Extra: Domonique Foxworth Full Interview
Domonique Foxworth began his career in the N.F.L. in 2005Â â a torn A.C.L. in 2010 set him on a different path. (Photo: Ronald Martinez/Getty)
Stephen Dubnerâs conversation with the former N.F.L. player, union official, and all-around sports thinker, recorded for our âHidden Side of Sportsâ series.
Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability.Â
This a Freakonomics Radio extra, our full interview with Domonique Foxworth, who appeared in bits and pieces in our âHidden Side of Sportsâ series. Iâve known Foxworth for a while now; heâs one of the most thoughtful athletes Iâve ever encountered. But this conversation surpassed my already high expectations â not just his thoughtfulness but his willingness to wrestle with contradiction, and his hardcore candor. As youâll hear in this episode, he was an N.F.L. player for several years, then served as president of the N.F.L. playersâ union and, after getting an M.B.A. from Harvard, was the C.O.O. of the N.B.A. playersâ union. It turns out he didnât like that job too much; youâll hear why. As the conversation begins, Foxworth is talking about his belief that the professional sports playersâ unions should be dissolved. I asked why âŠ
FOXWORTH: Yeah, where we are at, with professional athletes and how big a business itâs gotten, and how well they are compensated, I think itâs a product of sacrifices made by players coming up. And many players lost long seasons, were black-balled out of the league and had their careers really torn apart by their ambitions of free agency and pensions, and all those things. And they never really got to fully reap the benefits from that. And back in those days, the unions â the player unions were a lot like what we think of as traditional labor unions. But weâve got to a point now where itâs not like that. And with the length of a playerâs career, and how much money they could stand to make in a season, itâs really not in their best interest. Mathematically, logically, if you go through the numbers, itâs not in their best interest to actually withstand a lockout or to initiate a strike. They will not make that money back. Itâs just physically impossible.
The reason why they would do it is to further the cause, I guess, for players in the future. But since you canât hand your position down to your son or daughter, then it really doesnât seem to make sense. So for me, I can use me as an example, I sacrificed from the time I was â I donât know â probably in high school, is when I started to forgo other opportunities or other decisions to focus more on football. Then Iâm in college and I wanted to be a computer â I did computer graphics and some computer science in high school, and then in college I wanted to be a computer science major, at University of Maryland. And my academic adviser was like, âThat course load is going to make it very difficult for you to make our practices, there are labs, and blah, blah, blah, blah.â So I was like, âNo, not going to do that.â During the summers, when there was â
DUBNER: So instead, you did â was it American Studies?
FOXWORTH: Yeah, I did American Studies.
DUBNER: And journalism, right? Which just shows how easy what I do is, that you could do it and another major while playing football. But anyway, go ahead.
FOXWORTH: No, I enjoyed those. And it was good, but it wasnât what I wanted to do. And in the summers when people were getting internships or whatever, I was working out and getting ready for football. And I say all that to say, once I got to the league, then I got drafted and I was in the third round, so thatâs â itâs money, itâs good money, but itâs not life-changing money. It doesnât makeup for all the things that you have given up through the course of your life. And then I come up on free agency, and thatâs when I got a pretty nice deal. I canât imagine if somebody was like, âNo, youâve got to sit out right now.â
And then when you think about it, itâs competition obviously, because you are competing in this lockout or strike with the owners, whereas it does make sense for them to withstand a lockout, because they own their teams into perpetuity so if they win a lockout for a tenth of a percentage point or even a whole percentage point of revenue split, that is something that will maybe $3 million a franchise, for this season. And it will go up as things grow, and it goes on and on and on. So if you are in the old fashioned mindset of labor strikes is the only way to get anything, you are â players in all sports are severely mismatched.
DUBNER: Itâs interesting to hear you say, though, that that would be the reason to maybe not have players unions, because a lockout or strike I guess â the lockout is what the owners do, a strike what the players can do â even a strike threat is rarely â is pretty rare. Once every whatever, five to 10 years, depending on when a given unionâs collective bargaining agreement is up, right? so you I know â you were playing football in the N.F.L. when the lockout happened. It was 2011, right? And I know that the N.F.L. Players Association was basically telling you guys, âPut away as much money as you can, and maybe you might want to switch to regular gas from unleaded,â all this stuff. Can you talk about that experience and how you were thinking that might happen?
FOXWORTH: Yeah, I was heavily involved in the negotiations, so I remember that. I remember trying to get all the players ready. But the fact of the matter is, the players are severely outmatched if youâre going to try to match up with money, with owners. Weâre not going to be able to outlast how long they can go without making money. As far as influence on the media, they have that also. And trying to fight them in that traditional way â youâre destined for failure. It would seem. The point of decertification is, as long as we have a union, we have to agree over collective bargaining. Once you dissolve the union, then you expose the league to anti-trust law, which frankly, the N.F.L. existed for several years very lucratively for the players without a union. And the league was exposed to antitrust law. Thatâs what precipitated free agency in football.
And the only reason why the N.F.L. Players Association was reconstituted was because the N.F.L. made it a stipulation of the settlement. You must reform a union to allow us to operate as a legal cartel/monopoly. Thatâs only reason why we exist, frankly and I was the president of the union. I was the C.O.O. of the N.B.A. Players for a time. And I recognize the union provides a great deal of value. But I think frankly that protection is more value to the leagues than it is to the players. In whatever job anyone has, in your job, they canât institute a salary cap. They canât do a draft and say like, âHey, all the doctors that graduate this year, weâre going to draft you and tell you where you go.â You have some say in those things, because they are forced to abide by the regular laws that everyone else abides by.
DUBNER: Regular labor laws, not union provisions. Wow. So how would you have the scenario look? Every leagueâs different. But obviously, college football is this weird, unpaid, high risk â thatâs a whole other financial ecosystem. Why donât we just start with talking about how N.C.A.A. football works as a feeder system for the N.F.L., and what that does for or to the athletes.
FOXWORTH: I think weâre at a point now where most people kind of understand that college sports is professional sports. In select cases. So obviously, the vast majority of college sports are not professional sports. But the two kinds of big money sports, in the power five conferences, they generate a substantial amount of revenue, and that revenue goes to lots of people who are not the labor. So it goes to supporting other sports, it goes to building bigger and better facilities, it goes to paying college presidents and coaches and funding the N.C.A.A. It goes a lot of different places, but it doesnât go to the people who are the labor on the field.
And another thing that complicates that â it would be a problem if that was the end of the story and every player then went on to have N.F.L. careers. It would be unfair, but whatever, youâre not going to lose any sleep for those guys. But the vast majority of the guys â and I have several teammates who, because it is not considered work, theyâre not privy to workers compensation. Theyâre not privy to extended health care. So I have a few teammates who have torn A.C.L.s, separated shoulders, torn labrums and hips and shoulders, lots of injuries that â one of my best friends in college, I think it was a few years ago, his doctor told him that he was going to have to have both of his knees replaced by the time he was 50. And he didnât play professional sports. He had three knee surgeries while in college. And thereâs nothing that any college football team or governing body is going to do for him in that case. And that to me is tragic that a lot of people benefited from that.
And again, he had aspirations to play professional football. So while he was in college, he made all the decisions that people who have those aspirations do, where you donât necessarily go after the major that youâre most interested in, or the major thatâs going to lead to a career. You have the major thatâs going to allow you to focus on whatâs most important, which is sports, unfortunately. And I know many people would say that maybe that shouldnât be so important, but itâs hard when that carrotâs out there, itâs hard to convince somebody to try to balance and try to do both things well, when itâs like, âNo, I need to do as well as I can at this, because this is a life-changing opportunity, not just your life, but a generational shifting opportunity.â And you have a chance at it, and someone is going to tell you no? âHow about you donât go do that summer workout thatâs going to get you closer to â how about you take an internship or something. How about you do take that tougher major.â Youâre going to miss a few practices. The coaches may not start you. And it will stunt your development. That just doesnât make sense.
