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LPGA: PROFESSIONAL ATHLET FORUM

December 7, 2005

LPGA COMMISSIONER CAROLYN BIVENS: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Carolyn Bivens. As Commissioner of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, I'd like to welcome you all to the first ever professional forum that is focused totally on young athletes turning professional.
We brought together the commissioners from several major professional sports organizations as well as from the field of professional development to speak very specifically about a very important topic, the trend of young athletes turning pro sooner and sooner, more of them want to turn pro right now.
Across virtually every major sport, we're seeing an increasing number of athletes that are anxious. You know the names: LeBron James, Michelle Wie, Freddy Adu. Those are just a few of the examples.
When I began my tenure earlier this year as commissioner of the LPGA, I was immediately struck by how many young players were already challenging our age eligibility rules.
In researching the issue, it became apparent to me that this specific topic had never been addressed in an open forum. While there are already successful strategies, programs and interventions in place in the professional sports organizations, including PGA to deal with the transition of young athletes into the professional ranks, we need to share and renew this collective knowledge to assist in making informed decisions and, if needed, policy changes going forward.
The LPGA just finished one of the best seasons in its history. It's hot, hotter than it's ever been. Women's golf continues to show potential for the greatest growth in the golf industry, but, like all sports, it's critical that the increasing numbers of young phenoms have successful careers that will turn in and contribute to the growth of women's golf and to the LPGA for years to come.
That's why we're all here today. I want to personally thank Russ Granik, who's joined us from the NBA; David Stern had a personal situation that had to be dealt with and Russ stepped up. Russ is the Deputy Commissioner of the NBA. Gary Bettman has joined us from NHL. Don Garber from Major League Soccer, and Larry Scott from the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour.
We also have a host of professional development people from the various leagues that you're going to hear from as both speakers as well as panelists.
Finally, before we get underway, I want to acknowledge the RBC Financial Group for its sponsorship of this forum. It started as a very small forum, and it grew very large. It's evident by the turnout that the topic is certainly timely, important, and integral to the success of sports, and RBC recognizes that.
We want to commend you. I also would like to welcome Grant Carter from the RBC Financial Group, Director of Sports Professionals program, to say a few words.
GRANT CARTER: Thanks, very much, ladies and gentlemen.
We are really proud at RBC to be a part of this. In my role as the Director of our Professional Sports Division through the RBC Group based out of Atlanta, my daily task is, I'm blessed with the opportunity to try to provide a little financial and life advice to our clients who are athletes across the spectrum of sports utilizing our resources across the globe to do so.
I have the good fortune to have lived this particular element of making the transition from amateur into professional sports personally. I had the opportunity to play professional football for ten years, both in the NFL and the Canadian Football League, so I've lived this topic. Now I get the opportunity to try to impart some of that experience each and every day to our clients as we're trying to provide them with their financial advice and really walk them through the transition that we're going to be discussing today.
So when this opportunity came to us, we felt it was just an absolutely perfect fit for what we do each and every day. I think we, as a brand, can bring a lot of credibility to this event and we look forward to being a part of it for a very long time.
At RBC, the Royal Bank of Canada being our parent company, we are also very prominent in the United States through our investment platform, and my colleague Jeff Weiner, is here today as well as our bank, RBC Centura Bank.
We, again, are just very pleased to lend our brand and our support and our time and effort to this. We think it's a great cause, and I look forward to all the discussions today. It will be interesting to hear the various perspectives on this very pertinent topic because it's so prominent today.
Thank you very much for allowing us to be a part of it. We look forward to continuing to do so for years to come.
CAROLYN BIVENS: Thank you, Grant. Once again, thank you to RBC. I have got to move the microphone. He's a little taller than I am (smiling).
It's easy to have an idea about something. It's not so easy to execute. It's been almost four months ago that I walked into Dr. Betsy Clark's office, who is in charge of professional development for the LPGA. I said, "Betsy, I've been reading some of this stuff on professional athlete development. What would you think about a forum?"
She said, "What a great idea."
I said, "Terrific. Take it and run with it." That's exactly what she's done. Four months later, we're here.
I want to introduce the woman who's really made this happen: Dr. Betsy Clark.
(Applause).
DR. BETSY CLARK: Thank you, Carolyn. I'm not sure I'm running right now.
But good morning, and welcome. Before officially beginning the forum panel discussions, I would like to share with you a few notes and logistics about the schedule for the day.
As a forum, we encourage participation. In fact, this wouldn't be a forum without you. Within each panel discussion, as you look at your agenda, we have allotted some time for Q and A at the end of every session. Giving you an opportunity to direct questions to the panelists. Please take advantage of this time.
Following each panel discussion is a scheduled break. We have a number of representatives from the media here today, and they will be using the break time to interview panelists. So please direct any questions that you may have to the panelists during the Q and A.
As well, many of our guests and their speakers are going to be here for lunch which will be in Forest Room 1, right next door, and many of our guest speakers will be there, which will give you an opportunity to network and talk with them personally, also.
In your materials, you have been provided with an agenda, speaker bios, attendee list, resource materials and a CD with all the Power Point presentations.
We anticipate, and I'm using this word broadly, we anticipate that the white paper for the forum will be available for you by the end of January.
Should you have any questions during the day, please contact myself directly, Corrine Sullivan, or Laura Neal in the back.
It is now my pleasure to introduce Dean Bonham. Dean is the Chairman and CEO of the Bonham Group, a national sports entertainment marketing firm based in Denver, Colorado.
Recognized in the media for its analytical and evaluation services, and frequently consulted in complex sponsorship negotiations, the Bonham Group has a diverse clientele that spans American business, education and industry, including many sport entertainment properties.
The Bonham Group has been involved in sports entertainment consultation for over 17 years, and Dean Bonham has personally negotiated more than a billion dollars worth of sponsorships for companies such as IBM, Chrysler, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Ericsson and AT & T. He's definitely someone you all may want to talk to.
The Bonham Group has been the marketing agency for the LPGA since 2002. Dean Bonham's views on Olympic and League sponsorship and issues in professional sports have been quoted in scores of major publications. He has also been a featured guest on ABC's Nightline, CNN Moneyline, CNBC, and is our featured guest this morning as the moderator of the commissioner's panel.
With our thanks, it is my great pleasure to introduce Mr. Dean Bonham. Let the forum begin (applause).
DEAN BONHAM: Thank you for that nice introduction, Betsy.
I've been told, Commissioners, that I'm not to give you an introduction or talk about your bios but instead just to invite you up because you need no introduction.
However, you do have the bios of the commissioners in your information packets. So join me in welcoming the commissioners one at a time.
Mr. Gary Bettman, the Commissioner of the National Hockey League.
Carolyn Bivens we have already been introduced to, the new Commissioner of the LPGA.
Don Garber, the Commissioner of Major League Soccer.
Larry Scott, Chairman and CEO of the Sony Ericsson Women's Tennis Association.
Finally, Mr. Russ Granik, the NBA Deputy Commissioner and COO, Chief Operating Officer (applause).
I'd like to lead off this morning reading a quote from Phil Schaaf's book, Sports, Inc. - for those of you, by the way, who haven't read it, you should get it, it's a very interesting retrospective on the history of sports in this country.
The quote is this. "I'm out to get the money and I don't care who knows it. Furthermore, my advice to everybody is to get to the gate while the getting is good."
That's a quote by the fabled galloping ghost, Red Grange, over 80 years ago.
So what we're talking about today is not a trend or an issue that has just surfaced in the sports industry, it's one that has become more of a problem and more public, but it's not a new problem.
So, Carolyn, let me start off with you. It sounds like many issues have been imposed upon the sports industry for many years as it relates to phenoms in sports. What are the major issues that the phenoms face today? What are the things that you look for in advising them to make that transition and how to make that transition?
CAROLYN BIVENS: Well, the fascination with the phenoms obviously is that they bring energy, and an excitement. They add to entertainment value of this sport.
At the same time, it boils down to basically a young person, in many cases a kid, to live in an adult world, to perform at a top level day in and day out, to deal with all of the various pressures from agents, from parents, from the media, and to do it on a continuous basis.
It's not easy, and it's not just they got to the position of being a phenom because they're very good inside the ropes. What keeps one for a long time in a sport, and it makes a difference whether they make it or not, is being able to deal with a balance of a lot of other elements.
