In February the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade, and Consumer Protection held a hearing on “Name, Image, and Likeness: The State of Intercollegiate Athlete Compensation”. 1 of the witnesses offering his testimony was Kendall Spencer, the 2012 D-1 indoor long jump champion at New Mexico and currently a law student at Georgetown. Since these issues impact student-athletes from all sports (including college basketball), HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Kendall about testifying before Congress and training for the Olympics. If you would like to check out Kendall’s testimony, please go to: www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/FA28F571-60B2-4E80-BBE5-DA3A0BA2B0D0
You were the 2012 D-1 indoor long jump champion and a 2-time All-American while majoring in psychology and double-minoring in business/sociology at New Mexico: how did you balance your work on the track with your work in the classroom? I set priorities. When I got to New Mexico our coach told all of us that we have “2 pies and a slice of the 3rd” in terms of the 3 main areas of our life (athletics/academics/social). I had to stay really organized because I did not just want to be an athlete. I did not see my potential as an academic until my sophomore year, but once I saw a future in that I became passionate about it. I got involved in clinics/labs and served as a behavioral therapist for a couple of years. When I graduated I wanted to be able to look back and say that there was nothing else I could have done. I am pretty happy with what I was able to do.
2 of your biggest roles were with the D-1 Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and the D-1 Council: why did you decide to get involved with such organizations, and what have you been able to accomplish so far? 1st I was on the D-1 Council, then became the 1st athlete to serve on the NCAA Board of Directors, but decided that could not be it. The NCAA hosts a leadership forum each year where they invited hundreds of athletes/administrators to Dallas to see what goes on behind the scenes, and after attending that I really wanted to get more involved. The MWC was down a representative so I put my name in and they chose me to represent our conference. When I got to the SAAC it was like hitting a curve ball: I had no idea how complicated it was to put on a national event, work with sponsors/media, etc. I like playing a significant hand in the policy and decision making on the national level. After my 2nd year on the SAAC the NCAA was looking to restructure and I realized that I had a good opportunity to get voices/voting seats for student-athletes at the table of every NCAA committee. We stood up at the Convention to tell everyone what we wanted: there was a little pushback because people thought we did not have the time to handle it but we made time because it was important to us. Concussions were a hot issue at the time so to give everyone our own perspective was amazing. All of us had been involved in institutional/conference decision making so they did not just bring us in right off the field/court: we all had experience in advocating for different groups and turning that into policy decisions. That is why we can speak about the Name/Image/Likeness (NIL) issue: we understand the process. For the past couple of years people have talked about time demands on student-athletes: the initial research for that came out of our committee after asking everyone via a survey how much time they spend on different activities. We learned that some people spent 60 hours/week on athletic activities. 1 of my colleagues became co-author of the NCAA medical handbook dealing with concussions. We got organized so that we could text information directly to our membership, address the unionization issues with the Northwestern football players, etc. A lot of it had to do with education: we just tried to explain how everything worked because many people had no concept of exactly what happens behind the scenes. You saw campuses change as student-athletes finally had advocacy: I went around the country with different administrators to get our voice out there.
The SAAC found that some student-athletes spend upwards of 50-60 hours/week on athletic-related activities: I agree that if they are putting in long hours then they deserve something in return, but what if we resolve the problem by restricting the number of hours spent on athletics so that they can spend more time on academics (since an emphasis on academic scholarship is 1 of the many factors separating collegiate athletics from professional leagues)? That comment is why we did the survey: we asked what people would change and a lot of athletes said they needed to spend that large amount of hours on those activities. If you restrict the number of hours on athletes like myself who want to win a national title then that will not help. In my father’s era the athletes would do other exercises/training after practice. When coaches see that they can recognize that to be very good their teams need to spend that amount of time. Everyone does not want to win a championship, or even be a starter, and that is okay. However, when you force athletes to do that instead of study abroad or do a lab then there is added pressure. I want there to be a middle ground by creating an environment for the athletes who want to put in that amount of time. You want both kind of athletes to coexist so you do not want to force it. We have seen coaches become more lenient about it: if you are honest with your coach and are disciplined then most coaches are fine with it. My coaches were worried about me spending 4 hours in the weight room! You need to have that conversation during the recruitment process. That is part of the NIL discussion: you should go somewhere that fits your plan.