DUBNER: So, the old fashioned argument for why this was okay and why it was acceptable was that, well, this is like what economists call a tournament model, whenever you got a lot of people competing for the top of the pyramid, whether itâs show-business or sports or, whatever, the bottom of the pyramid, thereâs lots and lots and lots and lots of people there willing to do whatever it takes for practically no money. Itâs this weird, unpaid apprenticeship. And I guess some people accept that as okay. Others donât. But what strikes me thatâs especially noteworthy about sports is the degree and magnitude of sacrifice, physical and otherwise, is larger, I would argue, than trying to become an actor, trying to become a writer, and whatnot. So can you just talk about that component of it a little bit more, and what you think would be a better solution?
FOXWORTH: Bringing up the tournament model is interesting, because I can understand how some people would look at that and say that it fits here and thatâs why this is fair. But as a country, weâve decided that that wasnât fair a long time ago. Thatâs not â there are plenty of jobs where thatâs true, just about every job. The barista at Starbucks. There are plenty of people out there who are capable of being baristas, and you could probably allow Starbucks to pit them against each other and negotiate down, down, down, down, down. But thatâs not the case. Weâve instituted minimum wages and instituted lots of other laws to protect American people or American workers from these type of capitalistic urges run amok.
And the thing thatâs frustrating to me is, weâve instituted rules in professional sports, that happen to take place on college campuses. We instituted rules that are to the advantages of the institutions. But we are not interested in instituting any rules that are â that are things that we accept as just facts and fair. Youâll be hard pressed to find anyone in our society thatâs like, âNo, letâs eliminate the minimum wage and allow this tournament model to run amok for low wage workers.â
DUBNER: Well the other argument though, in colleges, is â again this may be a purely specious argument from your perspective, maybe partially specious. But the other argument is, wait a minute. Free education, four years of college. Whatâs that worth?
FOXWORTH: So thereâs two major issues that jump out for me from the education. The players are brought to the school because of their athletic prowess. There are many players who Iâve been around and I know that were not prepared to benefit. So, what theyâre receiving is, steps 10, 11, and 12 when what theyâre building on is steps 1, 2, and 3, if that makes any sense. So that education, frankly, is worthless to them. Theyâre in there trying to get eligible. And then there is the other people who show up who are prepared like me and like other people that then make all these decisions.
Because youâre not even getting the same education as the people around you, because you have to travel on Thursdays and Fridays, and you are not allowed to do certain majors because they conflict with your schedule. And three times a week, during the winter session or the spring session, you have to go to 5:00 a.m. workouts and that changes your academic experience. There are all these things that are mandatory because your scholarship is year to year, and you donât have any power to negotiate with your coach and say things like, âI want to take this so Iâm not going to able to go there.â Thatâs just not a thing that is available. So the education that theyâre receiving is not the education that people think it is.
DUBNER: This is a gigantic question and itâs such a big industry already that thereâs obviously no easy, quick solution that would satisfy even close to everybody, but what solution or solutions do you think are most viable that would, letâs say, keep big-time college sports intact in a way that the market would need them to be intact â in other words, thereâs massive audiences out there that really like it â but all those dollars, as youâve noted, donât flow to the people who actually produce the labor. So what would be a way to equilibrate that a little bit, or make more people less unhappy at least?
FOXWORTH: The thing that frustrates me about that conversation is youâre always asked to add something, to change a rule to fix it. Whereas I feel we should blow it up altogether and follow, frankly, the model that this country has followed up until now, is that you strive for a free market and then you institute rules to make it fairer. So thatâs where we should go. Letâs not try to add a rule or provide a stipend for players. No, let the schools go after these players the same way anyone else would go after any other employee. And then if we notice that there are issues along the way, then we can add rules to fix those. I think trying to inch our way back is not the way to get to the fairest possible system.
DUBNER: If you were going to blow up the system, would you even connect that pre-professional sports league, meaning college, would you even connect that to universities at all, or is that an accident of history that is the root of the problem, essentially?
FOXWORTH: I think itâs definitely an accident of history. I know you and your son are big soccer or footy fans â
DUBNER: You can call it soccer. Thatâs all right. Thatâs okay.
FOXWORTH: Thatâs not the model that they follow. This is a purely American model. This college athletics being a feeder system to professional athletics. And itâs probably â not probably, it is more unnatural, I would think, than these other systems. So I understand that it is the way that our country developed, and I understand the allure of being connected to a college that you went to, or a college you grew up around. And Iâm not saying that you â you have to dissolve that altogether. You can allow them to â many of them, obviously they are nonprofit organizations, but they understand how to exist in a for-profit environment, they do go after different professors and they negotiate over those terms, this is something that they are accustomed to.
They negotiate with coaches, they donât have to go that far â With their coaches and assistant coaches, they understand how the free market works. So Jimbo Fisher is a good example of it. He was the coach at Florida State. He brought them a national championship, and then Texas A&M offered him a better situation and he up and left, and then Florida State went and got Willie Taggart from Oregon. This is not something â while they want to pretend that it is a completely pure system, they know how this works, and every other year Alabama has to pay Nick Saban a little bit more to keep him at the top of the list. This is not something that that is brand new to them. I donât see why itâs any different from going into a kidâs living room and saying, well, we want you to come here. We can offer you X, Y, and Z. But it just â it makes people feel uncomfortable, but thereâs nothing wrong with it.
DUBNER: So itâs interesting â correct me if Iâm wrong. I probably am, but it seems like thereâs a weird paradox here. Youâre calling for the decertification or the blowing up of professional sportsâ players unions, because you feel they donât really work well â work in the interest of the athletes who need to make their money now, careers being so short. But it sounds like college athletes have zero collective representation, and a union for them might actually do some good. Or do you think thatâs not a solution?
FOXWORTH: No, I think that theyâve tried and failed. Ramogi Huma at one point was leading that effort, and it hasnât worked. But I do think that them having a seat at the table with some leverage would be helpful, because any time you have â and this is whatâs happened in college sports for a long time now, is you have a bunch of people in a room setting up the parameters of the game. But thereâs one group â thereâs only one group thatâs not allowed in that room. And of course that â itâs just human nature. That group is going to be the group that is perpetually slighted. So I think that college athletes are in a different space than professional athletes. So having a union â if the college athletes could organize to the point where they would just stop showing up to games, and thatâs an impossible thing to ask them, because again, it goes back to this is my one chance. But if they were able to at least threaten that, thatâs how they could get some significant change.
DUBNER: So given the history and the dollars and the emotions that are attached to college sports overall, how likely do you see any kind of substantial evolution or change, even in the next 10 or 20 years?
FOXWORTH: Yeah, itâs clear that the opinion in public is shifting towards wanting athletes to be fairly compensated. But I donât know that theyâre going to stop watching. So I donât know where the pressure comes from, honestly. Weâre already at a majority of society. I think itâs different across age and in racial demographics, but there will come a point, particularly as some young people get older, where all adults believe and accept that college athletes should be paid. But this ties into the union conversation. What is going to force them to act?
In the same way that a lockout or a strike is not necessarily going to force owners to act, in the same way that antitrusts or antitrust exposure would force them to act. This is true here too. I do think if collegiate athletes just stop showing up to big time games and tournaments, that would force them to act. But I donât see them doing it because they only have four years of eligibility, which means they only have four years to show professional teams that theyâre good enough to play. So itâs, again, not in their interest to do that. The only other thing is if the public stopped watching because of it, and I donât necessarily see that happening, so Iâm not sure how we get to this point.
DUBNER: The other thing thatâs tricky is that the guys with the least incentive to change it are the ones for whom the system works, which is to say the stars in the system, right? If you really think that being a college athlete, whether in basketball for one year or football for three or four years, that you are going to have a professional career, you donât want to rock the boat because youâre there now. So I donât see how they would have an incentive to even pretend to want a change. Do you?