NHL COMMISSIONER GARY BETTMAN: I think the issue of who's a phenom and who's not is probably as important as what happens to phenoms. It's a question of expectations. Too many times, particularly in team sports, there's a hope by either a club or a league that a particular player is going to be the savior. It's going to be the person who's going to be the marketing centerpiece of a league, or it's a person who's going to turn a losing team into a winning team overnight. More often than not, that doesn't materialize. How many phenoms come along in a particular sport? If you get one a decade, you're lucky. That's probably an overly optimistic approach to focusing on who's a phenom.
I get more concerned about the guys who are expected, or ladies in other sports, but in our sport, the guys who are expected to do so much and then don't deliver and wind up not even having average or mediocre careers. There are countless cases of No. 1 picks in the draft who never make it. Every now and then you get a Wayne Gretzky, a Mario Lemieux or now Sidney Crosby. Actually, if you look at today's newspapers, Alexander Ovechkin.
These are players who are actually playing at 18 and 19, and look to have promising futures, but I think the issue of too much too soon is as much a destroyer of careers as it is something that can build on a hype that would turn the fortunes of a franchise.
The other thing is, and I think it varies from sport to sport, I think it's different in individual sports than team sports. In team sports there's a little bit more of a structure and a culture that helps players develop. In our cases, most of our 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds spend most of their time in the Minor Leagues; they go up and they go down and they spend time maturing in a team organization. Occasionally, you'll get a Crosby or an Ovechkin who can start playing at a very young age, but, again, the structure of the game, the culture of the game, takes care of it.
In Crosby's case, by way of example, he's living in Mario Lemieux's house in the spare bedroom. He babysits his kids, he is a member of the family. In that type of environment, a phenom can take his time in maturing and developing, but, again, it's a question of how much pressure, what's the expectation, and how good the phenom is.
DEAN BONHAM: Don Garber, you're facing a phenom problem of your own these days. Blessings and some challenges. What kind of advice are you giving Freddy Adu and others these days?
MLS COMMISSIONER DONALD GARBER: I wouldn't describe it as a problem as much as a challenge and a situation that we're facing in professional soccer for the first time.
Unlike what Gary is dealing with with some older teenagers, Freddy was signed by us when he was 14 and now is a 16-year-old and going through the struggles that my 16-year-old daughter goes through or any 16-year-old person in this country goes through in growing up and living as a teen, and then at the same time having all the expectations of the global soccer world on his back.
It's been a process for us all to go through together. When Freddy came to us with his family, there was no question in his mind or his family's mind that he was going to go professional. We, in American soccer, were trying to manage the situation where we could put him in a controlled environment. Unlike what's going on with Gary's player, Freddy actually was being babysat. He was living in the general manager's house and was not being the babysitter, but being babysat by the parents. It was in a market where he lived, and that was a requirement that we had for his signing. We put him in an environment where he was trained, and focused on his training as opposed to focused on his playing. That was something that Freddy has issues with.
Freddy believes, as most players do, that he should be the star of the team and playing the entire game, and that's not something that his coach or team general manager believes is best for him.
In fact, the national team coach and everyone who is in our game believes that he's developing very, very well, and you've got to manage his expectations. It's complicated and it's overly complicated by us where we're not in a closed system. And while there are basketball leagues and hockey leagues around the world that have star players, we operate in an environment where we're not competing against ourselves to sign Freddy, we're competing against Real Madrid and AC Milan and Manchester United. In that environment, those players are getting signed at 14 and 15, and that's what we've got to face with every young player that comes to us.
DEAN BONHAM: So it is common for those teams in Europe to sign them at 14 and 15 years old?
DONALD GARBER: Each major super club probably signs eight to ten to twelve teenagers. They're signing them from all over the world.
Now FIFA, our governing body, has come in and put a restriction on what age they can play. That, primarily, is to protect developing countries from losing all of their players and from taking them out of a very difficult environment and putting them in a professional environment. We don't have that restriction in terms of when someone like Freddy could play because he's not a foreign player; he's a domestic player. We couldn't sign a player from Argentina and have him play until he's 18, but an American player can play at any age.
DEAN BONHAM: Larry Scott, Gary talked about the difference between the team sports and the individual sports. Your organization certainly has your share of young players coming into the league. You have a young player now that seems to be doing very well with Maria. What are you doing to help her along? What kind of council have you given her in the process?
WTA TOUR CEO LARRY SCOTT: Dealing with the issue of teen phenoms is something women's tennis knows well. It's been an issue for 15 years the organization has been dealing with, and we happen to be one of those individual sports where a young woman can reach the top of the sport at a very young age. It's been the case for a while, like other sports like gymnastics and figure skating, there's others like that.
In fact, listening to Carolyn, I was somewhat sympathetic. When I took the helm of the WTA two and a half years ago, the issue I got the most pressure about right away was our age eligibility rule. I'll never forget two months into the role at Wimbledon, being asked to come sit down with Maria Sharapova who was then 16 years old, her father, her agents from IMG who were dissatisfied with the rule at the time and thought she was physically mature and ready to be allowed to play more tournaments than we were allowing her to play, and they felt held back.
So I saw firsthand the pressures that the league was under, the pressures the player was under to sort of get out there, be marketed more, play more and have her ranking go up. She was 90 in the world at that stage.
At that stage the Tour had had an age eligibility program in place for 10 years. I think we were pioneering in that effort. The first thing I did was to commission a review of it, 10 years into it, because I was getting a lot of feedback early on, a lot of critique as to whether we were being too restrictive, perhaps not restrictive enough. The first thing I did was convene an expert panel of outsiders to come and look at the situation and talk to 600 people - players, coaches, our whole community. We looked at the science. Looked at the literature. Brought in sports science experts to analyze it. Based on all that feedback and 10 years of history, we've made advances with the program.
When I think about Maria Sharapova, who you mentioned, that's an example for me of sort of the success of an age eligibility program where you graduate the doses of play, at least in our sport, the players are allowed. She started playing at 14, steadily worked her way up the ranking. In her opinion, she wasn't allowed to go as far as fast as she would have liked. When I saw her win Wimbledon at the tender age of 17, to deal with the media onslaught that came because of everything about her, to see the poise with which she handled the situation and has subsequently handled the situation, there's been no sophomore slump, she's gone on to deal with a lot of marketing pressures, as well as being the highest paid female athlete in the world, has kept her ranking up there, has gone on to win additional titles, I think it's an example for me of how our program has worked well in terms of bringing a player along gradually, but on the parallel track, educating the player along the way.
We only allow advances in the number of tournaments a player can play if it comes with media training, education on science and nutrition, dealing with the pressures of the media, the commercial world, all those things.
So it's a balancing act. We have got a sport where players can reach the top at an early age, yet we also care deeply about the well-being and health of the players and care a lot about career longevity.
Before age eligibility program, we had a real career longevity problem. We had 10%, 12% of our players that started retiring by the age of 21, 22. The sport said that's not right.
For making various adjustments, that narrows down to 1%, yet we still allow our teen phenoms to come along and take advantage of all of the excitement that has been discussed.
It's a delicate balancing act and we're constantly reviewing it because things change.
DEAN BONHAM: Russ Granik, you've been with the NBA 25 years, I believe.
NBA DEPUTY COMMISSIONER RUSS GRANIK: More than that.
DEAN BONHAM: More than that. 27?
RUSS GRANIK: You're getting closer.
DEAN BONHAM: You've seen a few teen phenoms in your time. I know you've got one now - a couple, I guess, that are doing it appears anyway pretty well. You've also talked about age restrictions, which I don't want to talk about now, we'll get into that later. What advice did you give LeBron? How did you help him along?
RUSS GRANIK: I think, as Gary said earlier, I think there's a big difference between the team sports and individual sports. In the team sports you have the additional issue of not just what's best for the athlete but how it affects the teams involved.
Even within the team sports, I think things are very different. Don talked about in soccer they have to be concerned about losing top players, perhaps, to play in Europe or around the world. Gary mentioned that in hockey they have a structure where players are sort of used to the kind of pro or semipro life style before they're old enough to get drafted into the NHL.
We haven't had that in the NBA. So what we've been faced with in the last many years, really since Kevin Garnett did so well as a phenom, it's not a word we use much but seems to fit, we've had a situation of players coming right out of high school where they're in their home environment, in their neighborhoods, then all of a sudden they're on a professional team. So they haven't perhaps had the experience that maybe hockey players do get before they're finally in the NHL.
For us, we've really put a lot of emphasis on trying to work with the individual player both at the league and the team level. In our case, I think suddenly being with a team when you're 18 years old, that means, yeah, there is a structure to it that's helpful in some respects, but all of a sudden you're an 18-year-old traveling around the country on load road trips and strange places, with a bunch of, in many cases, 30-, 30-plus-year-old men. That's got its negatives as well as positives for someone that age.
