How Pay-to-Play Keeps Top Talent From Being Found | Brad Rothenberg

 Success starts with getting high school kids into college with some type of scholarship.
 And this year we had 23 kids graduate. They're all going to college with some full ride and some
 partial scholarships and some coupled with academic scholarships. That's the first level of success.
 Where we are maturing now is in college. We're creating college readiness programs to help them
 learn how to do job interviews, write resumes, get jobs at a college. But that's just beginning.
 That's the next measure of success is where our alumni end up.
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 Soccer in America is growing fast, but access to the highest levels of the sport still depends
 on too much money, exposure and who can afford the system. Brad Rothenberg, the founder of
 AccessU Foundation, saw that firsthand through the grassroots soccer programs that eventually led
 to building his foundation. Brad has a unique perspective from growing up around the business side
 of American soccer to now helping underserved scholar athletes turn their talents and academics
 into real college opportunities. Today we get into the pay to play problem while so much talent
 gets missed and how access you, so the kids get the shot they already deserve. Hey Brad, what's
 up? Welcome to write about now. I'm great man, ready to kick it around. I'll admit. I know a
 little bit about soccer, but I have four boys that played some. I'm always fascinated by the fandom
 and the spirit and have been around it, but I'm looking for enlightenment today. I can shine
 a little light on what I do. The World Cup is going to be here soon enough and you'll pick up
 a little bit of the excitement that others have. It's a little bit infectious. I have seen that
 and I do see the fandom and appreciate the educated enough to realize that soccer is the
 largest sport on earth. You grew up firsthand with it, literally. I was never a great athlete,
 but I played every sport I could. I'm a crazy American football fan. I follow everything. I was
 born into the world of soccer, but really my dad was more involved in the NBA. I came to soccer,
 look at it as a business opportunity and access to the program that I'm running now was born out
 of this massive Hispanic marketing program we created because after the 2000 census we saw these
 huge Hispanic members and we knew that the way to get to these kids was to soccer. That's when I
 really tapped into my dad's, I inherited my dad's soccer business acumen. This program we ran
 with the support of all these brands was a free program for Hispanic kids across the country. We
 produced events in 41 cities, youth clinics, coaching clinics, tournaments, and it was all free to
 these kids. One thing we did was this open tryout which very quickly became the voice of the program.
 You know a small percentage of those 25,000 people were coming to try out, but very quickly we found
 some super, super talented kids. Many of them went on to play pro in Mexico a few here in the US,
 a couple went to the English Premier League, but the real story we learned was there are a lot of
 kids good enough to go to college. Never good enough to be pro even if they were dreaming about it,
 and that's why access you was born. To help them parlay their soccer skills into a college education
 get scholarships and graduate that free. It's a fascinating ecosystem. The way soccer is so
 globally important and yet it's grown and you would have more data than me. It's growing in the US
 as we become more cultured and Hispanic dominated and just a lot of mixes of otherworldly cultures.
 It comes with the territory and I think we get more exposed to it. All those things happen,
 but it's always been interesting to me. Why is it so tertiary? Is it just sort of one of those
 things where popular things become more popular? Like it feeds itself, self-fulfilling prophecy,
 or is it deeper than that? I remember as I said growing up in my dad's business world, it was
 really about the NBA and I remember he was on the board of governors before magic and Larry,
 there were only five teams making money. At least in California we had to watch the NBA finals
 on CBS after the 11 o'clock evening news. Then Larry and magic showed up, followed by Michael Jordan,
 and you know David Stern, the commissioner had everything set in place to succeed, but the same
 kind of thing is going to happen with soccer one day. That's part of the objection I had to
 pay to play system is that it really prevents those kids playing in the inner cities. African-American
 kids in LA, Kansas City and Atlanta aren't being scouted and seen and developed because they don't
 have the money to play into the system. The next Lionel Messi, the next Maradona or Pele might
 very well be living in like the 10,000 block at least Olympic Boulevard in LA. We just don't know.
 I feel like soccer is doing a lot right. The league is on its feet and they're ready for
 Michael Jordan to show up and change everything. Sometimes it just takes that kind of a lot.
 Star power. It does fascinate me. I think you're nailing a lot of what made these other basketball,
 especially the star power. You would think that a handful of American all-star, rock star athletes
 would have come along already just by chance of nothing else. I don't know that I can connect
 those dots milling on the God nature. We are the undisputed best national team soccer program in
 the world. Brazil, Argentina, Italy has nothing on us because we have the best women's national team.
 We've won more world cups and Olympic gold medals than any other country because of our women.