FOXWORTH: Yeah, I think you linking these two is very important, because itâs pretty accurate â it isnât in their best interests. Those guys who are on the doorsteps of having professional careers, itâs not really in their best interest to stop this now. And you also bring into account the people who are benefiting most from it who are not on the field, thereâs really no benefit to the coaches who â because coaches salaries are inflated because they have extra money, because they are not sending it to the players. And the rest of the teams who are funded by money generated by football and basketball. Thereâs no incentive there â thereâs just the athletes who donât have much power.
DUBNER: It is interesting that in the N.F.L., a coach might make a quarter or maybe even a tenth of what his top star player is making, right? But in college you make infinitely more because theyâre all getting zero. If I were to think of someone who could try to get in there and navigate diplomatically and also bust skulls and who knows what theyâre talking about, youâre the guy actually, because first of all, youâve been a professional football player. You were also president of the Players Union in the N.F.L. But then, youâre the only person I know of at all â correct me if Iâm wrong â the only person I know of whoâs ever been associated with the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. as this chief operating officer for the N.B.A. Players Union, correct?
DUBNER: So youâve got the two major college sports â youâve got those credentials, right? You also happen to have an M.B.A. from Harvard. Yes?
FOXWORTH: Thatâs a thing.
DUBNER: Thatâs a thing. Am I wrong to think that you sometimes do think about being the person to try to go downstream from pro sports and into college and say, âHey, if you actually want to treat people properly, the place to do it is here. And yes, we do need to blow up the system.â
FOXWORTH: I donât, honestly. And maybe thatâs yelling about unfairness from the sidelines and not necessarily getting involved, maybe thatâs the wrong way to go about it. But I donât know. I agree with you, itâs not complicated, but I do think itâs complex, and that can be intimidating, and I donât know the way. You brought up business school. One of the things we, in the entrepreneurship classes that I took there, talked a lot about how little people know about what their business is going to become, and how many times it pivots and changes and how not knowing what youâre going to do is okay. Itâs like you bet on the person more so than the idea. You bet that the person will figure it out.
I donât have any clue, honestly, where to start with this, and thatâs more intimidating. I feel pretty close to 85 percent confident about the idea that unions should decertify in professional sports, because I fully understand that. Iâve been through this and I know that if they operate as trade associations, they can still provide a lot of the services to players that players get from the union, and it doesnât really hurt them. The scary part is, maybe you no longer have a league minimum for players, and that creates a tournament thing that youâre talking about. I understand the ins and outs, I understand that in a way that I donât understand the landscape of college sports. I donât know.
DUBNER: I guess I just look at it as a thought experiment. If you could take someone that doesnât know anything about sports at all and say, âHey, what if we have this system where workers are going to perform a set of tasks. Letâs say 50 hours a week, for four years, at this place, and then theyâre going to perform essentially the same set of tasks in a different place. And in each case, 80,000 people come and watch them and millions more watch them on T.V. But in one case they get paid, letâs say, an average salary of whatever, $2, $3 million a year, and the other they get paid zero. And theyâre the same people.â How â in what universe does that make any sense? Thatâs the thought experiment that I think would lead to a reassessment that â
FOXWORTH: Thatâs the thing itâs â another thing that Iâve come to learn in professional life is that logic is useless in some cases. The thought experiment that you just took me through is a wonderful one that proves the example, but people donât act based on thought experiments. They act in reaction to incentives and pressure, and those sorts of things. So a couple of things that we talked about â and I think creating another place, creating real competition, because the fact that they are a monopsony now, meaning that they can â thatâs the only place you can go â that exists in part because of the unions, both professional football and basketball. So basketball forces the players to be one year removed from high school, before they can enter the league, which forces them to then find an alternative. Maybe they can go overseas. But if they want to stay in America, they have to play college basketball.
Football is three years removed, and there is no real, viable, professional football leagues elsewhere, so you have to go to college. What the N.B.A. is doing now with the D-League, and theyâve started something called the Junior N.B.A., theyâre building that infrastructure, whether intentionally or not. They are certainly building an infrastructure, infrastructure to create an academy system that is an alternative to college athletics and I know theyâve discussed the idea and they probably are going to remove the one and done rule in the next C.B.A. And some players will start going straight into these N.B.A. academies or into these D-League teams rather than going to college. And that might change the system. In football, I donât think that there is much hope to change that anytime soon. I guess maybe if basketball changes then football has to change.
DUBNER: Well, whatâs to stop me? Letâs say Iâm an entrepreneur and I say, âThe N.F.L. Players Association,â â which is a sworn enemy of the N.F.L. in many cases, in many instances, but theyâre also colluding with them to basically get free labor for three or four years from all these athletes. What to stop me from saying, well, why donât I work up an alternative and I will create some kind of league, that is pre-professional that would satisfy the N.F.L. draft rules, I guess. On the other hand, they can change those rules at will and put me out of business on day one, I guess, right?
FOXWORTH: Right. They could, but I donât think they would. The major problem is network effects. You need to have a critical mass of the best players for the other best players to come, because the guys need to hone their skills and they need their skills to be matched up against other players, so that you can know. Maybe for basketball it might be a little different, because it seems to be that often they pick out those guys early on, and they turn out to be really good. But with football, if you get the top 50 players, top 50 incoming freshmen, to go build a league with you, which I think is â would be really hard to do. But if you do that, thatâs still not even close to enough. You need them â and again, basketball, everyone plays the same position, everyone blocks, shoots, jumps, plays defense. Football itâs like, âOh, so weâve got to get ââ It just seems like a really hard thing to do to build a real alternative.
DUBNER: Well let me ask you this: so the alternative to this, the purely cutthroat capitalist version, is the Academy model that soccer clubs around the world practice, right? And there, youâve often got kids, very young kids, sometimes really â eight, nine, 10. But usually, 11, 12, early teens, going into academies and basically becoming sort of unpaid professionals, although not fully unpaid. And that is an alternative. But A, if you donât make it into the professional level, which the vast majority, just numbers being what they are, wonât, then you have a weird â youâve been removed from mainstream education and whatnot for a long time.
But also, I look at the flip side â you as an athlete and as a student, you may think it would have been better for you to have had the choice between professional sports and a career that was not sports. But on the other hand, you went to college and played sports. They went together. And then even though you say this system is not optimal for anyone, and certainly not for you, you graduated from Maryland. You played in the N.F.L. You had a union position, then in the N.B.A. as well. And then you got a Harvard M.B.A. So I could look at that and say man, Iâm really glad that Domonique Foxworth was not sent to a football academy at age 13 to become a semi-professional. So now, maybe youâre just an outlier, but who knows.
FOXWORTH: So Jay-Z sold drugs, grew up in Marcy Projects to a single mother. Now he is a multi-multi-millionaire married to Beyonce, the most amazing talent we have today. So, why donât we set it up so that all young men must sell drugs when theyâre kids, and have only their mother and grow up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, New York? He had a great talent and to be honest, thereâs probably a great deal of luck, heâll speak to that, in that he happened to not be there when one of his friends got arrested, and his friend didnât snitch on him. That is a lot of luck. And the same thing is true for me. I can go through the course of my life and look at all the things that happened that were just happenstance that led me to these positions, and Iâm not going to say that itâs a model that should be followed. Just â I understand that there are occasional outliers, but trying to build around that seems crazy.
DUBNER: Let me ask you a very narrow specific question, but Iâm just curious what you can tell me, because again, youâre one of the few people I know and maybe the only person there is whoâs been in both the N.F.L. Players Association, had a position in that union, and a position the N.B.A. Players Union. So the two sports â even though we lump them together a lotâ pro football and pro basketball â from a labor perspective, theyâre pretty different, right? So thereâs 53 on a team in the N.F.L. Just 12 in the N.B.A. But then additionally thereâs visibility. We see the N.B.A. player â we see their faces. N.F.L. we usually donât. And also the salary â average salary is much, much higher in the N.B.A., in part because there are so many fewer players for the money to go around. With all those differences between two sports that we tend to lump in together, what are the differences in either what the union tries to accomplish for those labor forces, or any other related differences?