We really started the program years ago. I think it was the first in sports that Seth Sanders (phonetic spelling) helped create, that Mike Bantom is now in charge of in the NBA, and I know a lot of people work with him, Mike's colleagues are here today. That really focuses on how can we individually work with the player that enters the NBA particularly, the 18-, 19-year-olds get a lot of focus from staff in our office that work with them directly through the year. We have a person on each team now whose job it is just to help young players develop.
DEAN BONHAM: Is that a league person?
RUSS GRANIK: A team person that's dedicated to that function. Up until a few years ago, I think that was something that was ignored. It was left to the coaches to worry about what the players were or weren't doing. I think they're good at doing that on the court, but perhaps don't have the expertise to deal with the players' off-court issues. We have a lot of people both in the league offices and team offices to deal with that issue.
DEAN BONHAM: That's interesting. That's a great approach.
Let me touch on a little bit about a controversial subject. Is there a difference in female and male athletes in terms of them being phenoms and being thrown from the amateur ranks into the pro ranks at very young ages?
I'll start with you, Carolyn.
CAROLYN BIVENS: I'm not sure if there's a huge difference. I do believe there is a difference between team sports and the individual sports. There certainly are different maturation levels socially, especially, between young men and young women. I think this is some of the areas that we can collectively pool the knowledge that exists. I think there's a lot more that has been shared across all of the sports.
I think one of the difficult things that we all deal with is that there is a brand promise that's implied that we're going to put the very best out on the field of competition. And so the question is, over the course of the last five years, lots of things have changed in terms of training, technology, equipment, all kinds of things. Are we in fact still living up to that brand promise, if the best player in the world is 16 or is 14, are we in fact really fielding that?
DEAN BONHAM: Larry?
LARRY SCOTT: Having been in men's tennis for 13 years now, women's tennis for two and a half years, I've got a good vantage point on that. There are some very real differences, at least in tennis, between the men's game and women's game.
Women can break on to the scene and be on top of the sport at a younger age. I think they just develop faster. You don't really have 14-,15-,16-year-olds competing at the top in men's tennis the same way you do in women's tennis. But what we've learned from our experts is that there are also some very real medical, psychological issues and differences that young women go through in terms of their own development, issues like eating disorders, osteoporosis, things like that, that are really affected by the amount players are training, overtraining can be an issue. We really have tailored our programs very specifically to deal with some of those issues that are unique to women's players, and we're having to deal with a different set of issues.
DEAN BONHAM: Let me shift gears. I'd like all of you to just jump in here, no particular order. We'll start with you, Mr. Bettman.
GARY BETTMAN: I thought there was no order (laughter).
DEAN BONHAM: There's going to be one, one is the order. When you have a phenom like Sidney Crosby come into the league, I assume something's going on behind closed doors where somebody's discussing the impact on the league and what needs to be done to not only make sure that Sidney is successful but that the league itself is maximizing the opportunities without appearing to be opportunistic or exploitive, and at the same time organizationally making sure that everything is going as smoothly as it can.
What goes on behind closed doors that you can share with us that prepares a league for a Sidney Crosby?
GARY BETTMAN: Well, I think the first issue is the notion of what I started out with a couple questions ago, who's a phenom. In other words, every club is out trying to sell itself in the market place, sell tickets, and tell stories. All leagues and all sports are out trying to tell the most compelling stories that they have to create fan interest, to create media interest, and that's an ongoing process. That's something we all do on a daily basis with the players that we think will generate that kind of attention.
I'm not sure we sit around saying, "This is a phenom, so let's go get him more attention." I think it's more a question of, "This is an interesting story." This is a player, in Sidney Crosby's case or Alexander Ovechkin's case, this is a player that has more of a following, more of a background, that people are interested in, so let's tell his story.
It is a balancing act, though, because you don't want to put too much pressure on too soon. We were criticized at least twice this season for not putting certain games that the Penguins were playing on national television. We had a schedule in place. There were some logistic reasons not to do it. But also we think that the Sidney Crosby story, if it has legs, will develop not over the first six months of his career, but will develop over a decade of ongoing performance that warrants attention. In other words, getting behind the hype to making sure that it's real.
And so we're out looking to tell the interesting stories. Sidney Crosby has probably gotten more attention than most players, certainly more than any other rookies. But we haven't said, "This is the guy that we're going to chain ourselves to, and we're going to ride this media," because media sometimes flare out and I think it's got to gradually develop over time.
That may not be opportunistic enough for some people, but I think it's something we're comfortable with.
RUSS GRANIK: I think less goes on behind the scenes than people think. Particularly for us in the NBA, obviously the biggest young star we've got in years was LeBron James. By the time he was drafted in the NBA, he was already a huge media phenomenon. We didn't create that. I mean, that was just created by the basketball infrastructure and the way it was covered by the media.
So it's not like we sat around and said, "Oh, boy, we've got something great here in Mr. James," just his media image was already there. We were able to put him on TV a little more because we have more games on TV than Gary.
But other than that, other than sitting around, because our network partner said, "We want to get LeBron on the air --
GARY BETTMAN: You are so opportunistic (smiling).
RUSS GRANIK: It's not like we sat around and said, "How do we craft some special thing for LeBron?" I agree with Gary 100%. If he's going to be good enough, then it's going to continue to flow. If he's not, you would just as soon not have gotten involved in trying to create something that's not there.
DONALD GARBER: I'd say there's probably more on trying to manage those expectations than there is an aggressiveness on the League's part. Freddy is a perfect example. The kid comes to this country when he's 12 by winning a lottery, he comes into our development program in Florida and is discovered playing on a soccer field, and within a 13-month period he's this superstar young athlete.
Our role there was to try to find him a controlled environment, to put him in a place where we know he would be protected, and believe it or not restrict the number of interviews that he would do. When he was signed by D.C. United, there was a contractual restriction on the amount of interviews, amount of time that he could spend not training. It was a commitment that we made to his mother.
So there's a movement on our part, and I would probably speak for other leagues as well, to try to put these players in an environment where they're controlled and protected, particularly when they're 15, 16 years old.
LARRY SCOTT: I'd concur. The real superstars market themselves in a sense through their performance and everything that's part of the package - the personality, the looks, the public interest that they generate.
What I find is that we are spending most of our time looking to sort of push and market some of the other players that don't necessarily have the natural attention. It's more as Don says, sort of managing the interest, managing the requests for the top players, and sort of using that as a platform to promote other players.
Where I do see a trend, and where we're concerned, is that players are coming on to our tour already packaged, already with a marketing brochure created about them, with their first Nike or Reebok deal, already having been trained. The packaging of youngsters, even before they had the success, is increasing.
DEAN BONHAM: Interesting point that I hadn't thought of, but your real challenge is to make sure that the rest of the league and other players get marketed, and not lost in that media hype.
CAROLYN BIVENS: Absolutely.
DEAN BONHAM: That's a very interesting point. Of course you don't have any superstars coming into the LPGA so you don't have to worry about this issue, right?
CAROLYN BIVENS: Right. We have one-word names, Michelle. Michelle, much the same situation that Larry just described.
But it's also a whole new generation. These young people are really savvy and, once again, they've decided on the sport that they want to concentrate on at much earlier ages. They've generally gotten much better professionals around them. Most of these young people have websites of their own. They know how to package and how to market themselves.
We just finished qualifying school for next year. It was this weekend. We have two Japanese players. One is Ono Asata, she's considered a phenom in Japan already. There was 75 photographers, there were two trailers for qualifying school. So they kind of come with this.
Everybody said it in different ways. We spend more time marketing some of the others, and also trying to manage unreal expectations and pressures for some of these.
DEAN BONHAM: You raised something, Larry, that I want to follow up on. You talked about Nike. I've always sort of wondered, what is the real impact of a Nike or any company, I'm not picking on Nike, but any company out there and their relationship with the athlete. And is it the athlete driving the brand for the, in this case, the shoe company, or is it the shoe company driving the athlete brand, or is it both?
The question really is, what is the impact of corporate America on this whole phenom trend we see in the sports world today?
LARRY SCOTT: Well, in tennis, those types of companies are very involved in developing image and aura around an athlete. In tennis, you think of Andre Agassi and Nike and Canon, and some of the advertising that's defined him as a superstar in tennis. You think of Serena Williams and Nike. So much of her brand is about fashion and the look and sort of breaking new ground.
These companies are making big bets early on in a player's career, and they're kind of playing the numbers and signing up stables of players, and even before we see them. I think they're going to the academies and talking to the agents and finding players when they're playing the junior tour, and they're betting that some of the players that they get will become global brand ambassadors and who are worth the investments early on.
