Lightly edited for grammar and readability

Watch the Full Interview Here

Griffin Uribe Brown (00:01.93)

Welcome to the Athletes Bureau podcast. Today I am joined by Grant, who is a swimmer and academic all-American at ASU. More importantly to athletes across the country, he is one of the lead plaintiffs in the House v. NCAA case. Before we get into that, we will talk a little bit about who Grant is. So Grant, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Grant D House (00:23.858)

Ultimately I am just a kid from Indiana, Southeast Indiana. I grew up swimming, grew up playing some other sports, basketball, water polo and had this vision to create something very powerful, very special, very unique at Arizona State University and really build their program into something that I saw at, you know, at Texas, at a Cal, these renowned, year-in-year-out programs, and I really saw this vision at this university, this community, this environment to build something. And that basically became my sole initiative for the last six and a half years. And as of this point, last year we went from unranked when I joined to second in the nation, the first Arizona school to win a PAC-12 title ever for swimming in my last year there.

And so I would say we actualized as much as that dream and that vision beyond. Beyond that, actually, and getting here now. And I have always been enamored with how the human body operates and performs. So I wanted to go into exercise science, also double majored in human nutrition as well, just encompass everything that you are giving your body, training, stimulus, food, recovery, and everything it can do to be a better athlete. That is what I wanted to do. That is what I wanted to be able to give other athletes when I was done competing and being a coach in some regard. And then I kind of fell into my master's program, the sports law and business, which kind of correlated and collided with the lawsuit pretty well, being the lead plaintiff on that definitely was able to fortify myself and educate myself a lot more than I ever envisioned because I just envisioned furthering my exercise science degree, but I really was able to diversify myself and go into a different direction of the sports law and business program with Aaron Hernandez as the program head. And I think that definitely forever changed my direction in life and helped me better educate myself and inform myself as just a human and citizen in the US.

Griffin Uribe Brown (02:38.954)

Alright, you talked a little bit about the lawsuit, but for listeners and readers who may not know what is going on, could you describe what your part in that is and what the lawsuit is?

Grant D House (03:02.034)

Yeah, so essentially we have three sections. Primarily the big ticket sports are, you know, quite literally for tickets, like for swim meets, you do not even need to get a ticket at ASU to get into the meet, but for broadcasting basketball, football. So we have two categories represented by Sedona Prince for basketball. And then Tymir Oliver representing football. So just, it is a class action lawsuit. So we want a representative, someone to speak for athletes as well as possible, someone who can represent that population as well as possible. And so they needed an Olympic athlete. And so that is kind of where my role falls in of collecting, you know, these, this image, this representation of Olympic athletes, because they found that it was very important to have a representative for that because there are so many more sports outside of just football and basketball that need to have a voice and need to have power to, you know, actualize and have autonomy over their name, what they do, what they can be, their image, how they portray themselves and really what they put out into the world, besides just the stats on a football field, the stats on a track, the stats on a wrestling mat, whatever it may be, but really to allow them to actualize everything they can be. Obviously, July 1st, 2021 was the first real step in the right direction and really just making sure that these rules retract but become more permanent in the future, but also reconcile for anything that can happen that should have happened by this time already in past cases and in previous years of a certain timeframe. To reconcile a certain timeframe and then also my role primarily and my vision is to make these right now temporary rules – which I do not think a lot of people understand is at any point we could just stop having NIL again – but making sure they are solidified and making them permanent for the rest of the future because I think a lot of people just take it for granted that, okay, now it is here, now we get to do it, but not many schools were prepared. I would say maybe the top five or 10% like in Ohio State or Texas were prepared for this, but I can wholeheartedly tell you ASU was not prepared for NIL and that left a lot of players with decisions to leave and to actualize that opportunity elsewhere.

And, you know, anecdotally from speaking to athletes, athletes and seeing it on the headlines and seeing people athletes transfer out. So it is obviously important to people and I think that is definitely well known now.

Griffin Uribe Brown (05:41.842)

Yeah, and you may have touched on this a little, but why were you willing to join as a lead plaintiff and what role are you playing alongside the other two athletes that you mentioned, Sedona Prince and Tymir Oliver?