FOXWORTH: Yeah, the power dynamics are obviously very different between the players in the union and the players in the league, and also consequently, the union and the league. LeBron James, he is more powerful than anybody, in the league, any owner, any team, anybody in the union, any player. He has more power and influence over that league than anybody else. Thereâs no one like that in the N.F.L. So that is â as are all things â it is a gift and a curse. There is a silver lining and a cloud that comes with having such a concentration of power and influence in any one person. So that changes the dynamics.
Fundamentally the things that the players want and that the union want to accomplish, theyâre not very different. Honestly, theyâre pretty similar in what you want to accomplish. But how you go about doing it is very different. So obviously, I wouldnât speak about anything directly that I experienced while I was at either place, but this is one thing that I noticed, that, while working at the N.B.A. Players Association, was, the commissioner and LeBron James â the commissioner and Kevin Durant â they are more peers than anybody else. And they have a relationship, and they have conversations. Thatâs not something you have to concern yourself with. And frankly, when we were in negotiations, that was â it was nice to be able to actually be that liaison, when I was with the N.F.L. Players Association. The commissioner and the owners, they did not know how the players felt or what the players thought, unless they got it from us.
DUBNER: Do you attribute that difference, then, to the leverage that players have in part because basketball is different from football, or do you attribute that to some kind of either history or philosophy or economic leverage that N.F.L. owners have that is really different from N.B.A. owners?
FOXWORTH: Those all play a part in it. But fundamentally, it comes down to value, and I â while you brought up that there are fewer players in the N.B.A., and thatâs part of the reason why the players get paid more. Yeah, thatâs true. But LeBron James is more valuable to any single team as a talent or even as a marketing vehicle than anybody in the N.F.L. So that matters. You can go back through history and what Michael Jordan was able to create was a model, and player â he built on players before him, where the best basketball player is something that matters. And the best football player doesnât matter in that way. Iâm not sure that âI would also say that the person who is being most taken advantage of, honestly, in all of this, is probably Lebron James.
FOXWORTH: The existence of the max salary in basketball â and again, we talk about these relationships and we often just talk about groups as if theyâre monoliths, all N.B.A. owners feel like this. All commissioners and people in league offices feel like this. All players feel like this. All unions â itâs not true. The rise of the max salary was in part because the N.B.A. owners wanted to â and this was â max salary came before my time. But N.B.A. owners wanted to be able to control the salaries, because thatâs who was driving the salaries up, is the best players â best players drive the salaries up. So N.B.A. owners want to be able to control that. And the middle class of players wanted to make more money.
So those guysâ interests were aligned in that case, letâs cap LeBron James, or letâs cap this guy, because that will take more money out of the system and put â allow the owners to put more in their pockets. But in a cap system if you have a floor, that also forced them to give more of it to us middle guys who arenât really â so what ends up happening is, a lot of those guys get more than they, frankly, are worth. And LeBron James and people like him get a lot less than they deserve.
DUBNER: This happened in the N.F.L., too, didnât it, right, with the different value attached to draft picks? Right? That year in the C.B.A., right? So all of a sudden the top draft pick was probably worth about a lot â 30 or 40 percent less than the same person had been a year before. Yeah?
FOXWORTH: I would quibble slightly with the word worth, and â paid, because I think the worth and how much theyâre paid are two different things. But if you had a true â and the N.B.A. obviously has â the N.F.L. has a salary cap and the N.B.A. has luxury taxes and a cap which creates a de facto cap. And Major League Baseball, while it is uncapped, they still have instituted a number of rules that, last time I checked, the lowest percentage of league revenue goes to baseball players, while they have these enormous contracts, if you put together all the money thatâs going to players, they are lowest of all the three major sports.
DUBNER: So let me ask you this. Letâs say someone listening to you says to themself, âI like sports. I played a little bit in high school, whatever, and I think itâs an amazing endeavor. Right? It scratches some itches that nothing else can. But I also like fairness and treating people with respect and also paying them what theyâre worth. How do I reconcile that, as a fan of professional sports, and college sports, where youâre saying thereâs all kinds of reasons to be frustrated, if not more than that?â
FOXWORTH: Frankly, you donât. You donât have to. Itâs an interesting irony in that sports is a place that we consider it a very controlled environment and itâs as close to a meritocracy as we have, and we feel like it is fairness. Whoever wins on the game, on the field, is the better team. You arenât necessarily â and itâs not â obviously itâs not true in life. The people who win in life are disproportionately people who are from wealthy parents and who have certain connections that â but you look at the field and we convince ourselves that once you step out there, itâs all fair, and it feels that way.
That doesnât extend to the business of sports. And people who are interested in the business of sports, I certainly encourage them to learn more and to get involved in this, but the business of sports is much more business than it is sport. So I understand that there are lots of people who donât care about this and arenât interested in this, and I am not asking them to care or be interested. I just hope that they donât get in with limited information. I love going to movies but I donât necessarily want to get into the weeds of all the issues that happen in production.
DUBNER: Right. So talk for a minute about you as an athlete, as a kid, and Iâm curious to know what the transition was like, when it went from something that you love to do â for whatever reasons you love to do it, whether it was pure fun or competition, or being good, whatever â the transition to when you realized it was something that was going to be a profession and a career, and how getting into the business of sport changed your view of it.
FOXWORTH: I was eight when I decided I wanted to be a professional football player. Actually, I was younger than that. I Remember because we lived â my dad was in the military, so we lived a couple different places. And I remember being in an apartment we lived in in Indianapolis, and I told my father I wanted to be a professional football player, and he told me, I donât know if he believed me or not, but I suspect that he didnât, but he told me, âAll right, well, you set a goal, you should do something to get you closer to that goal every day.â And I took that to heart. So I did a bunch of pushups and sit ups that night, until I was throwing up, itâs ridiculous. And then my father â I assume â tried to teach me about moderation the next day. Like, âHey, why donât you take some smaller steps?â I was in love with the game, in part because of how violent it was.
Honestly, whatever warped sense of masculinity I had at that age, that probably has not fully left me was like, âBasketball is for the soft kids. Football is for the men. And I want to play football.â And to get back to the original question that you asked, I donât remember not thinking that I was going to go. Itâs weird, I was young enough then to be naive enough to think, âObviously, Iâm going to play in the N.F.L.â And as I got to an age to realize not everyone plays N.F.L., I also was one of the few kids who colleges wanted to talk to.
I think around high school, when â I worked from the time when I was old enough to â I was too old to go to summer camp â I started to work. And that was only two summers before colleges started inviting me to football camps. I would go to those football camps and realize, âOh shit, this is an audition, this isnât camp.â This isnât football camp. I was 13 when I went to Art Monkâs full-pad football camp. And I didnât get an invitation. I just wanted to go. And I still have the report card that they gave me that said that I maybe could play Division II college football. And then the next two â
DUBNER: How did you feel about that?
FOXWORTH: I was heartbroken and defiant at the same time. But everybody has these â those type of stories.
DUBNER: What position where you playing at the time?
FOXWORTH: I was playing running back and safety, which was probably part of the problem because they â they separated us by age at that point and not by weight. I was very small â too small to be a running back. So after that year, then at 14, I was old enough to work, so I worked the next two or then â yeah, I think I worked for â might have the years off, might have been 12 at Art Monk and then 13, 14, I worked. But anyway â
DUBNER: What kind of work did you do those summers?
FOXWORTH: I worked at a camp for disabled, a sleep away camp for disabled children and adults called Camp Green Top, the first year, which was a hell of an eye-opening experience, where you have to feed, bathe, change diapers of adults, chase them when they run off, and whatever. So thatâs a whole nother ball of wax. But then next year I worked at Dragon House Express, the Chinese food restaurant in the mall food court. And then the next year I got â started getting invited to football camps. And thatâs when it started to become a business. When I showed up and I was like, âOh, theyâre evaluating me, this is how I can get a scholarship or cannot get a scholarship. This is where the dream either continues to go forward or dies.â
DUBNER: And then how did that realization affect your performance?