Our players are more and more exposed to the commercial world, commercial pressures and are thinking about marketing even before they broke into the Top 100.
DEAN BONHAM: Russ, you've had a lot of dealings.
RUSS GRANIK: The shoe companies are a particular issue, obviously, in basketball. In addition to the marketing part of it, I think the shoe companies and the structures they've created in recent years for summer competition among high school players has really fueled the issue of players feeling that they're ready to come out and play in the NBA.
I think you go back not that many years, yes, there were always sort of the high school scouts out there that could kind of tell you who the best players were, but it was very, very fuzzy. You didn't have players from New York competing regularly against players from California so it was a little hard for a player to say, "Yeah, I think I'm one of the three best high school players in the country."
Now, because there is so much of this competition that goes on, funded a lot by the shoe companies, you've got players that are ranked all over, and in a lot of different publications, in a lot of different ways, so that a player can pretty well feel when he's a junior or senior in high school, he knows exactly at least where he thinks he stands among other athletes.
I think that's created an aura around certain players, in some cases deserved. But as you said earlier, you worry about the cases where it's not, too. Nonetheless, it creates an impression that, "Okay, since this player, since he's ranked No. 2, he's got to be ready."
DEAN BONHAM: I hadn't thought of that, it's a corporate influence influencing some of that, isn't there? We always thought it was the media, but there's a corporate influence.
RUSS GRANIK: Now you see the NBA's Player Association holds now one of the best camps I think for high school players every summer. They're really responding to the fact that these camps exist already. They were created by the shoe companies, and there's now an effort on behalf of the associations to get involved, and at least make sure that when players come to these camps they get a certain kind of other education as well as playing basketball.
GARY BETTMAN: I think the plotting behind closed doors that you think that we do... (laughter)... is really being done in a corporate environment, where there are targeted players that companies have invested in and they want to make sure that they're maximizing the value of their investment.
We get a little less hung up on shoe companies because... (laughter)... although the main, Nike and Reebok, both have a hockey division and make skates and hockey equipment.
The ability to turn the products the athletes endorse into increased sales is why there's such a large investment in young athletes. You're trying to buy low before the market takes off. Whoever decided at Nike to invest in Michael Jordan before anybody knew who Michael Jordan was, was a genius. And look what's happened to Nike as a result.
But that's where the imaging and brand building is really taking place. We have 700 athletes, and some get more attention than others, but if Nike or Reebok has a dozen or so athletes in each sport that they're focused on, those are the ones that they're going to market, promote and brand in ways to get attention to maximize their sales.
DEAN BONHAM: I guess that can be a positive or a negative, Carolyn, but you've got an athlete that I think probably has some corporate pressure to come out and play more and turn professional as soon as she can. I'm guessing on that, because I don't know. But what's been your experience in your tenure so far with the corporate world and its influence on Michelle Wie or someone like Michelle Wie?
CAROLYN BIVENS: We spend a lot of time on the corporate side and on the media side. It's a situation where I think, number one, the athletes have much more sophisticated management support around them these days. Let's face it, corporate marketing has gotten much more sophisticated. I think there's a lot of built-in protection these days against exploitation. I think it's less likely today than it was five or ten years ago.
Most of the partnerships between those companies who endorse athletes work out pretty well for the sports as well. There is a corporate consciousness, that, yeah, there are some renegades, absolutely, but I think that's the exception rather not the rule.
DONALD GARBER: We have an interesting scenario in our sport, Dean, because if you look at what Nike was able to do with Michael in the NBA, and you look at certainly Tiger in the PGA, you could think of so many sports that have been elevated by a star athlete and its corporate partner that has promoted that particular player.
We have Nike and adidas chasing after these young kids and have complicated our world. It's not just the foreign clubs that are influencing their decisions, it's the shoe companies that are influencing their decisions. There's a young player now that's 16 years old that's in our training program in Bradenton that's being offered more money than Freddy is being paid by Nike to sign with them and have the opportunity to be the next person.
When you think about how these phenoms are teed up, I'm going to go back to what we're all saying, it's less about us and it's a lot more about these outside influences that creates these stories. Now these stories are good for us. Certainly, in our sport having Freddy out there gave us a tremendous amount of exposure and publicity. That was a positive thing, making it more important for us to manage that responsibly. If the next kid out there can be someone like Freddy, that's a good thing for our sport. If adidas promotes him, so now you have Nike and adidas competing to run those ads, that's a good thing for the sport. But we have a responsibility to try to get these companies to do the right thing.
With adidas, who's our primary supplier, we have something called Generation adidas. Any kid that signed that's underage goes into that program and we, in our federation, the US Soccer Federation, buy an annuity that pays for that kid's college education should he retire from the game within five years. So we're in essence saying, "If you don't go to college, we'll help fund your college for five years after you graduate."
We have a handful of players in a young league, only 10 years old, that have graduated from college who have come in through this program. We view it as a responsibility, and if we can get a corporate partner to align with us, then that is a positive thing. But there is a lot of pushing and shoving to get everybody on the same page.
DEAN BONHAM: I guess as this conversation has gone on, we've talked about pluses, minus, we've talked about age issues, media issues, corporate issues. It begs the question, are there enough restrictions in this area? Of course you've dealt with this issue publicly, Russ, not only age but should there be other restrictions to protect these athletes and bring them along at a proper pace.
RUSS GRANIK: Obviously, in the NBA, we've always had restrictions. Originally the restrictions were 30 years or so ago you had to finish four years of college or at least be four years out of high school. But that got changed in the '70s, and at that point it was changed to where you could come into the NBA right out of high school although it was very, very rarely done until, as I said, Garnett had such success in our league.
As Gary said in the beginning, in team sports, you've got an additional issue, which is not just what's best for the athlete, but how it works for the sport. And the draft is very important in the NBA. Subject to the quirks of the lottery, we have a system where you try and give the worst teams generally the earliest picks in the next draft in the hopes that that's going to help them get better, and you can have an ebb and flow to who's good and who's bad in the league.
But when you have to make judgments about players that are coming right out of high school that haven't had any serious competition, that's difficult. And then you're picking players that you know almost for certain are not going to be able to help you right away, and it's a much longer bet as to whether that player is going to be a real star or not than if you've seen them in better competition.
That was a large motivating factor for us. It wasn't just about, although we think it gets better for the athlete as well, and we'll have less players who think they are take going to be stars and turn out not to have a career at all. But there's also this element of what we needed for our teams in order to have a better competition.
So we ended up settling on 19, as you know. That means for the vast majority of players, they'll have to play somewhere beyond high school before they can get drafted, which we think will be an advantage for them but also lets our teams see them against competition that goes beyond high school, whether it's in a Minor League or whether it's in Europe or wherever.
DEAN BONHAM: Developmental League.
Gary?
GARY BETTMAN: It's hard to legislate maturity and balance. I think as a general rule, the leagues, the organizations, the clubs, want the players that they bring into their organization to succeed. They're going to do everything in their power to develop them.
You can have age restrictions. You can even have dress codes (laughter). That's not really, I think, where the issue comes from. I think there are a lot of outside pressures as well. There are unscrupulous people that will try to take advantage of young players. Sometimes family; sometimes friends of family; sometimes agents. This isn't a blanket indictment of any, it's just the cases that you hear about that you shake your head and say, "How did this happen?" probably are things that developed before the players even get to us.
So I'll use hockey as an example, not to pick on anyone else, there were issues back - I don't know - ten years ago in major juniors, that's where kids 16, 17, 18 develop, in Canada and northern parts of the United States, where promising hockey players can play organized hockey. It's not really professional, but it's very organized. Generally, they're away from home, they live with other families. There were instances of coaches at that level being abusive of the players at that age. So you have a young child who's away from home, who hasn't been fully matured or developed, being in a situation that was difficult.
It was the exception by a large extent, not the norm, and the Canadian Hockey League put in procedures for clearing coaches and hot lines so that in the event there were those instances, and Sheldon Kennedy is a name that comes to mind.
We just had this crazy situation about this player, Mike Jefferson, that was just a program on the CBC about it, about a major junior coach who got involved with a kid in his formative years, and some complicated things and allegations of one tried to kill the other. I mean, you get crazy situations that develop, and they are generally things that happened before it gets to the league level. Whatever the development system is, whatever the rules of engagement are for endorsements, for agents, those have to really be targeted down to where the process starts. By the time it gets to our level, there may be rules and restrictions that we can put in place, but for some of the problems, it's probably too late.