Grant D House (05:54.334)

Yeah, so for me, I was asked to share my story, share my experience and I did not see any harm in that. And I just felt like it was an honest and authentic and sincere representation of what I felt like I could do. I had represented Team USA five times, four times in my college experience, and never got to capitalize on that. Swimming not being a lucrative sport to begin with, any opportunity you get to represent your country and any regard, should be a phenomenal opportunity to capitalize on that. And I am forever grateful and honored to be able to represent the red, white and blue, the stars and stripes and that is an amazing memory and experience in and of itself. But it really just stopped at that and that I could not make anything more of that without compromising my integrity in college was something that always spoke to me. And so I just kind of shared that experience with the firm, with my lawyers, and using that as a representation to speak on what Olympic athletes can reach. You know, football players can not go to the Olympics, they can not go to world championships, they can not go to these international meets and competitions other than a couple that are in Germany and stuff across seas now for one or two regular-season games. But for these pinnacle of our sports, what every Olympic athlete is typically working for, especially at a Division One school, it is really either succeeded at that or bust. 

It is a very narrow pathway. And so what I wanted to do is help athletes get paid for the hard work and sacrifices and labor of what they have been doing for now, we say 20 hours a week, but any athlete at Division One, like if we are just counting the 20 raw hours, like you are lying, everyone is lying. That is not the amount of time you put into recovery. That is not film study, video analysis, nutrition, how much time you are thinking about it, travel, pregame, postgame.  We are talking upwards of like 60 and 70 hours. I mean, some of the stats that [Andrew Cooper] has given me and shown me over the years are crazy of how, how far even some other coaches say that athletes end up working in the week. And so, my role was really to bring light to that and really to push that into the forefront of what athletes are really doing and that they should be earning for all this work that they are doing.

Griffin Uribe Brown (08:27.618)

What call to action do you have for college athletes across the country who may or may not be invested in this? And what do you have to tell them about why it is important that people support this and understand what is going on?

Grant D House (08:30.588)

I think it is important for people to understand what is going on because I think the more empowered you are with this, you know, wisdom is power and knowledge is power, and the more we can fortify ourselves with that information. They really wanted to put me as the lead plaintiff because I educated myself on past cases, you know, NCAA v. Alston, O'Bannon v. NCAA, how the NCAA was founded, which I do not think a lot of people know the NCAA was actually founded on a regatta, which is a rowing event. Which was a paid event for the winner by the railroad companies that took these teams like Harvard or Yale, these Ivy teams, like six or seven teams, very small. They paid their way to the competition. They paid the winner and then the winner got to stay at a hotel paid for by the company. And that is how the NCAA was started. And then they had this event. They are like, “Oh, wow, this is really cool. We should make this annual thing, and then we should incorporate other events.” And so I think the irony in that is a story in itself, but I think the aspect of making sure that people are educated is really important into now as to how we operate and take our next steps with NIL, because right now, I mean, there are a lot of things that are unregulated. There are a lot of things that are flying under the table still. There are a lot of things that are going left and right, people are not acknowledging. I think we have had some people get caught out here and there, but it is really just the highest earners in some regards. And I just do not think that is regulated or fair at all. And I think if we want to have this be a replicable model to make this permanent, we need to have a better outline, a better structure to go forward to. And if you do not know history, if you do not know the information that came before us, then it is just going to repeat itself and we are just going to keep spiraling in this “wild west” that everyone keeps calling NIL, when it does not have to be that. It can be very systematic. There are people, there are experts that can crunch numbers, that can compile things, compile answers, solutions and put those in forward and steps in place. And, you know, a place like Ohio State, I looked at briefly when I was swimming. But I mean, you ask any other players, they were ready, locked and loaded, ready to go when NIL came out and they hit the ground running. So they were being proactive for years about this. And I think the main thing right now I am seeing, the discussions I am having and the noise that I am hearing is really this resistance to something that is going to happen inevitably. And the more we resist it, the longer this journey is going to take. And if we are more proactive now, if we are taking these steps: Step by step, we travel far. Drop by drop, the jug fills full. 