Your own plan was originally to go into neuroscience: how did you end up at Georgetown Law, and how is it going so far? That is my favorite thing to reflect on. At the end of my 4th year I realized that I wanted to do neuroscience and I worked with a professor at New Mexico who was doing concussion studies by helping him study the scans. I needed to find a post-baccalaureate program and must have emailed 200 professors around the country to see if I could be a summer research volunteer. Dr. Stephen Pinker said he did not have any funding but could find something for me to do. Later that day I went to Chipotle for dinner when they still had quotes from famous people on their bags…and Pinker was quoted ON MY BAG! I spent 2 weeks traveling up and down the East Coast to look at various schools and found a perfect match at UMass-Amherst. I met with the faculty athletic representative who was doing research on memory consolidation/sleep and the effect that exercise has on that. I got accepted into the program and had 18 months of classes/funded research but was still training the entire time. The following spring I was getting ready to start my graduate program and then Ferguson/Baltimore happened. 1 week later I was invited to speak at a panel in Baltimore in front of hundreds of lawyers and I guess I gave a decent presentation. A lot of attorneys came up afterward and said that I was good at oral advocacy and suggested I try law school instead of neuroscience so at the time it seemed like a really good fit. I moved back to California, studied for the LSAT…and bombed it. I was mad because I knew those Harvard kids could not be that much smarter than me! I moved to Cambridge on a whim and decided that I would figure it out. I emailed Harvard’s track coach because I wanted to keep training: their staff was amazing and brought me in as a volunteer coach while I took an LSAT prep course. Harvard AD Bob Scalise met with me and gave me a lot of great pointers, including the idea to get involved with the Kennedy School of Government. I helped teach a class there, which in turn helped refine my public speaking skills. I remember attending a 2016 election watch party with a bunch of Harvard/MIT professors, and by the end of the night they were all crying. I went home and decided that I wanted to see where law/policy intersected so I ended up going to Georgetown. It has been absolutely amazing here: I gave a TED Talk, had reconstructive surgery on my ankle, and started getting more into technology. I even helped run a “voting machine hacking village” at an annual hacking conference called DEFCON. I am also doing some work on privacy while also training. You see the same technology crawl into college sports as societal issues manifesting themselves in intercollegiate athletics. The NCAA governing process is a total microcosm for America: getting your message across, working with different groups, etc.
Last September California governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 206 (Fair Pay to Play Act): do you think that states should be allowed to enact whatever legislation they choose or must the NCAA provide structural guidance to cover all student-athletes? It is a tough question. States should always be able to deal with some of these issues. The problem is the way this industry works: it is not an area that states have a lot of knowledge about because it is the entertainment industry. Just ask a college basketball fan what Zion Williamson’s major was at Duke: nobody knows. People just see the athlete portion, not the student portion. You need the NCAA to have as much involvement as possible because nobody else knows student-athletes more than them. It is not just NCAA president Mark Emmert/COO Donald Remy: it is the SAAC, the athletic directors, chancellors, etc. The groups have to work together. I am from California and I thought Newsom’s ploy was a terrible idea and incredibly short-sighted: it was a grand gesture to induce fame without even reaching out to the Pac-12 Student Advisory Committee. The fact that he signed it with LeBron James on the “Uninterrupted” TV show was insane, and the ripple effect was incredibly detrimental. However, it did bring the conversation to the front. If the issues is compensation, then we cannot reach the merits before we evaluate what student-athletes are already getting to see how we can make the experience better. When the NCAA was in court a couple of years ago I said the exact same thing: if you are skipping steps and just providing more money, we will be right back here in a couple of years to address the issue. We did the research: when all the football/basketball players got their checks they just went out and got hoverboards and still could not feed themselves. California does not know how they will define “Name” or “Image” or “Likeness”, which as a law student is a big problem. Doing that without taking into account the world we live in will destroy a lot of the student-athlete experience. The notion that we expect the NCAA to solve a problem that the federal government has not yet solved is insane. It is really important for us to get active before it crumbles. Once you answer the threshold questions, only then can you ask if NIL is the appropriate model to use. Most people will say “hell no”: economic growth is a big part of social media influencers in a world that exists without regulation. I wish you could have seen some of the senators’ faces as they realized that this would be a big problem. It is the same issue with privacy: you cannot have 50 different regulatory structures so now we have to work backward
In February you testified before the US Senate: why did they invite you to speak, and how was the experience? I spoke with Senator Jerry Moran’s staff for an hours-long vetting process and shared my thoughts on the issues. They reached out to me 6 days in advance of the Subcommittee hearing and asked if I would testify, and I said yes. As scary as it was, I am someone who is still living it and in an environment where I can connect all of the dots, so my colleagues said they could not think of anyone better to do it. My nuanced point of view goes beyond just getting an education. The experience was amazing. Last year we had a final exam assignment where we played the role of a senator during testimony and I played the role of Richard Blumenthal. I enjoy writing and love public speaking: I got some great feedback even though it was not perfect. I still wish I had an extra week to make it crisp. 1 of my 1st pages fell out of my bag on the way there but people did not know so I guess it went well. Senators Marsha Blackburn/Blumenthal advocated for the states to do it but later came around to my point of view, which was a huge compliment. To hear Blumenthal say that he thought I got it right and then have a quick back-and-forth with him was the coolest part. I think that they had not heard my approach to technology/social media before, and I am 1 of the 1st people to talk about that in connection to privacy. My goal was to tell them about the world we live in, the student-athlete experience, as well as some overarching regulatory roadblocks, and I think I did that. I want to follow up with a few individuals and help them out. Seeing how shocked people were was kind of scary but not surprising. Congressman Mark Walker put a panel together last year with a few people including Jay Bilas that had everyone…except the NCAA and student-athletes. I addressed the panel about the role of technology and Bilas said we are not thinking about technology. If we get it wrong then we will cost the taxpayers a lot of money and there will be a nasty public perception. I want to do as much as I can to avoid that.