 Our men trail on the field and that's largely because we're not able to just really pursue merit.
 And that's this part of what I love about like the NFL and the NBA is there are fewer barriers
 to entry because it's a more commercially viable program. And if you're scouting for Texas A&M,
 you're competing with all the other big Texas schools and you're going to every high school game
 to find that kid to play the position you need to get over the top. And that's not the way it's
 done in soccer. Most of the good coaches, the college level, are able to use the club's system to
 find the kids to go to a couple of tournaments. They don't have to dig deep into the urban centers
 to find this untapped potential. You'll see if it changes one day. I have an
 remember, Sunny, the car, this system where we're paying coaches to find kids in the inner cities
 and bring them into the program and rewarding them as those kids succeed. That's commercialism
 at its best. That's one method by which we can find kids and get those communities in the inner
 cities supporting the national team program. Talk about how access use helping connect those dots.
 Most of my questions are going to be about things that access use actually helping with.
 Let's talk a little more nuts and bolts about that. I am not a cynical person,
 but I've been in the sport for 30 something years. And the paid-as-play system is not going anywhere.
 Major league soccer is done a really good job of changing it to the extent they can, but they're
 trying to run a league. They do offer free academy slots for talented players. US soccer at the top,
 they have the desire, and they've created some programs to do this, create a merit-based program.
 The sport is run by local clubs and local communities across all our states, and those guys
 can make a living creating a paid-a-play system. It's really ridiculous at this point for me to think
 I could change that or anybody should. What access you does with the programming we've done in the
 past is we work around the system and creating another opportunity. Access use is not going to
 unearth the next great national team player. We are giving kids who have earned it on the field and
 earned it in the classroom opportunities to go to college and secure scholarship. So our
 criteria is you have to have a 3.2 GPA. Our scouts that we respect from local communities tell us that
 your elite level player that can get a D1 or even a D2 scholarship and you can play D3. Our first
 filter is class. If you don't have the financial means to seek these opportunities, then we don't
 bring you in. We provide over the course of four years of high school, one-on-one academic tutoring,
 one-on-one college counseling, SAT and ACT test prep, college selection, financial aid forms,
 and then we have the recruiters on our staff. We work with a lot of young high school women,
 and one of our top recruiters is a woman who won two national championships at Portland. She has
 a couple of caps with the U.S. national team. She played professionally for the L.A. Galaxy women's
 team, and she can call coaches and have credibility. So you can just recently, we got our first girl
 into Stanford. And while we paid for her to go to tryouts, we paid for her family to stay in hotels
 and go to the Stanford showcase. She still wasn't on top of the radar until Lindsey called and said
 you should take another look at this girl. We have kids playing now, Stanford, our third boys at
 Harvard. We've got kids in Texas, our third kid at Berkeley, kids at UCLA, and these kids all
 deserve to be there. And I emphasize that because their GPAs weren't it, and they're on field performance
 warrants, but they didn't have the means to go to all the scouting tournaments. We're not changing
 the elite system for the national team, but we're changing the opportunities that these kids have
 earned and deserved by getting them into college and giving them scholarships to play.
 Yeah, it's fascinating. I hear you talk on go. You have to pay to play in your already elite.
 It makes sense. It doesn't make sense if you want to win. You want to win a world cup. Our system
 is a barrier. And that's just the fact. FIFA says that there's 25 million people playing soccer
 regularly in this country. The overwhelming majority are under 18, but US soccer has fewer
 than 3 million players registered. That means there's 20 something million people playing soccer
 outside of a system where we can identify them as talented players and develop them. And as I
 said, Major League Soccer now has an Academy program. They have MLS next, which is also based on
 merit, but it's still not deep enough into the community to find kids who could be elite level
 players if they just were developed younger. Our system's not designed to succeed at the
 international level. Is it a case of back to where I started the questioning like chicken at the
 egg? The other sports were popular. So you have these super athletes, these kids that probably
 could have been the next Michael Jordan. Maybe I'm speculating they get pushed and funneled into
 other sports where there have been more popularity, more support, less bureaucracy, whatever you
 want to call it. It would have already happened. And it's financial too. It's not just popularity.
 You're absolutely right that you're hitting 1314. I played, but I was a fan of all sports.
 I didn't have a local soccer hero. I lived in LA. I had a lot of heroes in other sports.