And I think I really think of those sentiments, those phrases, as to how we can best go about the process with NIL and really moving this into a productive forefront and next generation of athletes, rather than just kind of holding, holding until the dam just bursts and then everything breaks. And then we have to rebuild and reconstruct everything, but if we are able to be proactive about it, get ahead of something that is going to happen, whether it is five minutes from now, 10 minutes, five years, one year, 10 years, it is going to happen. And so I think we need to be more proactive than resistive right now.

Griffin Uribe Brown (12:19.562)

Alright, Grant, those are all the questions that we had for you. Thank you so much. Is there any place that people can find you online if you have an Instagram page or something you want to plug?

Grant D House (12:27.89)

I am on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter as well. I am typically more productively active on Instagram and Twitter with more content geared towards my lifestyle. LinkedIn as well. Instagram and TikTok are @mitochondria_house. And then Twitter is @housethemouse. LinkedIn is just my name. I like to share out aspects of the athletic journey, physiology, performance, nutrition, recovery. LinkedIn, a more professional standpoint of what I am doing as a coach and moving forward in my career there and also trying to advocate and create a clearer picture of this future of NIL and this future of college athletics advancing and evolving and adapting into a better world for athletes to prosper more and improve themselves for a better world and better lives than any college athlete had before.

Griffin Uribe Brown (13:33.282)

All right, well thank you so much for chatting with us, and thank you for the work you are doing. Best of luck.

Grant D House (13:37.963)

Thank you, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

This interview has been slightly edited for grammar and readability. The video of the conversation transcribed below can be seen HERE.

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Griffin Uribe Brown (00:01.954)

All right, welcome to The Athletes Bureau. My name is Griffin. We're joined today by Sydney. Thanks so much for joining us today. Yeah, of course. All right, let's just get right into it. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? You play volleyball at Cornell. How'd you end up there? Give us the rundown of where you've been and why you're where you're at right now.

Sydney Moore (00:08.979)

Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

Sydney Moore (00:22.443)

Yeah, for sure. So keeping it short, I play volleyball at Cornell. I've been playing volleyball throughout high school, grew up in northern New Jersey, and then moved to San Diego right in the middle of it. Both my parents were college athletes, so always been a really athletic family and I've been a women's sports advocate for the past four years or so.

Griffin Uribe Brown (00:43.918)

Cool, tell me a little bit about how you got into advocacy and what kind of things you're advocating for on a day-to-day basis.

Sydney Moore (00:50.127)

Yeah, for sure. I think my whole life I've been a little bit of an advocate. My grandmother was a social studies teacher and I spent a lot of my summers with her and she would always show me a lot of different stories and we’d watch the news and go to museums. So I've always been learning about advocacy, how the world works and trying to improve it. But specifically within sports advocacy, I started when I was going into my freshman year of college during COVID. 

One of the girls that I had gone to high school with was writing these different articles about her experience as a Black woman athlete. And I was so inspired by them and was messaging her and saying, “Wow, this is so cool. I wish I could be involved.” And she actually invited me to write my own article. So it started with me talking about being a Black woman athlete, writing for a company called Voice in Sport that was just about to launch. I ended up becoming a mentor and a marketing intern at the company and I've been working there and as part of their foundation for the last couple of years, specifically working with Title IX and being a mentor to high school and college athletes.

Griffin Uribe Brown (01:55.97)

And what have you been kind of working on the last few months or weeks, what do you see yourself doing right now?

Sydney Moore (02:01.359)

Yeah, right now we've been working at Voice in Sport Foundation. We have what's called the Advocate Program, where we get high school and college girls to come in and learn about Title IX. And it's a big national program where we meet once a month to talk about different issues in women's sports, specifically in gender equity. All of our advocates get trained on Title IX, exactly what the legislation is, how to check their school for compliance, and then they create chapters to actually evaluate their school themselves and make changes on the community level.