FOXWORTH: It worked out, so I guess it helped.
DUBNER: Were you intimidated a little bit, or were you more like, âOh, now I get it. Now this is my business and Iâm going to win.â
FOXWORTH: Yeah, I do my best to be honest and not paint this picture of â I feel itâs easy for me to say, âNo, then I turned it up another level.â Which canât actually be true for a 15-year-old kid who knows that his whole life is riding on how well he does at Duke football camp or whatever. So Iâm sure I felt some anxiety and some nervousness. But I pushed it down I guess, and I did well enough to get their attention. But it also felt like the pressure that I wanted, you know? I wanted to be a professional football player â I wanted for my play to matter. And obviously it felt like it mattered in my little Pop Warner games, whatever. Iâd cry when we lost. But I knew that nobody cared in the world. But then, those were real stakes. And I was like, âYeah, this is real.â
FOXWORTH: Were there other kids from those camps that you remember who also went on to play in the N.F.L.?
FOXWORTH: Probably. The one person I remember â I went to Penn Stateâs football camp and I remember Adam Taliaferro, who was older than me. He was the big guy on campus at the time, and he was their big recruit. They really wanted him. And I remember befriending him. He was a few years older to me, befriending him and looking up to him and being like, âOh, this is cool. This big time guy who was on the cover of all these newspapers, weâre friends.â And then he ended up going to Penn State and playing safety, I believe, and was paralyzed. And yeah, thatâs a whole nother avenue to go down.
DUBNER: Yeah. Well, letâs go down that avenue for a minute. You were relatively injury-free during high school and college. And when you would see other guys getting hurt or in an extreme case like Adam, getting paralyzed, whatâs your response to that? How do you react?
FOXWORTH: It goes back to my warped ideas of masculinity, as much as Iâve gotten older and try to suppress them. At that point, it was still there. And probably â not probably, it still is in me at some point. Hopefully Iâve stifled some of it now. But it was like, âYeah, I play this game, and yeah, people get paralyzed ââ Iâve been on the field a couple of times when people have been paralyzed. I played in a preseason game in the N.F.L. where a guy died in a locker room afterwards. I was on the field when Kevin Everett was paralyzed. We had practice at Maryland where a helicopter came to take one player off the field and the coach said, move it down, and we kept doing the drills as a helicopter was taking one of our teammates who couldnât move to the hospital. He ended up being okay. But these are all things that happened.
And I do remember â I think I was 11 years old. Pop Warner, we were playing against this other team that had a really good running back. We were tackling the running back. I hit him in his leg and it was so many people on him. He hit the ground and it popped, and he screamed, and we all got up and the bone was sticking through his skin, and it was broken, obviously. And we all went to the sideline and weâre broken up and weâre crying and stuff. And it took awhile to get him off the field and the coach was like, âWe got to finish the game.â And that always stands out in my mind as a turning point, where I was like, âThis is what youâre into, and this is what youâre going to be confronted with. And from that point forward, I donât think I was aware of those things, but it never really bothered me â if anything it was a badge of honor. Yeah, I know this crazy stuff happens, and I go out there and do it anyway because Iâm a man, or something like that.
DUBNER: You go out there and do it and you donât get hurt doing it. But then you did start to get injured as a pro. Can you talk about your first significant injury there?
FOXWORTH: Yeah, it was tough. From a professional standpoint more than anything. I was fortunate that it didnât happen a year sooner, or or two years sooner.
DUBNER: Well, this is tied to the money, right?
DUBNER: So letâs walk people through this, because a lot of people donât understand how money works in the N.F.L. You were drafted I believe 2005, third round. Right? So what Iâm looking at here, you were paid for that year, including a signing bonus, which was a lot of it, about $660,000 â that sound about right for year one?
DUBNER: Okay. And then I guess back then, it was a three-year rookie contract. Is that right?
FOXWORTH: Yeah, it was a three-year rookie contract, with the fourth year option, I believe.
DUBNER: Gotcha. Okay, so looks like your first three years paid you a total of about $1.5 million. Most places in the world, thatâs amazing. And those first few years were in Denver.
FOXWORTH: Yeah. So I went through the first three years, and then I was coming up on a contract year and I played pretty well in Denver, and I knew that I needed to play well in this year because if you donât, then the salary minimum goes up for guys after that point. So then they just go get a younger one, and you â and you go on with the rest of your life. So during week one, weâre getting ready for the first week of a season in Denver. They traded me to Atlanta. Atlanta was a terrible football team at that point. It was a year after Vick was gone and they just drafted a rookie quarterback who no one thought was going to be very good. That was the first time when I considered going to business school. My girlfriend at the time, who is my wife now, I remember talking to her then like, âYeah, this donât look like itâs going to work out,â and Iâm having to think about business school because I got traded on week one. You normally earned your position during training camp. I skipped training camp. This team is going to be terrible. Iâm not going to play. And then Iâll be out of the league. But â
DUBNER: That year you got paid a little over $900,000, but you must have a pretty good year, because the next year you signed a contract with Baltimore that paid you in year one, $8 million, year two, $9.2, and year three, $4.4 â does that sound about right?
FOXWORTH: Yeah, it was a four-year, 27, I think. In Baltimore. And then the first year, I struggled at the beginning of the season but I was playing really well towards the end of the season. And Baltimore is the city I grew up in. So it was cool. And then when we have Super Bowl aspirations, and Iâm playing well coming into the next season, and I tore my A.C.L. on the first day of training camp, and I was never the same. So that was â it felt like my career, with all the uncertainty and the, frankly, fear that I felt going into year four in Atlanta, I was the most confident that Iâd ever been. And I was like, âOh, this is perfect, I am a Baltimore guy. Back in Baltimore. Playing well. Super Bowl contender. Weâre going to win the Super Bowl. Iâm going to have a great season. Iâm going to go to the Pro Bowl, this is â Iâm playing as well as I ever have.â People are starting to recognize that Iâm good and everything is starting to fall into place â and then the A.C.L. pops.
Frankly, thatâs what led me to take on more leadership in the players association and led me to be involved in the negotiations, which then is what I used, frankly, it was the big piece that got me into business school, because I didnât have the grades or the background to get into business school. But no one has experience like that, whoâs going to business school. So thatâs what, frankly, got me into Harvard Business School. So it still turned out to be a good story. But at the time it was â I donât know. Obviously I would not say that it was a depression by any stretch, but I do remember my wife â and I think she was still my girlfriend then â telling me like, âGo get a haircut,â because I was just sitting around the house, going to rehab twice a day, and coming home and sitting in front of the T.V., just no shave, and no nothing.
DUBNER: What got you out of that?
FOXWORTH: I think itâs the opportunity to do â to be involved in the C.B.A. stuff â it gave me a purpose.
DUBNER: Right. Itâs lucky you were near D.C. â did that matter?
FOXWORTH: Oh yeah. That absolutely helped and lucky that I already had relationships there and I was involved, and I was already in a leadership role. But I was given so much more time because of it.
DUBNER: So that four year contract you signed with Baltimore in 2009, it was a four-year, $27.2 million contract. How much of that did you actually collect?
DUBNER: You did. Did you have it guaranteed even though you didnât end up playing out the whole contract?
FOXWORTH: So I was on the team for three years, so I got those three years, and then the fourth year I got â I had taken out an insurance policy. So I got the rest of it there. Thatâs why I said earlier, I was fortunate that the knee injury happened after I signed that deal, because if it would have happened when I was in college, or happened a year earlier, I would have been on an entirely different path, which may have turned out to be great, but I really like where Iâm at now.
DUBNER: Let me ask you this: generally, how did the reality as an N.F.L. player match your expectations? Youâre a kid who, as you told us, from the age of eight or earlier, was seeing yourself playing in the N.F.L. And then you get there. Now it really, really, really is business. So Iâm curious to know about that.