 And I grew up watching the Lakers. It's impossible to expect teenagers to be attracted to a sport
 that doesn't have iconic heroes in your local community. It's changing. It really is. We have
 messy playing in the United States now and he's really changed the fortunes of the league. But the
 other piece is until the average player is making the minimum salary for an NBA player,
 kids aren't going to be as excited about playing a sport where they're not going to be compensated
 as well as they are in other sports. That's changing too. As Major League Soccer becomes more
 viable, better commercial property, and they are, that will change in time too. Soccer is a top five
 sport in terms of attendance and participation for sure. The NBA has some challenges right now,
 whether it's the gambling issues or just players flopping. I don't know how much higher the NFL
 can go. It's certainly awesome. And I love the NFL. Soccer has the potential to, in 20, 30 years,
 maybe sooner become one of the most elite level in terms of a commercial property in the United
 States. It's really set up to succeed. It's just going to take time. You know how baseball has made
 a lot of rules changes to speed up the game, make it more interesting, get with the times,
 the attention span. Is that a soccer problem or is that just an American perception of the game
 problem? If it's US, I'm in it. USA World Cup, Go USA. It doesn't matter. I have a vested
 interest, and I'm not a professional soccer watcher regularly. I appreciate the athleticism. I'm
 not bored, but it's definitely not as frenetic as basketball or American football. Do they have a
 problem there? Is it just an American attention problem like me? The serious problems that soccer has
 are not, in my opinion, the pace of play. It is flopping. When they make me president of FIFA,
 I'm going to demand that anybody who is on the ground for more than 10 seconds, and if you're
 flopping, you're rolling, you're rolling, and takes time, more than 10 seconds get up,
 then you're on the sidelines for two minutes. And then you'll see flopping stock, or post-facto
 after a game, you're going to get a red card for the next game. The tolerance that we give to
 player indulgences should stop, and the US could do that. The MLS is thinking about it. If not so much
 picking up the pace of play, because it's a running clock, not spending time watching drama unfold
 that isn't real drama. There is plenty of good soccer drama for you. I mean, even for me,
 I love the game, but I'm not a tactician. It's a generation of kids who grew up playing it that
 are going to change the fortunes of the league. You've got World Cup this year, the economic impact
 for the US, how grand this fully is. I don't know if people completely grasped the economy.
 I was supposed to US, I know outside of the US, the economies of it, maybe drop a few lines on FIFA
 and how much you love them. I'm looking forward to this year because I'm a fan, but next year is
 the Women's World Cup, and our Women's National Team is outstanding. A lot of the kids in my program
 are girls, and I'm hoping that I get to work with FIFA on some type of legacy program here in the
 United States. There is no legacy program that FIFA is doing in the US this year. That's left to
 the local organizing committees. Unlike in 94 when we last hosted the World Cup, there were a ton
 of revenue opportunities, sponsorship categories, licensing, premium ticket sales. FIFA is controlling
 all of that, and you know what, if I was FIFA, I'd probably do the same thing. They don't look at the
 US as a market that they need to grow, like they did in 94. They look at a market that is exploitable.
 Because we are the cash for soccer in the world. Most of the big brands that sponsor the World Cup
 are US companies, and we can afford these outrageous ticket prices. Even if games aren't going to sell
 out, they're going to make a ton of money. The dynamic ticket pricing, which everyone's complaining
 about, and it's kind of new to sports fans, but it's been in the concert business forever. It's
 right now that the media is just grasping on anything because there's nothing else to talk about.
 There's going to be plenty of money made on the program, mostly by FIFA, and I'm looking forward to
 them returning in 2027, dropping it back in the US and returning those dollars back in here for
 the companies. Obviously seeing the value of it and getting in front of those audiences, multicultural
 otherwise. I mean, it's larger than multicultural. I might have been that 15, 20 years ago, but it's
 a lot more mainstream. I think it's mostly international. All of our brands, Coca-Cola, for one,
 they're selling more products around the world than they do in the US, and soccer is their vehicle.
 Talk to me about what it was like growing up with your dad and his involvement in all this. You
 had a front row seat. I'm sure they had his positives and his negatives on some level. What was that
 like? It was actually all positive. My dad, his resume starting with the NBA. He was in this 20s when
 he got to work for Jackhand Cook as his private attorney out of his house in Bel Air. My dad came
 from a lower middle class community in Detroit, first his generation, the first to ever go to college.
 What I inherited from him as a sports fan, watching him with the NBA and the Lakers and the Kings,
 and then watching in the early 60s when he was the general manager of a soccer team. Outside,
 he was a big shot and called the shots. But my mom and my brothers tell you, he is so easy going.