DEAN BONHAM: That's a very good point. It needs to start much earlier than by the time they get to the league. I hadn't thought of that.
Carolyn, you're going to be challenged on your age issue here shortly. How are you feeling about that? What can you share with us?
CAROLYN BIVENS: Really excited about it.
GARY BETTMAN: So are your lawyers.
CAROLYN BIVENS: It seems to me, looking at the opposite side of "Do we have enough regulations protecting these people," it's are we taking a continuous look at the rules that we have and what emphasis are we putting on making the transition.
I will still go back to certainly coming from outside the world of sports, these young people today are very skilled on the field of play. There's not a question in the world. That is why they got there as phenoms. That will not ultimately determine what they make, how long their career is, whether they are successful at the transition, and it's those adolescent development things that I think all of us - and, yes, they'll be applied very differently to our sports - that make a huge difference.
I was very struck on the last day of the Solheim. For the first day, it was alternate shot, and the very first team to go off was Beth Daniel paired with Paula Creamer. There were 30 years' difference between those players.
I selfishly want more of those. I want a Michelle and a Morgan to come in. I want them to be standing there competitively in a major event 30 years later. I worry about that as much as I do about the transitions in.
DEAN BONHAM: Hadn't thought of that.
Don, you raised something earlier. You're in an entirely different world, it seems to me, than these other commissioners in that you actually have to compete with really the most dominant governing bodies of soccer in Europe and Asia and other places for your players. You have no choice but to draft these players and try to get them to commit to this country. I assume then that age restrictions are something more difficult for you, but other restrictions, as Gary talked about, may be more appropriate in terms of how they're dealt with before they actually get to a level where they're playing on a day-to-day basis.
DONALD GARBER: That's true, Dean. It's both restrictions and guidelines, really.
I've mentioned this program we have in Bradenton. We have 40 kids that are under 15 and under 17 years old that are the elite soccer players in this country that train in the Bollettieri Academy. They go to school there. They have to graduate from high school there. It's a controlled environment. They're selected by our national team coaches and they're put into an environment where they're taught how to deal with the media. They're obviously going to go school and taught how to be great soccer players.
Our sport is probably a little different than others. Soccer players play 60 to 70 games a year. They're training all year round. The season in Europe, they have a little break for Christmas, break for the summer, they're playing games all year round. With weather here in the United States, we have a much shorter season. Even with all that, our national team has gone from 38th in the world when the league was started to now 7th in the world.
So the level of quality of play in this country has been increasing primarily driven by young players who have come into a professional environment. Without that professional environment, U.S. soccer as a credible sport in the global landscape that we compete in just would not be able to stand toe-to-toe.
So we're not going to have to -- we would not be able to have age restrictions and be able to compete. What we could do is have the guidelines in place, which we do have, on how those players are protected, ensuring that they can get an education, ensuring that they're trained off the field, ensuring that they're living in places that are close to where they've grown up and putting them in a system where they can succeed. So far it's worked very well for us.
We had a young player, our best player, Langdon Donovan go overseas at 14. He was living in Leverkusen, Germany, hardly a major center of Europe. He was very unhappy there. Lived there for a couple years, came back here to the United States, living in LA, getting married and having a great life and will probably stay in our league for the rest of his career.
We have seen that for young kids to go overseas, they've struggled in being successful. We've seen young kids that have developed here be very successful.
DEAN BONHAM: In Langdon's case, was he away from his family?
DONALD GARBER: Absolutely, he was. He was 14 years old, living in a small, industrial town by himself, learning a language and it was a real struggle for him.
DEAN BONHAM: You're dealing with a number of foreign cultures and the age issues. Do your foreign players and families view age issues differently than we do here? If so, how are you dealing with those?
LARRY SCOTT: Well, it is a global issue. We deal with it the same all over the world. Some of the issues Don has referred to have been very real issues in tennis.
When we did a study over 10 years ago about what the major stressors were for young players, it was the media pressure, it was family pressure - sometimes the players are expected to support the family through contracts and earnings - it was the loneliness of being away. Now we have 10 years of history. We've probably got as good a case study now about the effects of restrictions.
They've worked extremely well in tennis, but restrictions are a bit of a blunt instrument. It's not the restrictions alone that have led to some of the improvement in tennis, it's educational programs and support systems and hotlines and availability of outside people to consult with our players and family. It's training, coaches, family members. It's mentoring. It's orientation of rookie hours. It's skill training with the media.
So we did a study against that benchmark in 2004, and neither media, family, or loneliness were at the top of the stressors.
DEAN BONHAM: That means the program is working.
LARRY SCOTT: We had some success in that regard. The stressors of the young players were the same stressors for players 25 - injuries, length of the season, more competitive stressors as compared to social stressors and other things.
We've also raised the average age of our players by 25% from 10 years ago. This is during 10 years where the commercial pressures have gotten even greater and societal pressures to be a teen sensation have gotten even greater.
We're quite proud of the program. We definitely think restrictions have been a positive thing, but at least for tennis graduating the dose and combining it with education and support systems as well and finding that delicate balance.
The other thing that I'll say is we're constantly reviewing it and it evolves. Things change, and we try to stay flexible.
DEAN BONHAM: We've talked a lot about family. We mentioned it on several occasions here. Russ, first of all, I would assume this is the case, I want you to correct me if I'm wrong. In most instances family is supportive and trying to do the right thing. I assume there are instances also where you've got a family that maybe isn't trying to do the right thing. How do you deal with the families? How do you make contact with the families? Or do you? Are you restricted to just talking to the player or can you interact with the families?
RUSS GRANIK: Last few years, David and myself have gotten more and more involved with the families. We have started to in the last few years recognize that families do play a big part. Basketball players I don't think are any different than any other group of young men; some have great families and some have not so great families.
But we try and help the families to understand what the pressures are going to be, what kind of support would be best for their sons in the NBA, and we now have programs where we bring, before a draft, we have what we think will be the Top 20 draft picks or so, we have special sessions with their families. There's a mother's group now, mothers of NBA players that meets that we work with. So in a variety of ways now we are trying to help them to help the sons adjust.
But it is, again, it's not like tennis or golf where there can be an ongoing, constant involvement. The player's a part of the team, he's going to go on the road for a large part of the season and the family's not going to be there. So you have to have a structure beyond that as well.
GARY BETTMAN: I think for the most part, overwhelmingly, families are positive particularly in hockey. Hockey is actually a unique sport in a sense that as a young child, you can't even begin to play unless you have the involvement of an adult, generally a family member.
Kids four, five years old, can't carry the equipment, can't lace up their skates, can't get to the rinks. For those of you who have kids who play, five o'clock in the morning, it's not that easy for a kid to get himself to a rink, and a five-year-old can't lace his skates properly.
There's a long history and tradition of families being involved. In fact, a number of our clubs have at least one road trip a year where dads come with their sons and they do the road trip together. So this notion of family has been important.
We also, when we started our substance abuse program, I don't know, ten years ago, it wasn't really just a substance abuse program; it was an employee assistance program. We offered family counseling and counseling for players, not just on substance abuse but on financial matters, stress, family issues and the like, and it's been open to family members as well. There have been sessions where when the counselors go around from team to team, they sit with the spouses and talk to them about what's going on with their husbands, significant others and what services are available to them.
I think the families tend to be supportive. I think it's important for players, when they're on the road and particularly when they come home, that they've got a good environment to go to. In most cases, that is what is there for them. I think family is nothing but a plus.
DEAN BONHAM: Carolyn, you've had a few family issues in the past at the LPGA. I know like Gary and Russ, most of your families are very supportive, but I assume you all have family programs in place to influence positive behavior.
CAROLYN BIVENS: Certainly at the LPGA we do see some cultural differences. A lot of the young people, more and more of them do have families. Sometimes the putting green and the driving range before tournaments are very crowded. There are a bunch right there with the parents there.
But culturally it's probably something we deal with more than anything else. It can be an extreme source of stress for the player, a little bit of the stage mom and dad syndrome. That's one that's a little more tricky. You can't always intervene unless someone asks for help or you have the opportunity.
DEAN BONHAM: Don, it sounds like Freddy Adu's family, particularly his mother, is a better way to say it, really has the right idea. I've read a number of things, I've heard you make a couple comments about her insistence on reducing the number of interviews and all sorts of things.
How important is this family connection for you as you're looking at dealing with much younger players? Are you really focusing on that issue?
DONALD GARBER: Well, it's very important. Similar to hockey where there's the whole soccer family in and around these kids. They're coming out, many of them, as old teenagers or their families are following them through college.