Was there any testimony that you agreed/disagreed with the most from the other 4 witnesses (Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby/NCAA President Mark Emmert/Kansas Chancellor Douglas Girod/National College Players Association Executive Director Ramogi Huma)? I took issue the most with Huma because I do not know if his heart is in the right place. He made it a lot about the NCAA and where they get it wrong, but I think it is more about student-athlete welfare. He talked a lot about the legal cases and the NCAA’s history in court: his idea is to create an open market because a 3rd party is better-suited to do group-licensing issues. I feel that 3rd parties are just looking for their 20% and do not care about the athletes. I thought Commissioner Bowlsby had a good take on things because I think we can only solve this at the conference level and they have schools that cross state lines to play games. Emmert was definitely put in the hot seat, as we all expected: his job is to echo the sentiment of the membership and he handled it as best he could. Since I do not have to answer to anybody I wish that Blackburn would have asked me a couple of questions. Dr. Girod has a neurology background, which I thought was cool, and his experience on the institutional level was great. I think they did a good job of having all levels represented and it was a great discussion. Moran got everyone to agree that they have to do something, which I think was a great 1st step and eliminated a lot of issues. The Senate has all the information it needs to either create a preemption or give its members broader authority. I cannot figure out how to get the Arkansas state rule to work with the New Mexico state rule if the Razorbacks play the Lobos at a tournament in California: I would have to hire an attorney! I strongly hope that people do not take it out of the hands of the NCAA: that would be a huge mistake.
You spoke about the role of student-athletes as “community leaders”, yet within the past few months we have seen 2 Ohio State football players arrested for felony rape/kidnapping and a Houston basketball player suspended for biting an opponent during a game: why should we give college kids any kind of compensation if some of them continue behaving badly? It goes back to whether we should penalize everyone for a few people screwing up. I think you should still deal with the issue: people would not have a problem with that at any other level. Sexual assault is not a college athletics issue: it is a societal issue, and we have been addressing it for a while. It is on us to end the issue on college campuses. It is a really tough balance to strike: I can think of many athletes who were falsely accused of rape after hooking up with someone who later got angry. Some of these issues disproportionately affect Black males: I hate to say it but it is the truth of the matter. It does not matter if the victim recants a week later: you have already been kicked off the team and it is all over social media. It does not take away the validity of having that conversation. The only reason it is a big deal is because people look up to these individuals. Even if you never had a platform before, you get an opportunity once you put on the jersey. Instead of taking it away, you view it as an opportunity to change it. You can totally use this as an opportunity to educate the world: people in other countries are watching. For every bit of pressure there is 4 times the opportunity.
I assume that everyone is in favor of more equality for female athletes/more access to health and wellness resources: can athletic departments just direct their resources to such good causes without needing funding from NIL opportunities? It is an issue of how to divide the resources, and with gender equity things get really sticky with NIL. Those top brands will gravitate toward high revenue sports, so I fear that female athletes will highly-sexualize themselves in order to get 3rd party sponsors. I guarantee it will happen, and it will be a pile of money that male athletes will not be able to get. Schools cannot put me on a poster without paying me and that money will have to come from somewhere. I do not know how to divide it up but it will come from universities. When you realize that truth, then you bring in the Title IX issue. The public just cannot wrap their heads around health issues. The amount of money I would spend outside the school if I did not have insurance would be $200/hour at a minimum, but I am getting treatment from school trainers every single day. If I was a school and had to pay for the use of your NIL, then I would charge you for the use of your brand. Unless you clear it with the school 1st, I do not want to see any pictures of you in our jersey or in our weight room, which will really change the relationship between the student-athlete and the university.
Will we get to see you at the Olympics in Tokyo? Yes! I am young enough to not be close to retiring but training while in law school is keeping me out of the bars and relatively in shape. You can get tunnel vision during law school because that is all the students do: I can understand why people do not like lawyers. I will retire when I reach my potential or duty calls me elsewhere, but neither of those have happened yet. I fly to Maine every week because that is where my coach lives: the people there are nice and it is so beautiful…during the summer! I like waking up during the day knowing that there is not a single person in the country working harder than me. I am in charge of 3 organizations, working part-time, doing well in law school, running the trial advocacy group, and training for the Olympics. It is not about accomplishing any of these goals: I just want to show people that it is possible. It is so worth it: I would do all of it again. I thought that I was working as hard as I could in Amherst, running hills in the snow at 11PM. I want to represent the idea that when you enter a role knowing that you will transition out of it 1 day, you should want people to know that you were there. When I graduate in May I will be proud of the fact that there is nothing more I could have done. I got to have dinner with the Clintons/Justice Ginsberg and testify before the Senate: I got my money’s worth out of this university! I have worked with Georgetown President John DeGioia before: he called me into his office last month to have a conversation with him, which was a tremendous privilege. I want people to know that I was here for good reasons. There were a lot of sleepless nights but it was a hell of a 3 years. 1 of my mentors is determined to make me do a PhD in the future…but we shall see.