FOXWORTH: My freshman year in college, I started towards the end of the season, we played well, we won the A.C.C. championship. We went to the Orange Bowl and lost, and then immediately after, my head coach got a $10 million extension, and that was when I was like, âOh, we arenât a team, weâre a business.â And that was when the light went on for me. I donât know that I would wish it any different. But thatâs the thing that sucks the most, is that when you feel like youâre a part of a team and you still have that camaraderie and love for your teammates, but you also in the back of your mind, you are also thinking like, âHey, Iâm out for myself.â
I remember when â Denver, I had a really good rookie season and then my second year was okay, then I was scheduled to be the starter opposite Champ Bailey, the other corner, the next season. And they went and traded for Dre Bly, and I love Dre. He and I became good friends. But it was not lost on me that Dre was messing with my money, and my opportunity, and that sucks. Itâs not fun to be in that situation. Itâs not fun to feel that. I didnât consider that, because I used to watch every Saturday and Sunday morning, they would do these N.F.L. yearbooks on E.S.P.N. and they would run them back to back to back, and I would get up and watch them all the time. And those do such a great job of telling the story of football. And I believed it, which is not to say that itâs not true, but it is incomplete.
DUBNER: Is part of that story when the new kid comes to camp or somebody is traded, that everybody tries to help them fit in, even though there is competition for the job, is that part of the story youâre saying?
FOXWORTH: Thatâs definitely part of the story, and itâs not untrue, because we do help each other, we do care about each other and we are a fraternity, look out for each other. But weâre also aware that itâs a business. Thereâs only a certain amount of money on the salary cap â and you recognize as you get â you recognize, âAll right, if this doesnât work out, what am I going to do?â If it didnât work out in Atlanta, and I was out of the league after a year, Iâd have been a 26-year-old with no real experience.
Being a football player does not qualify you to do anything, short of being a bouncer, I guess. And â no real experience, and Iâm so far removed from college that itâs like, âWhat am I going to do?â And I have a bank account that is much larger than most of the other 26-year-olds, but still got a whole lot of life left to live, and itâs not a great situation to be in. Itâs not awful, obviously, but you do feel that pressure. Youâre thinking about that and youâre thinking about if you have kids at the time, or if you have family members that are depending on you, youâre like, âOh, well as much as I love this guy, as much as I want him to do well. I need this.â
DUBNER: And what was Ashley â your then-girlfriend, now wife, what was she â what was her position now? Because I know Ashley a little bit, and I know that sheâs not one to let things happen as as theyâre going to, right? Sheâs like, âHave a plan. Make it work.â What was her advice to you?
FOXWORTH: I donât think she gave me much advice at the time. She was in law school at the time. And sheâs much smarter than me. I know a lot of people say that because it seems like the nice thing to say.
DUBNER: No offense, Iâll say, itâs pretty obviously true. Sheâs obviously very smart.
FOXWORTH: She went to â we met at Maryland and she went to the law school at Harvard, well before I went to the business school up there. But she â I was more stressed than she was.
DUBNER: Do you think in the back of her mind, sheâs thinking, âItâs okay, because Iâm going to be a lawyer and I can carry him if I need to.â Do you think that was part of it?
FOXWORTH: I donât think so. Honestly. I donât â as she tells it now, is she knew that I was going to be successful, and that was one of the things that was attractive.
DUBNER: You mean beyond football, or in football?
FOXWORTH: No, just in general. I donât think she knew that I was going to be successful at football. I donât think she knew what I would do professionally. But the way that she tells it is, she knew that I would be successful. So that was why she was not concerned. But I didnât know that.
DUBNER: Does that say more about her or about you? In other words, does it say more about her like, âThe kind of man Iâm going to pick, Iâm not going to pick someone whoâs not going to be successful.â You think it was more â
FOXWORTH: Youâve been hanging out with her, because thatâs the story that she tells. I think that she â those are things that I think she found most attractive about me, I was mature and focused and the idea that â the example of it is, I was already looking at business schools because I had already â I was obviously going to be all-in on this season. Iâm going to make the season work. But I know that thereâs a possibility itâs not going to work, and Iâm not going to â Iâm not going to wake up tomorrow and be like, âOh, now what?â
DUBNER: Yeah, yeah. What about â did you ever think about politics?
FOXWORTH: Iâve been told that a lot. And I guess Iâve given it some thought. No more than a couple of hours. And I hate it.
FOXWORTH: It seems terrible, because it seems you â well, the money in politics is one thing. Youâre constantly fundraising. Youâre not actually getting to affect any change â and I guess it depends on what level of politics youâre going to, or whatever, but it often feels like a trophy head, and to be a good politician, you are always looking for the next angle, the next office, or the next person whoâs going to give you some money. I donât know, that does not interest me at all.
DUBNER: So youâre a little ways into your athletic afterlife. Now, youâre about 35 years old, is that right Domonique?
DUBNER: So youâve been out of football for several years now, Where do you feel you are in your athletic afterlife, are you still at the beginning? And Iâm curious to know what you see â how you see it playing out.
FOXWORTH: So I was president of the players association of the N.F.L. while I was playing, and after business school, I went to the N.B.A. Players Association, and I â I am in a weird state, frankly. I donât know how to â it feels like a state of transition, which â but it feels like I shouldnât be in a state of transition, if that makes any sense. So my whole life since I was a kid was very â I had a very clear goal and I worked towards that goal. And I made lots of decisions that would get me closer to that goal, but get me further away from other important and interesting things, including friends, including family. And then I was like, âIâm done playing.â So I will be in this state of transition, business school was like, âAll right, this is my transition state, and then Iâll take this job at the N.B.A. Players Association and then Iâll be back to a steady state.â But I didnât like it, and I left.
DUBNER: Because why? The N.B.A. position?
FOXWORTH: Yeah. I was the chief operating officer there, and there was a lot of things going on at the time, a lot of transition there. But being a chief operating officer was something that sounded good and paid well and I was very proud of. But itâs a lot of operating, frankly, which is â I remember living in New York, and my wife was pregnant with our third child, and she was not feeling good, and I was getting up at 6:30 a.m. to ride the subway to work with a bunch of other people who werenât happy about where they were going to work. And Iâd be there until 7:00 p.m. at night working, working, working, working. And I remember being on the subway thinking, âAm I happy? I have enough money that I donât have to be unhappy. All these people who are on here with me, they have to go to work. And I donât have to go to work.â So then I quit.
And I started writing for fun, and thatâs what landed me at E.S.P.N. But to be completely frank with you, thereâs some focus and clarity that scarcity brings to your life, and I donât say this because I want to go back to a state when I was not sure, financially. I like being in a comfortable financial state. But thereâs something to be said for the focus and clarity of, âOh no, Iâve got to do this, because I got to feed my family.â And when you donât have that focus and clarity, thereâs something a bit frightening, honestly, about always feeling like, âWhat should I be doing with this gift, frankly, that I have? This gift of of flexibility and independence?â And sometimes in the job that I have now, I went to business school in part because I fancy myself as a smart person who is more than an athlete. And I wanted to get away from this, so thereâs parts of me thatâs embarrassed that I write about sports. Talk about sports.
But then thereâs parts of me thatâs like, âThis awesome. Itâs kind of flexible. I get to do fun things. I get to be â pick up my kids from school and take them to school.â And so it just depends on the day, where sometimes Iâm like, âI should be chasing some big professional glory, and Iâm wasting time. Or some days Iâm doing just exactly what I should be doing, or well, I should be spending more time with my kids and my wife because I have this flexibility.â So when you have that scarcity to focus your thought, itâs very clear what you should be doing. And itâs an interesting thing to happen to somebody at this age. It feels more of a midlife thing. And for athletes itâs a unique thing. Successful athletes, itâs a unique thing, that in your 20s or 30s. Youâre like, âNow what?â
DUBNER: Now, everything you said just makes sense to me, but Iâm also curious if thereâs one more element that plays into that, which is that sports is maybe singularly thrilling to do. And I say maybe â if you play music at a high level â itâs probably silly to say that sports are the only one â but because of the nature of what it is and the competition, itâs thrilling. Look how thrilled people are to watch it. And you guys are the ones who are doing it. And I just wonder if part of whatâs contributing to your sort of malaise is just the possibility that that thrill is irreplaceable.