One of the great moments I've had at one of our drafts, I remember standing up there and seeing this young guy get signed, his name was Quavis Kirk, his parents were crying as he held up the jersey for the Earthquakes. It made me feel like our guys are just like every other athlete. Their parents come to the draft, wait in the audience, wait for their son to go up there and hold up the jersey. Then there's a bit of separation. They're moving away from home for the most part and going to be a professional athletes.
With the younger players, we keep them close to home. They live at home. Their families are part of the process. They're driving them to practice, they're allowed to come into team meetings. They're really an extension of a senior youth player, and that's something that we think is important so that the family unit stays close and so that we can have a relationship with that mother and father or just mother or father.
In all of these cases when we sign these players, it's like a college recruiter. The league, as many of you know, signs those contracts. Our player folks are going out and meeting with families, that's going on right now during our signing period. They're going to their homes and talking to them about staying in the United States, being in a good environment close to home, talking to them about the team and coach. It's all relatively structured play.
So the family is extremely important. If you're lucky, you get a mother like Mrs. Adu. He's really a fantastic woman, that's why she's got such a fantastic kid.
DEAN BONHAM: That was a major issue for Freddy, was it not, to be able to stay in the United States and continue the family in the United States?
DONALD GARBER: His mother made it a requirement, and he listens to his mom (smiling).
DEAN BONHAM: Good, good.
Larry?
LARRY SCOTT: Again, in tennis, I think families are as involved, if not more involved than in any other sport probably.
In many cases, the parent is the coach. These are young teenage girls traveling around the world on their own. We don't have the barrier or support system of a team structure, so it really is up to each individual player and their family to figure out the support unit for that individual player that may be traveling 30 weeks a year around the world.
The relationship between the player and the parent, player and the coach is evident even during a match. The sort of family box at Wimbledon or the US Open, certainly getting a lot of TV time and the relationship between the player and parent is critical. Certainly my observation, not unlike life in general, is that the parents are the No. 1 influencer on the player and how they will adapt to life as a professional athlete. I don't think it's any different than what teens go through in any walk of life.
We certainly respect the critical role parents play. We have a professional development staff that is working with kids as soon as we see them directly, but we've also got parents and coach orientation, training, support services that are available, because our relationship can't just be with the player; it's also got be with their team, whoever their team may be. Usually that's three or four people that we need to communicate with on parallel tracks to have the positive influences we want to have on a player.
DEAN BONHAM: So we've talked about the players and the role of a professional athlete, but I think that one of the things that really concerns me is these horror stories that we read where during their prime they were one of the most recognizable faces in the world or the United States, and now we find them in a slum someplace, barely able to find enough money for food.
What's going on, and I'll start with you and just go down the line, Russ, what's going on to educate and create a sense of balance so that when the hey day is over and it's time to go into what I'll call "the real world," they're prepared for that?
RUSS GRANIK: That's something that we do emphasize in our joint program with the Players' Association for player development. There are lectures that players get when they come into the league as rookies and again three times a year, I think it is, during the season, where a very important element of that is dealing with financial issues.
Certainly in the NBA these days anybody who has a halfway legitimate career should have made enough money that the situation you described shouldn't happen. But I think that nonetheless, in some cases, there are things you can't control.
It's an issue that we've made very much a priority.
One area where I've always wished we could get something done but we never have would be to actually invest dollars for players. I think it's something we've discussed with the union at earlier times in terms of, if you have a player who's making multiple millions of dollars, it always struck me there ought to be some system where some amount of that beyond what you're entitled to as your pension and IRA and everything else, that some amount of that gets invested for you for the future.
But we've never been able to break through in that area. I think the sense always was that maybe that was, at least on the union's feeling, it was too paternalistic and players, like other adults, should be able to deal with their own funds entirely. Occasionally it does create some problems.
But it's an important issue, and one we do spend a lot of effort on.
GARY BETTMAN: I think that the utopian notion that Russ describes would be great, that if you're a professional athlete in any time, at any period of time, you should be set for life financially. There are only so many controls and restrictions you can put in place. People who work hard to create a career and earn money are entitled to do whatever they want in terms of investing it. Some of them might do better than a league-imposed system, and some might do worse and squander it.
But I suppose that's their prerogative.
From hockey, you always have in every sport the occasional story of somebody who's lost it all. We have a fund that we use for former players that find themselves in dire straits.
But for the most part hockey players at least, and it may be backgrounds of hockey players, even internationally and how they come up through the ranks, they generally don't live rock-star existences. Most of them come out from a decade long career with enough money to live a comfortable life. It is a shame if you look at it from afar, and it's probably projecting values that maybe you shouldn't be projecting on others that you should feel financial security if you've made it to the elite level of your sport and were able to stay there for a long enough period of time to make a significant amount of money.
DEAN BONHAM: Carolyn, I know this is a big issue for you. I've been impressed with your comments about balance and the importance of balance. It seems to me that Russ and Gary are right, in that utopian world, you've made 20, 40, 60 million, whatever you've made, and now you're set for life. Doesn't always work that way.
Seems to me balance is a two-part issue. Not only taking what you've earned and controlling it, saving it, but also going into the real world and then dealing with life without sports. Even if you have that money, how do you help them with that balance so that they can operate in the real world without the cameras and the cheers from the sidelines?
CAROLYN BIVENS: It's interesting because there's so much focus right now on the young people coming in to our sports. We actually are doing just as much work on those that are transitioning out of our sport.
We have some very exciting things that we'll be doing over the course of the next few months and largely coming out of the LPGA professional development area to work with and help with players that are about to retire develop the skill sets that they need to transition into life post playing.
Some of the most trauma is imposed when someone who golf, or their sport, has been a central part of their life and, in fact, their identity for years all of a sudden feels like they're lost when they're going out. So that is a very high priority of focus for us.
DONALD GARBER: Well, it's an exciting time for us, Dean, because we've just completed our 10th year and we're getting some of our founding players retiring.
As our league grows and the sport gets more popular, they're becoming our coaches, they're becoming our broadcasters, they're becoming scouts, they're working in our office. And the founders of our leagues, those guys that were playing in the World Cup in 1994, 1998, are now coaches in Major League Soccer. Many of them are broadcasters on ABC and ESPN. That's one of the things we're proudest of.
So obviously we're creating programs at the local level to transition some of these players into coaching jobs. We've created a new position in each of our teams which is a soccer technical person. That position is going to go to an ex-player. We're creating our own little cottage industry, if you will, of soccer players who can make a career staying in the game because there's a league to support them.
I smile when I listen to Gary and Russ and even to Carolyn. Our guys are really not struggling with making that $40 million when their career's over to worry about squandering it away. We now have a union agreement, there's a pension program and 401(k) program. Our union agreement is only a year old. We're, as a young league, looking to do all those things that will help secure their futures for years to come.
LARRY SCOTT: Similarly, given that the roots of the WTA was a players union, we have had a pension in place for a while for players. That's nowhere near funded to the levels where players don't have to worry about their financial future, but it's something that's there.
The other two things are obviously education and development. So there's career counseling, financial planning assistance, things like that. Fortunately, tennis is a sport where there's ample opportunity, once you stop playing, to be a coach, be a commentator, be involved in your tennis federation in whatever part of the world you're from.
DEAN BONHAM: We're going to break for questions in about seven or eight minutes, so be thinking about any questions you may have. I think maybe we'll close on this question. We'll put you all on the spot a little bit.
We'll start with you again, Russ.
GARY BETTMAN: This is the random order (laughter).
DEAN BONHAM: I've gotten away from the random order. I got too much grief for it.
Success story. What went right? Who was it? Why did it go right? And then a story that wasn't a success. What happened, and what did you learn from it, and how are you applying for those learnings?
RUSS GRANIK: Okay. Well, I guess certainly our most recent success story, we're talking about phenoms, is LeBron James. I think one reason it worked is because he was at the time as skilled as projected and really was able to play at the NBA level from the very beginning. He was that really unusual athlete that not only excelled at the level he had been at, but was good enough to play at the highest level and seemed to have a good support system.
He was drafted by his local team. I mean, he grew up in Akron, I believe, so Cleveland is not very far away. That can be good or bad. In his case I think it worked out well, and I think the team put a lot of effort into working with him and his representatives. I think he's had from the beginning some good people working with him. That's been a success. He continues to get better, which I think is the second element competitively that you need. You have to have a certain ability to begin with, then you have to hope that you don't just stagnate, and he hasn't. He's demonstrated that he really is going to be at the very, very top level of NBA players. So that's worked well.