And so I've been working on that a lot lately, a lot of calls with advocates, a lot of Title IX trainings. I just did one on Monday with Ohio State SAC virtually. So that's really what we've been working on. Working on Title IX and trying to get our bill passed.

Griffin Uribe Brown (02:44.386)

Alright, so in part today we're here to talk about the College Athlete Economic Freedom Act. Can you tell me a little bit about what that bill is and what's in it?

Sydney Moore (02:51.907)

Yeah, so the College of Economic Freedom Act is super interesting. It actually came to us from the two sponsors of the bill, who also sponsor our bill, the Fair Play for Women Act. So it was very value-aligned and that's kind of how I came to know about it. The bill really works in four major ways to improve the experience for all athletes, specifically within NIL or Name, Image and Likeness. I'm going to break these down here. 

The first is preventing schools, conferences in the NCAA from restricting athletes' NIL opportunities. So that can show up in a lot of different ways, but the main way is really ensuring that athletes can choose the opportunities they want and how to get them. So for example, if they want an agent or some kind of representation to help them negotiate their deals, if they're looking for specific types of contracts that their schools, the conference, NCAA isn't prohibiting them from doing so.

At that point, right now, a lot of conferences or schools kind of say that they have these rules to protect student-athletes, to keep them from making bad deals. And while that's definitely important and we want those things in place, schools should be responsible for that. At this point, they're maybe kind of going above and beyond in the name of protecting athletes. So this kind of evens the scale a little bit. The second is allowing international athletes to market their NiL.

The second allows international athletes to market their NIL rights without losing their visa status. So right now, if you're an international athlete, you actually can't do any NIL deals or use your name, image, and likeness without losing your visa and your ability to play and go to school in the States. So personally, this is close to home because I have a teammate who's an international student who isn't able to be involved in NIL.

To me, NIL is more than just making money and promoting products. For me, NIL has been being able to go to the ESPNW summit and talk about Title IX. It's being able to post on Instagram and do different things to talk about advocacy without fear of my athlete status being kind of used against me. So that's super important to me. But also because I know of plenty of international athletes or international student-athletes whose whole teams are able to participate in NIL activities. The brand that represents their school wants them all to do something and they can't go because they're an international student. And it doesn't quite make sense because international students can make money by being a student in so many other ways. So why not this one? 

The third is ensuring colleges and collectives don't discriminate against race, gender, or sports in NIL deals. And this is super important to me as well, being a Title IX advocate, being a gender equity advocate. This is huge because right now Title IX really isn't held in a lot of schools. A lot of schools aren't compliant with Title IX. This is a really nice way to kind of set that precedent. But then also for athletes of all races, of all genders, and especially, you know, non-obvious sports, this is a great way for them to get opportunities. So just having that option and giving them an option if they want to take it to be able to get those NIL deals.

And then specifically for women athletes, this is our best opportunity right now to make money as an athlete. So having that is amazing. 

And then the fourth is encouraging negotiations between athletes and colleges for the use of NIL in promotion and media rights. So historically the conversation about NIL before it was passed is that colleges, the NCAA, conferences are making billions of dollars off media deals and promotion and all of these different things of their athletes, and student-athletes aren't seeing those dollars directly. So while NIL opened up the opportunity for athletes to benefit, it didn't change the fact that schools are still excessively profiting off of them. It didn't change the fact that schools are making money directly from the promotion, just allowed student-athletes to make money off their own promotion. This just allows student-athletes to start negotiating and really gives transparency of what the schools are making and what deals they're making about how the athletes are going to be portrayed.

Griffin Uribe Brown (07:13.642)

Thank you for that. That was a very helpful way of laying it out. So you've decided to endorse this. You kind of mentioned the value alignment and a few reasons for how this touches you personally. What do you want to tell other student-athletes about why they should also be supporting this?