FOXWORTH: I think thatâs a reasonable thing to think. But it doesnât feel like that to me. I donât feel like Iâm missing that thrill, itâs not something that I feel I want. The feeling of uncertainty is the feeling that I have more than anything. Itâs not like, âOh, my life is boring.â Itâs like, âAm I doing the right thing? Am I doing the best thing I can with this fortune and situation that Iâm in?â And where it is connected to sports in some way, what also exacerbates it, I think, is a feeling of loneliness, honestly, which â I have three kids and my wife, and Iâm not alone, obviously. And I love them and have fun with them.
But throughout my life, I have been almost myopically focused on a goal, which â being focused on that goal gave me purpose and Iâm sure Iâm going to butcher the Nietzsche quote, but itâs something to the effect of, âWhen a man has a why, he can bear almost any how.â And I donât drink now, I never drank in my life. I never smoke weed. I was singularly focused on doing everything. Every decision I made was like, âAll right, Iâm going to get closer to his goal.â And the people I was close with in high school, those arenât my friends anymore. People I was close with in college, not really my friends anymore. And then at 35, Iâm in D.C. where my wife has a bunch of family and friends, friends that sheâs been close with since they were in the second grade, and Iâm like, âI donât really have that.â And I was making these choices, which I thought were choices to get me â
FOXWORTH: Right. And I wasnât â there were choices that I was making that I was unaware that I was making. I didnât realize at the time that I was foregoing long lasting relationships. And I think lots of athletes do the opposite and bring their friends and family along with them, and then they are making a decision. And there are a whole other whole mess of problems that you get from that. So there is no right way to do it. And I am very happy with where Iâm in my life. And while youâre a professional athlete, you walk around with this skepticism, frankly, of all new people in your life. So even if there was the potential for some great friendships, I wasnât open to them.
Iâd go to these places, people are like, âOh, football player,â and Iâd pretend and be nice to them because thatâs what you do, and they pretend or whatever to be into me, because thatâs what you do, and then you move on. And then youâre 35, and youâre like, âHey, you havenât talked to your best friend from high school in 10 years, or something like that.â So I certainly donât feel sad or anything, but these are things that I am becoming more aware of now. I said to my wife a couple of days ago that I feel Iâm in a perpetual state of transition, which is interesting and uncomfortable at the same time.
DUBNER: What are some of the other things youâve tried? You mentioned the N.B.A. Players Association job. What are some other things that you tried that you thought would make you excited or happy, and didnât?
FOXWORTH: So, itâs not that they didnât, itâs that they â that they donât. Itâs â so I mentioned, itâs no matter â and Iâm starting to understand that â and this goes back to the scarcity point, where if there is something there to make the decision for you it feels somewhat easier. But I imagine that everyone can relate to this, that when youâre at work sometimes, youâre like, âMan, I really wish I was with my kids. I really wish I was partying.â Or when you are with your family, youâre like, âMan ââ Particularly if you like your job, you want to be at work, or you might want to go on a guys trip or you might want to go on a romantic vacation with your wife, thereâs so many things that you want to do. But there are things for so many people that they have to do.
So when Iâm in this position where itâs like, âAll right, I want to do this and then Iâm doing it, but I want to do some of that.â It even breaks down into professional where itâs like, âAll right, I want to just chase professional glory. I want to work my way up to the top of some company.â And Iâm capable of doing that, I feel like I have the intelligence or charisma and pedigree, academically, to get in those positions, but that requires you to not be home a lot. And thereâs part of me that wants that, but then thereâs part of me â I want my kids to look back and be like, âHey, my dad picked me up from school a couple of days a week.â I donât know.
DUBNER: So this ambivalence, you never had any of this, though, when you were chasing the N.F.L. dream, did you?
FOXWORTH: No, this is brand new. It was quite clear to me that there were two things: I need to get paid, and we need to win. And anything that was not in line with that was like, âAll right, obviously I donât need to do this.â And maybe I was a more extreme version of it than a lot of people, to the point that I donât drink and stuff. I donât have some religious thing against drinking, I just never have, and I didnât â when I was in high school and probably a lot of people start, because Iâm like âNo, itâs going to make me a worse football player.â And one of my best friends in high school actually sold drugs, and got a little bit of time for it. And when he was selling and occasionally smoking, I was like âNo, Iâm a football player.â Even our presidents, over the years, have experimented with marijuana. It feels like for me â and some even cocaine. For me it was like, âNo, thereâs one thing to doâ. And now Iâm at this point where I donât really know how to have fun. I donât really have super close friends, and I donât really know what to do with my life. But Iâm pretty happy still.
DUBNER: So it sounds to me at least that you built an identity that was focused, really strongly focused on football. But there are a million parts of what identity means, it means who you know and what you do with them, and what you put in your body, and so on. And now, you still have the identity, but you donât have the thing that you built it for. Itâs got to be a little baffling in a way. You are the person you made, to succeed, and then you did succeed, and now itâs like, âWhat next?â
FOXWORTH: Most peopleâs journeys are so much longer that when they do succeed, they die a few years after or something.
DUBNER: Thatâs your problem. Yeah. Thatâs whatâs always attracted me about the idea of the afterlife of an athlete, is itâs unnatural. Most people, they pursue something for their whole life, or itâs not so specific that they basically are told to stop doing it when theyâre 35, because theyâre too slow. And yet, you canât ask â you got a lot of money in the bank, you canât ask people to feel sorry for you on that front.
FOXWORTH: Iâm certainly like this â to be clear, this conversation is not at all about me wanting sympathy or feeling sorry.
DUBNER: No, no, I didnât mean to imply.
FOXWORTH: Thereâs nobody that I want to trade places with. But I just â that doesnât mean that there arenât things â
DUBNER: You have a serious case of âgrass is greenerâ-ism, it sounds like.
FOXWORTH: It feels that way, right? To the point that you made about the â I am the person that Iâve made. One of my classes in business school, one of the â it was surprising. I went to business school before â after I finished playing, I went to business school because I was like, âAll right, now Iâm going to keep competing. Iâll go to the best business school and Iâm going to turn this 27 into 200.â And then I got there. And surprisingly, as Iâm sure Harvard has a bad stereotype or a bad reputation for creating money-hungry people with low ethics, Iâm sure there are plenty of them coming out. But I was surprised with how many mushy, soft classes that we had. That were about our feelings and integrity and all that stuff.
And I do remember one professor who said that â it wasnât to me directly, it was just to the class, but it felt like he was talking to me directly. And I didnât really like this professor necessarily, so I hate to give him credit. But he said something to the effect of, âThe operating system that you used to get here may not be the operating system that you need going forward.â And that resonated with me, because I feel thatâs definitely true for me. But I donât know, they donât just release updates for humans. So like, modifying my operating system is a slower and more challenging process.
DUBNER: Right. What was the professorâs name?
FOXWORTH: I donât remember. I didnât like him because on the first day he said to me â obviously, I was the football player there, and that was part of my identity. He sized me up and was like, âArenât you kind of small for a football player?â I was like, âI will whoop your ass in this classroom.â But he was actually a pretty good professor.
DUBNER: So let me ask you this. You are a scholar, at least an amateur scholar, of the civil-rights movement. Can you just talk for a second about the relationship between the civil rights movement per se and sports, areas where thereâs overlap, maybe where one movement is way ahead or behind of the other. And Iâve certainly got in the back of my mind the anthem protests that are a big piece of this conversation right now. Iâm curious to know what you have to say about that.
FOXWORTH: At least in America, thereâs something black about professional athleticism. The players are largely black and â particularly in the Big Two sports, a lot of the culture that seeps out of the game into our pop culture comes from black players and thereâs a lot of people who want to separate race from sports. And they say they want to go back to how it was when race and sports were separate, but it never was. It always has been intertwined â race is probably the most, particularly in America â the most defining characteristic of our country is how we have dealt with race. And it is always involved in everything.