 Like, we got to motivate him to get excited. He just wants to hang out. When growing up,
 he just wanted to play with us, play ball, watch a game. Mr. Easy going at home. He made it really
 easy not to have to live in his shadow. And my joke with him now is if he was any good at running
 soccer in this country, I wouldn't have to be doing what I'm doing because he would have gotten
 rid of pay to play. But that really is evidence that you can't get rid of pay to play. At least not yet.
 I inherited some good lessons from him. And my favorite is just keep your nose down. Do whatever
 you're doing in front of you to the best of your ability and opportunity will come. And then,
 of course, he had mended that by saying, when you've established yourself, figure out how many
 different things you can get your hands on that you can do well, which uses my lesson. I learned
 fast from him that soccer was burdened with these problems, that there were ways to work around it,
 but it really required entrepreneurial efforts to do so. Amen to that.
 He says a lot of yes. Just show up and say yes. You knew when you don't feel like it.
 I've had failures. He's had failures because you say yes and you try things and that's a little
 beyond your capacity or things didn't work out, but it's worth it. Talking to Brad Rothenberg,
 he is the founder of AccessU. When you say pay to play, I get in this headspace of NIL, name image
 and likeness, which is a huge topic now with college sports, definitely football and basketball. I
 mean, it's really in everything. I'm a supporter of athletes and young persons getting paid for
 their name. I'm a marketing guy. I'm brandy guy. It's my legacy. So I believe you should get paid
 for that, but there's two sides of every coin. Two things can be true at the same time. I can
 believe that, but I can also be witnessing some of the decay of the sport because of it. What's the
 balance of all that? I'm absolutely pro athlete, pro amateur athlete, but I look at what's happening
 right now and you just start with football. The SEC and the big 10, they're really doing what we've
 done in society, which is they're going to be able to afford to spend two million dollars on a
 cornerback and they're just going to marginalize the other conferences and smaller colleges. We're
 going to have great football from those two conferences, but I worry that the margins are going to
 get so great that it's really going to be the haves and the have not. I do hope, I don't really
 thought this true. I would expect that at some point, the NCA or the conference is get together
 and figure out how to distribute NIL money with some caps that allow for those smaller universities
 to participate too. I love the idea that great athletes come out of small colleges and I worry
 that NIL is going to make that harder and harder to come to pass. Gays should be paid and they are,
 but it's how do you keep the moral compass? Someone's got to step in and probably covers even soccer
 to some degree. A body has to step in to regulate this stuff because you have free agency happening
 essentially at will. It's a wild wild west. We're still going to have to deal with a lot of this
 extreme NIL numbers before it settles in. I hope they do adjust it for the reasons I said.
 Soccer is not the same. We offer NIL money to the kids that graduate from XSU because through
 our responses all state and Toyota, we're able to give them certain travel stipends. We give a card
 to buy books and stuff like that. It's not like they're endorsing a brand in the same way. That
 money's small change compared to what the NCA football players can get. You got a limited pool
 of it lead athletes on the planet getting them to play soccer versus football or baseball or
 basketball can be a tough road. That's why it's going to take a while. Unless something super
 surprising happens in this world cup and we get to the real late rounds, which I don't think any
 irrational US soccer fans expecting. If you're paying attention, you know that we are not ready,
 but if something like that happens, that's the Michael Jordan moment. That's something that's
 beyond the capacity to prepare to organize for, but you better be prepared and organized when it happens.
 What are the best athletes you work with having common beyond talent?
 I'll have to describe it by gender. The girls, they show up academically so strong that they don't
 need a ton of academic support. We do some college counseling and help them with recruiting,
 but those girls are so responsible as teenagers and the boys just aren't and I'm sure that is not
 specific to soccer or race. I mean, I got to college because my college counselor tapped me on
 the shoulder and said, look at these. I was like, oh, okay. Across the board are boys and girls.
 We have a hundred percent graduation so far and several years we've been doing this. Everybody
 graduates from college. They're determined and that determination starts on the field for the
 boys and then goes to the classroom, but for the girls there is determined in the classroom as
 they are in the field. I'd say every one of them has some story of obstacles in their path, not
 just that they're outside of the pay to play system, but whether it's family, community, crime,
 immigration issues, they just never quit. They never back down and we've made it easy for them
 to raise their hand and say, I need some help beyond just the academic stuff and we do step in and
 help on a case-by-case basis that way. What's fine success for access you? I get it one
 created a time, both the macro and the micro level. Success starts with getting high school kids
 into college with some type of scholarship and this year we had 23 kids graduate. They're all
 going to college with some full ride and some partial scholarships and some a couple with academic
 scholarships. That's the first level of success where we are maturing now is in college. We're creating
 college readiness programs to help them learn how to do job interviews, write resumes, get jobs at
 a college, but that's just beginning. That's the next measure of success is where our alumni end up
 and most of the because these kids have gotten these great opportunities. We have one of our
 boys is at Goldman Sachs, another one's working for an engineering firm right out of college.
