How’s everyone’s weekend going? Thanks for spending a portion of it with the Six.
The professionalization of amateur sports took another turn this week.
The National Labor Relations Board has reportedly instructed its Los Angeles office to pursue charges of unfair labor practices made on behalf of athletes that attend the University of Southern California.
An advocacy group called the National College Player’s Association first levied the claims against USC the Pac-12 conference and the NCAA. In a statement published by ESPN, the organization’s executive director, Ramogi Huma, had this to say: “We are working to make sure college athletes are treated fairly in both the education and business aspects of college sports. Gaining employee status and the right to organize is an important part in ending NCAA sports' business practices that illegally exploit college athletes' labor."
College athletes are already getting paid. Name, image and likeness deals are now on the up-and-up and perfectly legal.
But the NLRB legal action is different. This is about potential unionization, an entirely different ballgame for collegiate sports.
A well-publicized attempt at unionization by Northwestern athletes less than a decade ago failed. But we are in a totally revamped environment in late 2022 and momentum towards athletes being classified as “employees” continues to gain steam.
A representative of the NLRB said about the irrelevant labeling of collegians as student-athletes, that it, “deprives these players of their statutory right to organize and to join together to improve their working/playing conditions if they wish to do so. Our aim is to ensure that these players can fully and freely exercise their rights.”
We don’t exactly know exactly how college sports will look in five or 10 years. The games on the field won’t change much. But the off-the-field business model will be entirely different. That’s for certain.
Let’s proceed with the Six.
1. Twitter’s Secret Blacklist.
Elon Musk decided to open up Twitter’s archives for a small group of reporters to boon through these past few weeks. At the end of they day, the “Twitter Files” reveals power hungry and pretty random progressives with unimaginable power –and they wielded it. In response to the document dumps, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote in a newsletter post, “The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves. This burdened the company with too much power...” Ya think? The Free Press newsletter, one of the publications gifted by Musk to publish the “Files,” with a good summation of it all.
2. How Bad Is Crime?
We just finished a mid-term election season with a constant stream of political messaging. Crime is always at the forefront with Super PAC’s funding ads produced to dramatize all the unlawfulness in American cities. But what is the actual cost of crime? The author of this piece attempts to quantify the cost of murder, for instance. American courts tend to value a life at around $5 million. Opinion polls suggest that Americans would collectively contribute $10 million to avert a murder. But taking all externalities into account, including the effect on property values, the costs of a given murder may be closer to $30 million. Interesting statistical argument and if so, crime is an underrated problem.
3. Why the Coca-Cola Freestyle Machine Is A Hit.
There are above 50,000 Coca-Cola Freestyle dispensers in operation, those hulking beverage dispensers that have every possible variety of carbonated Coke brands available on a touch screen. How’s this for a stat from Food Dive – those dispensers sling 11 million drinks daily from the 32 brands available, and Coca-Cola is paying attention. The company can see what drinks are poured and in what combinations, and on four occasions have actually mined that data to make a new beverage for sale in stores. The data is the reason for Sprite Cherry, Coke with Cherry Vanilla, Coke with Orange Vanilla, and Sprite Strawberry with Lymonade existing. I don’t go for all that fancy bourgeoisie stuff – pour me a 32 ounce Mello Yello and I’m good to go. Keepin’ it old school.
4. What Is The Net Worth Of All 46 US Presidents?
This list from Buzzfeed is not entirely accurate — plenty of "reported" and "alleged" here — but fascinating nonetheless. The figures have been updated for 2022's values, so it’s generally possible to compare the finances of 18th-century president George Washington and Joe Biden. Of the 46, Trump and JFK are the two likely billionaires. Only seven presidents were worth less than $1 million. The vast majority either inherited or married into money. One interesting estimate – Abe Lincoln, projected in this list at just north of $1 million. That number, of course, is equal to the average annual value compensation for most Illinois politicians today.
5. Soft Rock Doc Series Starts To Launch In January.
We haven’t seen a comeback like this since LL Cool J’s character in his 1990 track “Mama Said Knock You Out.” The resurgence of soft rock or now, reconstituted as “Yacht Rock” music, is at a such an interest level that a streaming service is producing a documentary on the genre. As Variety reports, Paramount Plus launches the doc next month and tells the story of legends Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins, Hall & Oates and Ambrosia. Is there anything more soul soothing than hearing “Sailing” pop up on satellite radio during a late night drive home?
The term ‘viral sensation’ is somewhat ubiquitous in internet culture. A snake slithering through an open toilet can rack up just as many millions of views as the behind-the-scenes making of a McRib sandwich. The whims of our collective attention spans are impossible to engineer. I fell victim to such waggish distractions earlier this week when this social media post came up on my feed: a 200-pound, mustached football player in Texas claims to be 12 years old. What do you think? I’m aligned with Tyreek Hill, the Miami Dolphins wide receiver, who tweeted about the ‘boy’: “If that 12 year old really 12 my son not playing football, these kids built different.” Facts.
Thanks for reading everybody and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
We’ll take Christmas and New Year’s off and be right back here on Jan. 8.
Happy Holidays from the Six.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.