Obviously, there were the â60s. Obviously, no one can say that race and sports werenât connected. But people point to the periods after that from the â70s, â80s, to the â90s, and they would say that those were times when race and politics and social issues were not in sports. But I still think they were, because the players were still dealing with it. Whether the media was putting attention on it or whether people were willing to address it or talk about it, it was a thing that was always there. So that frustrates me. So I donât necessarily feel â while I do accept that weâre in a state now as a country where it is unavoidable, the intersection, I donât feel like it ever went away. Itâs not a new intersection, itâs just I happened to be on that corner altogether, at once.
DUBNER: Itâs funny you say that because the thing that struck me most about when Colin Kaepernick first decided to protest police violence by sitting and then kneeling during the anthem, the thing that struck me is it felt so mild compared to some past protest moves, like the 1968 Olympics. That was a big deal. And then it also struck me â the response also struck me as so overwrought, that again, it felt pre-â60s in a way. Havenât we done this, and shouldnât the conversation be way ahead of this? But maybe thatâs because it is at the end of the day, all about just race, and not even race in sports, race in politics, etc. Do you think thatâs what itâs really about?
FOXWORTH: Yeah. Itâs not about the issues, itâs not about the posture you take when you are â when the national anthem is being played. Itâs something that I â As a father, Iâve come to recognize that adults arenât very different from children. Adults learn how to justify and how to validate their actions and decisions. Whereas if my son does something ridiculous and I ask him why he looks at me like Iâm crazy like, âHow you ask me why?â Or heâll just say, âI took a cookie.â And, why? âI wanted a cookie.â Okay. Yeah, thatâs fair. And I think that people to a certain degree, even if it is subconscious, they do what feels right, or what makes them happy or what makes them feel good, and then theyâre like, âAll right, now let me concoct this post-hoc justification whether itâs conscious or unconscious.â And I think thatâs whatâs happening.
And we see it with the anthem stuff. Itâs like, âAll right, sitting down during the anthem is a problem. And then you move from there to kneeling â so kneeling is then a problem. Raised fist is a problem and now we see that staying in the locker room is a problem.â Letâs just be honest about it. You donât like these people making any statement and it makes you uncomfortable and you donât like it. So youâre not going to like it no matter how they get it across. Thereâs no â and thatâs one of the things thatâs been most frustrating about this is theyâre like, âNo, I understand. But this is the wrong time or this is the wrong way.â No, there is no right time. There is no right way.
âYou should be more like Martin Luther King.â Martin Luther King was assassinated and a large majority of white society was not happy with him advocating for advanced rights. I donât know. It just feels like no matter what, there are people. And itâs a trap that we often get caught in, and not just in this case, but just in general, where itâs like, âAll right, weâre going to try to satisfy everybody or weâre going to try to satisfy this group.â Some people donât want to be satisfied. They want to be angry, let them be angry.
DUBNER: If you were still playing in the N.F.L. and first day of the season happens â
DUBNER: What do you do during the anthem?
FOXWORTH: I think at this point you probably stand up because thereâs not much. Itâs easy to say now. I donât know. So Iâd like to say that I would be in solidarity with those guys and I would have the courage to expose myself to the hate that theyâre receiving. But I donât know. Itâs easy to say now. From the sidelines.
DUBNER: Iâm just going to ask one last question if I can. Two part question. No. 1, you played professional and college and high school football. So you canât not think about long-term brain damage, since thatâs a big piece of all conversations about football these days. So Iâm curious to know whether you feel a little bit like youâre living with a time bomb in your head. And related to that, Iâm curious to know what happens if and when your son wants to play football.
FOXWORTH: So Iâll take the second one first. Slightly easier. Heâs only five now and I say no. Itâs not a problem that weâre actually facing at this point, but I would say no.
DUBNER: So if he comes to you and says, âHey Dad, I know before I was born, you were an amazing N.F.L. player, great career, etc. What do you mean, no? What are you talking about?â
FOXWORTH: I think the research wasnât there. I suspect my parents would not have let me play when I was that age, if there was information available. And itâs not even clear information. But what is clear is that it does put you at a higher risk. Like, my son doesnât need those things. The best case scenario is that you play professional football and you make a lot of money. I wasnât â I was far from poor growing up, like middle class, but I went to Baltimore County public schools. Thatâs not my sonâs experience. I didnât have access to the things that heâll have access to. So I frankly think that he is starting in a much better place than I am, so he should do much better than banging his head into other peopleâs heads for money. It seems like a step back to me, honestly.
DUBNER: On a macro scale, does that mean that as football goes forward, and I guess if football goes forward, which obviously in the short term it will, but in long term itâs a question, does that mean that the only people that play it are going to be the people who need to play it to try to make the money that they canât make otherwise?
FOXWORTH: Feels like outside of the quarterback position, itâs already gravitated to that, both prior to now.
DUBNER: But youâve got guys, the San Francisco 49ers for instance, they have a few guys whoâve had a lot, there have been a lot in the league, who went to Stanford. So these are football players that go to Stanford to get a Stanford degree. Thereâs a lot of ways they can now make a living. So thereâs obviously more about the appeal of playing at that level than just making the money, yeah?
FOXWORTH: Football players, athletes are still heroes in our society. And itâs something that people, particularly young boys, will aspire to. I understand that. But I do think that the danger is something thatâs going to push people away from it in a way that it drew people to it in the past, so itâs not â football is not by any stretch dead, and there is still hope that they could find ways to modify the game or improve equipment or whatever and make it safer, but until they do, I donât see why my son needs to play. But I donât judge anybody else. Your son can do what you want your son to do. Thatâs just not for my son.
DUBNER: And then what about you? Do you worry about your brain? Does your wife worry about your brain?
FOXWORTH: Absolutely. I do. Itâs something that I think lots of players talk about and think about. And every time there is â It could just be general aging, you donât know where your keys are. Itâs like youâre living a horror movie honestly, where itâs this thing lurking in the background, that you hear noises but you donât necessarily know if thatâs just a regular noise or if that is a monster. And thatâs what I analogize it to, where itâs like all right, I canât find my keys. That to me feels like âOh, is this a signal? Or is this just something, whatever?â Itâs scary. And what is most frightening is, right now, I would do it all over, because of what itâs done for me and my family.
And I think most players would agree with that, except for the ones who killed themselves. I have been sad before, obviously, but I donât know that darkness, I donât know. Iâve never ever in my life gave any realistic consideration to ending my own life and trying to â And I invite you or anybody else to try to wrap your head around how sad, depressed, how dark you must feel to see death as relief, as a way out. And I imagine if I were ever to feel that way, or for people who do feel that way, they donât say like, âI would go back and do it all over again.â I would imagine in that moment they would give up all the fame, all the money, all the success, all the women, or whatever else, all the trappings of this, to not be in a place where you feel like the only exit is to end your life. So thatâs very dark and very difficult to deal with, but Iâve never been there. I hope never to get there. But until then, I feel like Iâm happy with the decisions that Iâve made and I will continue to live as happy and productive a life as I can.
DUBNER: Well on that note, let me just thank you for a really great conversation and wish you and your family all the best, and I hope you find the greenest pasture possible.
FOXWORTH: And then find a greener one.
That was Domonique Foxworth; on Twitter, heâs @Foxworth24. Hope you enjoyed this full conversation; he appears throughout our âHidden Side of Sportsâ series, including episode numbers 349, 351, and 365. Thanks again to him, and thanks to you for listening.
Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. Our âHidden Side of Sportsâ series was produced by Anders Kelto and Derek John, with lots of help from Harry Huggins, Alison Craiglow, and Alvin Melathe; we also had help from Rebecca Douglas and Nellie Osborne, and our staff includes also Greg Rippin, and Zack Lapinski. The music you hear throughout our episodes was composed by Luis Guerra. Our show can also be heard on NPR stations across the country â check your local station for the schedule â as well as on SiriusXM, Spotify, and even your better airlines!
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