 They're also succeeding that way. Very few of them have not materialized and leveraged the
 opportunities they've been given. That's just the easiest measure, right? To check the box that got
 to college and they got out of college graduated and I'd work them. I'm not looking to find the next
 messy. We have a few kids that are playing professionally but that's not really the way we measure
 success. How do people get involved with what you're up to Brad? How can brands are listening? What's
 that process like? On the brand side we've had some great partners Verizon Allstate is still donating
 to us. It's easy for a brand to donate money to us and in case of Allstate who's been a partner
 for several several years, they give us money, we onboard a couple of kids in their name, move them
 through the process. It's not free for us to put these kids in. We spend about 1500 a year per
 kid over four years, so 6000 total in a direct cost of the academic tutoring and college council.
 Brands can donate and I'd love to hear from them. We have a media partnership where brands
 might be interested in helping us create content which we did successfully with Allstate and Verizon
 in our for-profit business. We have some grants that have come from local organizations from
 Act students at Charleston, South Carolina to the San Francisco Bay Area as well as a couple
 of professional teams. And then I live on tapping in after so many years in the sports business,
 tapping into friends, high net worth individuals. We have a big donation that came from an
 individual earlier this year that changed our fortunes and that's helping people understand
 that they're money and it's not a lot for a rich person to pay 1500 a year to do this. Change is
 not just these kids' lives but their community and family because they're changing the people
 that they return to after college. They are seeing a path and a light that leads to the future.
 They can go to our website and donate. I remember the people that have donated 50 bucks as much as
 I remember the ones that have donated 2000. Every penny helps. Back to like the NIL in
 Paris and not that they wouldn't be doing it for the altruistic side of everything you just said.
 But are there opportunities for brands to sponsor your athletes and then content or otherwise
 done by the athlete or showing support of that sponsor that is supporting them? I have that in my
 proposals for brands. That's only a few hundred dollars per semester for each kid. That buys them
 and the endorsements that a brand's looking for. The money goes a long way because these kids are
 not exposed to these opportunities. Five hundred dollars a semester to help them buy books. It makes
 a huge difference. So it's easy for our brands to do that. So in every proposal I send out to
 the corporate entity I offer that. One thing we don't have that we used to have when we were in
 the private business was we don't have huge numbers. But we're starting a media partnership with
 a company that's going to produce content. The partnership blives on the Hulu and Disney plus
 networks. We could create content telling the story of our kids that's supported by a brand where
 suddenly we'll have impressions to offer and a brand can tap into and they're marketing dollars
 and spend it on us. Every percentage of every dollar will go to a kid, scholarshiping them and
 to access you. The influence of these kids on their peers, especially the premium athletes that
 are good academically, that is one of the strongest marketing channels on the planet. The impact of
 those peer marketing sources, anyone listening, call Brad, get in touch with access you on a way to
 pioneer or do that. And again, it is for ultimately getting these kids the opportunities that they deserve.
 Two sides of the coin can be played here. What's both good for the athlete but also good for
 business. Those things don't always have to be mutually exclusive. I like what you're doing with
 access you. I want to see soccer in more sports, sport and activity and high achievement. Never
 should grow old or tired. There's just so many other things that distract us now. We need to
 support ways to keep the kids, especially high achieving ones like this with getting the opportunities
 that deserve. Brad, I really appreciate you for coming on. Thank you. I've enjoyed listening
 to your podcast. I certainly enjoyed talking to you. Thanks for the time. Drop that website one
 time, Brad. We'll have it in the show links as well. Everything you need to know about access you
 can find at accessufoundation.org. We'll have that in the show notes. Everyone go check out everything
 that Brad and his team are up to and let's shine the light where it needs to be. We appreciate
 everyone for listening. You can find us. Ryan is right. Com on Instagram, Matt Ryan offered.
 See you next time right about now. Here's the truth. Information doesn't change your life.
 Execution does. So don't just listen to this episode and move on. Take the idea. Make the call.
 Launch the thing. Fix the problem. Build what you keep talking about building.
 For more follow Ryan Ulford on Instagram at Ryan Ulford and watch or listen to every episode
 at RyanIsRight.com. This is right about now. Now quit waiting. Go win.