Sydney Moore (07:29.475)

Yeah, I think regardless of whether you specifically care about NIL or whether you want to be an influencer or want to be an advocate or post things, I think having that opportunity to and having that transparency is super important and that's why I'm really endorsing this bill. Especially if you're a woman athlete, the line alone about collectives and schools not being able to discriminate in deals is just alone you should be supporting this bill. It just opens up such a great legal precedent in the future for Title IX reform like the Fair Play for Women Act. So that's really why I'm endorsing it and I would say as a college athlete think about what can your peers who are also students at your university do in terms of social media, in terms of promoting a brand, different things, and is it really fair that you can't do the same? And so that's really what this bill is doing. It's nothing too radical. It’s things that are already available to most students on campus and making sure they're available to student-athletes as well.

Griffin Uribe Brown (08:35.758)

All right, and I'm not a student-athlete. What are things that people like me could do to help this bill get passed?

Sydney Moore (08:42.543)

Yeah, so I would say all student-athletes, anyone over 18, and honestly under 18, should know who their representatives are in both the House and the Senate. So you can take a minute right now and go on Google and find out who your Congresspeople are. Both your House and your Senators, and know who they are. Follow them on Instagram. You can send them direct messages if you want to. You can get their contact information quickly off of Google search and ask them what they’re doing to support the things that you care about.

So knowing what those are, if there's anything that feels off about your greater community, do a quick research and see what's the law about that, what's the bill, what's going on with that and how can they help. It's great to vote and there are so many people who are going to tell you to vote this year and I definitely encourage that. But on top of voting, know who your representatives are after you vote, who actually gets elected, and make sure that they're doing what they said they were going to do.

Griffin Uribe Brown (09:42.038)

Alright, and do you have any advice for other college athletes who aren't as involved? If they want to get involved, what should they be doing? How can they find opportunities to do what you do?

Sydney Moore (09:54.383)

Yeah, you know, it doesn't take a ton to be an advocate. You don't have to post on Instagram all the time. You don't have to travel and do Title IX trainings. You don't have to do a podcast. You really just have to know what the problem is and want to help it. That's kind of what I've always been saying about advocacy. So I would say look up the College Economic Freedom Act. Also, look up the Fair Play for Women Act.

Follow the different people who are talking about it, repost it, share it. It's super easy to see a graphic on Instagram and post it on your story and kind of share that information. You're not going to go to the Senate and talk about the bill, but what you can do is talk to your school, talk to your coaches about small ways that what's being represented in the bill can be done. So maybe we're not going to pass that bill right away, but maybe your school would be open to sharing what the contract looks like or allowing you specifically to do some kind of deal. So there are a lot of ways to be an advocate and get things done.

Griffin Uribe Brown (10:54.954)

And how do you balance being an advocate, being a student, being an athlete? How do you do that day-to-day?

Sydney Moore (11:00.187)

I'm still figuring that out. It's a lot. I think what is most important is what have I committed to and what's most important to me. And that changes day to day, right? The time of practice changes from week to week. But I did come to Cornell to be a student and to be an athlete. And the advocacy sometimes comes second or comes right after that. A lot of time management and I think also a lot of trust that these things do take time and that I'm doing my best to live the world and change the world to the way that I hope it will be.

Griffin Uribe Brown (11:38.154)

And one last thing, do you have a call to action to whoever is listening, student-athlete, non-student athlete, not even someone in college, if you have like one sentence, two sentences to give something to them, what do you want them to hear? Take away from this.

Sydney Moore (11:50.571)

Oh, I would say, my favorite quote that I've heard from so many people now, I don't know who started it, is “you can't fight for right if you don't know you have it.” And second, “just because this is the way things are done doesn't mean it's the way they have to be.” So if there's something going on, you don't like it, you're confused by it, research it and figure out what's actually going on. And then if you think there's a better way to do it, you don't have to settle with it. Use your voice and figure out how you can change it.

Griffin Uribe Brown (12:21.591)

Where can people reach you? Where can they find you on social media or any other way?

Sydney Moore (12:26.019)

Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram. That's the best way to see everything I'm doing. @ssydney.mmoore 

Griffin Uribe Brown (12:37.474)

Perfect, yeah. All right, Sydney, thank you so much for talking to me. Some really good answers there, a lot to think about.

Sydney Moore (12:44.071)

Thank you, Griffin. Thanks for reaching out. I'm just excited about this.