I mean, I don't want to pick a particular example, but we certainly have had a number of examples of players who believed they were ready for the NBA and applied for a draft and either didn't get drafted at all or slipped to the second round of the draft, which means you don't get a guaranteed contract in the NBA. If you're drafted in the first round, you can get now at least a two-year guaranteed contract. Even at the 30th pick, it's in the high six figures. As you go lower down, it can go up to four and a half million or so.
But if you're in the second round, you don't get a guaranteed contract. We had a number of players that fell to that level, didn't get drafted at all, and very shortly found themselves without a job in the NBA, without much prospect of it. And at that point, because of the NCAA's rules, they couldn't go back to college, and in many cases really hadn't put in the effort if they'd gone to college for a year or two, hadn't really put in the effort because they were always looking at the NBA and really weren't ready probably to succeed academically in any case and ended up -- some do get to play Minor League ball or play in Europe and have some kinds of careers. But there are many for whom the disappointment is so great that they end up really having achieved nothing as a result of nonetheless being a very skilled athlete, just not quite good enough, not quite good enough at that age. Maybe on a different progression, they would have been good.
DEAN BONHAM: I guess the learnings could be defined as those programs that you had in place now that you're continually working toward to try to prevent those situations. In other words, what you said earlier about working before.
RUSS GRANIK: Well, we work with them once we know they're likely to be drafted, and drafted as high draft picks. The problem is although we have tried to do some programs, done some small things with the NCAA or even the high school federations, that's where people really need to be counseled. We actually have a program where you can, if you're draft eligible but trying to decide whether to come out that year or not, because you're not automatically drafted until you're basically 22, you can petition the NBA office and a committee will give you advice. I think they've been pretty reliable over the years as to where you're likely to get drafted. Will you be in the top 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 30 or beyond?
A lot of players avail themselves to that, and that's good. But some don't. Some listen to their advisors, to whoever it is that may be talking to them that tells you, "Don't believe what anybody else says, you're going to be a first-round draft pick." And that's the player we really can't do much for.
GARY BETTMAN: I'm going to cop out to make a point, because I think characterizing a particular player as a phenom or a failure is kind of what we're all agreeing you really shouldn't be doing at any stage of their career. So you want two great success stories of kids who started young and made it great: Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux. It's really good. Will it be Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin?
This year, for those of you who aren't hockey fans, this year, we probably have 30 kids from all around the world, a combination of having been off for last year and two years of young players coming in at one time. You have a goaltender in New York, you have a defenseman in Calgary named Phaneuf. The number of young potential superstars is great, and time will tell how good they are.
The failures tend to come from the hype and the expectation that's never fulfilled. Ten years ago, maybe it was eleven years ago, Ottawa drafts Alexander Daigle and they said he was the next great one. He's a good player. He's still in the league. He's bounced around a lot. He's had a very respectable career. But he was never the next one. So maybe the label was unfair, and that's why it never got fulfilled.
We had a player drafted in Tampa Bay by a then brand new owner in the league, who's name is Vinny Lecavalier, a great player, a huge star in the league. Helped take his team to the Stanley Cup, the last time we had a Stanley Cup Final. He's a great player. He's one of the big stars in the league. But at the draft, his owner announced that this was the Michael Jordan of hockey, and nobody really needed to star, particularly in a sport that emphasizes team over individual. Before he ever played his first game, no player needs that kind of hype.
Vinny may be one of the best players we have in our league going forward. He certainly will be. Could be the best. But the fact is, to start with that type of hype, that's not a label or a burden that any youngster should have to bear.
RUSS GRANIK: To me, anybody that's had a 10-,11-year career, is not a failure in the NHL.
GARY BETTMAN: That's right.
RUSS GRANIK: It's not Wayne Gretzky, but you're by no means a failure.
DEAN BONHAM: That's the point, isn't it? If you set the expectation level too high, then they fail even when they succeed, which is really interesting.
CAROLYN BIVENS: The LPGA's age eligibility rule was written in the mid '60s as a result of a woman named Beverly Klass, who was 10 or 12 years old when she began professionally. Even according to Beverly, she had a very difficult time making it through life in general. A one-off, probably, but clearly not a Nancy Lopez, who's an example of someone who started extremely young and had a terrific career, and is still writing pages in the books now.
Michelle Wie, Paula Creamer, we'll see. They're off to really good starts. But there's a level of expectations and stressors that are put on those young women because they are expected to perform above and beyond. I think, again, sitting in the qualifying, the rookie orientation on Monday, for those people who qualified and got their card, you look at the range from the 18s to the 25s, 26s, 27s, and, again, they all played extremely well and they all earned their card. I think it's going to be interesting and there will be a variety of elements that determine whether or not they succeed.
DONALD GARBER: Well, I think every interview we ever did when we were talking about Freddy, we'd get asked by the media, is Freddy going to save soccer? I'd respond by saying, the sport doesn't need to be saved. So we have high expectations and hope that he can fulfill his goals and be a great player, and being in our league two years, it's way too early to tell to see how Freddy continues to develop.
All expectations are that he will develop to be the player that everybody hopes he can be.
We have two great stories, though, that we're very proud of, and both -- one player is still in Major League Soccer, one is playing over in Europe. Both came into the league at 17 years old, who came out of that Bradenton program. One's name is DaMarcus Beasley, who's an African American kid. He grew up playing soccer in the Midwest and has played in our league for four or five years, took the Chicago Fire to a championship game, is playing in Holland now, probably makes two and a half million dollars a year and is a starter on that team and is a great, great star player for our U.S. national team and will only get better.
We have a young kid named Eddie Johnson who just turned 20. He plays for our team in Dallas. He's just been signed to a million dollar contract.
So soccer players are starting to earn -- make real livings. Eddie is also an African-American kid from Florida, came up through that youth system and came into our development program at 15, not the league's, but our federation's. And he is one of the stars in our leagues.
So managed right, there is a great opportunity to take young players and turn them into great athletes. Managed better, we can turn them into great men.
What we're proudest about, and I think all of us would say this about our athletes, these guys, kids, men and women are not just great players. Because of the professional environments they're in, they really are great citizens and they stand tall representing our country if they're playing for their national team, or representing their teams or their sport in ways that really are important parts of our society. That's probably the thing that we at Major League Soccer are proudest of with our young kids.
DEAN BONHAM: Larry?
LARRY SCOTT: Tennis has had its problems in this area. In the early '90s, 7% of our players burnt out. When you define "burning out," it's retiring before the age of 22. That was an alarming number.
There were several high-profile examples that players that had a difficult time dealing with media pressure, parental pressure, was getting a lot of attention, and that's why the Tour at that time took such strong action over ten years ago.
Guess what I'm proudest of now is more sort of the systematic results of that program over ten years and the fact that the average career length is 15 years, so longevity of career has dramatically changed. That the 7% burnout rate is now down to 1%, which is a significant change.
If I look at our Top 10 at the end of this last year, we have two players at age 30, Lindsay Davenport, Mary Pierce, then we have 18-year-old Maria Sharapova. There's quite a wide range of players at the top of the game.
As I said before, if I look at real highlights and evidence of the success of this program, I think there's a lot of individuals I could point out, but certainly Maria's success 18 months ago, burst on the scene as "the new big thing," and "a star is born," 18 months later, $25 million in off-court earnings annually and a lot of days having to give to sponsors, a lot of fashion requests, interview requests, and handling it extremely well, top five in the world, still winning major titles. I think that's the result of appropriate restrictions, a lot of hard work with her and the people around her, and that's just one example of several others.
So I think given that we had some real problems in our sport in this area, I'm very proud of the turnaround and some of the individual success stories.
DEAN BONHAM: Do you attribute a lot of that to the study that you did and the action you took on the study?
LARRY SCOTT: Yes. This was in 1994. Maybe the Tour felt that dramatic action needed to take place because it wasn't in the best interest of the sport nor of the individual athlete to have burnout, to have a lot of premature injuries, to have players flaming up because they couldn't deal with media and other pressures.
Those major stressors, those major problems have really been ameliorated to the largest extent, and players are enjoying the kinds of careers that those that were around at the time would have hoped they would have. That was all borne out by this 10-year review that my commission did in 2004. We continued to involve the whole community and we'll continue to evolve it.
DEAN BONHAM: We have about 10, 15 minutes for questions.

Q. This is for Commissioner Bivens. The LPGA does something that the other sports don't do, and that is the tournaments provide sponsor exemptions. I think this creates an interesting paradigm. On the one hand, it's great for the LPGA, it's great for TV, revenues, awareness of the game. On the other hand, with all due respect to the great job you did with Michelle, I wonder if the path that's been taken by people like Tiger, by Morgan, by Mina, the young kids, Julieta, Paula, who have come through the ranks and learned how to win, for them as individuals, I wonder in the long term if that's not perhaps a better course. Certainly, there's no argument with the Nike and the Sony deal. But by the same token, I sit and watch Michelle, bogeyed last two holes in Japan, shot 82 on the final round of the women's, was up two with three to go in the Women's Am two years ago and couldn't close the deal. She's a terrific golfer, and that's not to say how it's going to be. I'm fortunate enough, I'm a family friend of Mina Harigae from Monterey and I'm on her bag so I hear the conversations amongst the young girls. At this year's Women's Am, I listened to Morgan say, "I bet she won't be here because she doesn't want to play us." So what happens is these kids, because they have beaten Michelle and Paula at that junior level, they see how well they do on the tour, it creates this cycle inside them that says, "If they can do it, I can do it." That's why Commissioner Bettman was saying you might be hearing from lawyers because they want to come out now because they think they're as good as these other people. I think there's sort of a circular issue with raising the awareness of the sport and allowing people like Michelle to play on it. At the same time, you have kids that say, "I'm just as good, and I want to be there, too." It's sort of an interesting issue you're faced with.
CAROLYN BIVENS: It's interesting. You just covered about ten different topics there (laughter). Let me try to pull out of this.
Number one, from an exemption standpoint, most of the tournament's exemptions are structured. It's either a top amateur, top two on the money winner. It's not that the tournaments invite whoever you want to fill the spot, there are some restrictions there.
The other thing we have to keep in here, we've talked about balance, uniqueness and individuality. The thing about, you could talk at the break to Russ and he'll give you the real story on this, but Michelle's parents are very involved, just as Paula's parents were very involved in the course that she took. I think we have to step back and trust a bit that they may know, in combination with Michelle and/or Paula, what was best for them.
The one thing I want to make sure and certainly representing a woman's sport that we didn't do, whether Michelle joined the LPGA or asked to join the LPGA or didn't, is really an inside sports talk. People who tune in on television or the spectators who come out, all they know is it's a charismatic young woman who's playing golf, just as when Tiger came out.
The fact that Michelle has a choice playing on men's events, playing in made-for-TV events, endorsement deals, that's good for all of us. There were a lot of people, men and women, who blazed the trail before her, so she had the choices. What a shame it would be if at this point, when someone has it, that we make them feel bad that they didn't come a traditional route.
DEAN BONHAM: We have another question.

Q. This question is for Don. Some critics, some people have criticized your league for putting Freddy Adu on a pedestal. Perhaps that's unfair. You could have his press conference in a cardboard box with the media requesting to talk to him, but making him among the highest paid players, that Freddy would somehow boost the popularity of soccer in this country. Again, I don't know how is that pressure. Then the detail that the D.C. United forgot to play him or just plays half the minutes. Would you have done anything differently with your handling of Freddy Adu and where does the criticism fall, if there is any?
DONALD GARBER: Well, let's start with how all this thing got out there. Freddy signs a contract with Nike, determines he is going pro, hires an agent and a marketing and PR firm, and it's off to the races. He does the "60 Minutes" interview before he signs the contract with us. He does MTV, "TRL" before he signs the contract with us. In a two-week period it became the buzz of the sports industry.
We, as a league, at that point, were trying to negotiate and finalize a contract with him, and were subsequently able to do that within that time period. The league office was not the entity that was promoting Freddy. His agent and his manager and Nike were promoting Freddy, which is their right and entitlement to do.
We are going to respond to media interviews. We certainly had to have a press conference. That press conference was well attended. We were very careful knowing the controversy that would surround the signing of a young player to try to manage expectations and to continue to use this positioning that Freddy is not the savior for soccer, Freddy is just a great young player that we hope has a great experience and a good career at MLS.
He gets signed by D.C. United because that's where he lives. So he could live at home and be driven to practice by his mother. Interestingly has a coach, a guy named Peter Novak, star international player, also played in Major League Soccer, who signed as a European at 15 years old and played in the Bundes Liga, is a tough eastern European guy who is training Freddy very, very well as a professional soccer player, probably not training him as a professional 16-year-old soccer player, but is trying to have Freddy be in an environment where he can be as good as he can be. It's the coach's view that Freddy's playing a lot.
By the way, the guy played in 18 -- started in 18 of 24 games. He played far more than many of the pundits have said that he played, but Freddy didn't play as much as he wanted to play. By the way, I coach a youth soccer team. There's not a kid on that team that thinks he's playing enough. That's the nature of young athletes.
What subsequently happened, by the way, there was an article in the Washington Post yesterday, our deputy commissioner and player handlers, and we have a group that helps us manage our young players at the league office, sat down with Freddy's family, sat down with the coach, sat down with the four or five people that are around Freddy's family including his agent, his manager, PR guy, we all kind of came to terms as to what Freddy's expectations should be going forward, if he's going to continue to develop as well as he is developing. In the eyes of our national team coach, in the eyes of all the soccer people that are around our league, Freddy is developing very, very well, and that's the most important thing that Freddy should be thinking of, and that's the most important thing that we, who are responsible for his career development, should be thinking of.

Q. Question on minimum age requirements for anyone on the panel. You all represent arms of the entertainment industry, and ever since there have been movies, ever since there has been theater, there have been child actors, child prodigies. Somebody comes to your league with immense gifts, why not let them play? Follow whatever labor laws are in place and let it go with that.
RUSS GRANIK: Want me to deal with that?
CAROLYN BIVENS: Don't all jump in at once (laughter).
RUSS GRANIK: We're different. Playing a team sport is different than being a child actor, where you have individual people wanting to employ somebody to fill a specific role. We run a competition. The most important thing to us is to have a structure where we can have teams that have a fair shot at being equally competitive.
As I said earlier, a big part of that is our draft. Drafting someone without a certain level of experience really just becomes a large guessing game. Yeah, there is that occasional LeBron James who is not a certain thing, but virtually certain.
But that's rare. And it's hard to have something that applies just to that person. That's why, I think the biggest reason why it meant something to us.
GARY BETTMAN: Russ is absolutely right. It's not just the question of using your draft asset, your draft rights, and not knowing what you're getting.
You have, in team sports, particularly where there's physical contact such as in hockey or in football - you don't have a contact sport, I was told - but the fact is you can't have children playing with men.
By the way, we don't use stunt doubles. We don't do retakes. It's live, it's real, it's physical, and people sometimes get hurt.
Looking at it from the other perspective, while a lot's been written about our new Collective Bargaining Agreement, one of the things that we put in, which is the opposite end of the spectrum, is that a player with 600 games and 10 years' experience is entitled to a single room on the road. The reason for that was guys who are now 30 years old and have families and children, and are dealing with family issues when they're on the road and they're away from home and maybe they have to help somebody with homework or yell at somebody for not going to the right class or doing whatever in school, they didn't want to be sharing rooms anymore not only with 25-year-olds, but even 19-, 20-, and 21-year-olds.
And so for the older players, we decided it was time to give them a little bit of space. We're in a different kind of environment, particularly in the team sport analysis.
DEAN BONHAM: I'm sorry. There was a gentleman back there. Did you want to ask a quick question?
We're going to have a 15-minute break until the next session. Before we go, I'd like to just make a couple of quick comments.
First of all, thank you to the panelists. What's impressive to me about what we did up here today was that in the past, this issue has been dealt with clearly, intellectually and effectively by all the commissioners in all the sports that are represented up here today. What we got today was something unique. We got the benefit of them sharing in a public forum so we know what all of them are doing at one time.
I found it very entertaining, and I thank you all very much for your time (applause).
RBC Financial, it seems to me based on one of my questions, that you're an example of how the corporate world can be a positive influence on this process. I applaud you for stepping up and recognizing that and being part of this. It's very important for us. We really do appreciate it.
Finally, when Carolyn told the story about the idea, she said she had the idea and she took it to Betsy and Betsy ran with it, and that's right. But I think it's important to point out that vision and leadership are what makes this industry and all these commissioners great, and it's the vision to do something that's never been done that we have to credit the LPGA for, and then it's the leadership, to give it to somebody who knows how to get it done and do it.
So we all wouldn't be here today were it not for Carolyn's vision and leadership and her organization that pulled off a great event. Let's give them a big round of applause (applause).
Thank you all.

End of FastScripts...

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LPGA: PROFESSIONAL ATHLET FORUM

December 7, 2005

Gary Bettman

Carolyn Bivens

Dean Bonham

Donald Garber

Russ Granik

Larry Scott