Ep. 19 – Black Student Athletes, Leadership, and Social Justice: A Conversation with Professor Daron Roberts

[0:00:07 Peniel] Welcome to Race and democracy, a podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice and citizenship. Welcome to race in democracy we have Special guest today is Professor Darren K. Roberts, who’s right here at U. T. And director for the founding director of the Center for Sports Leadership and Innovation, which was created in the fall of 2014. Professor Roberts is a former NFL coach and author of Call an Audible. Let my Pivot from Harvard Law toe NFL coach Inspire Your Transition, which was published in 2017 by Green Lift Call. Inaudible was named a number one release and best seller by Amazon and Sports Illustrated selected the book as one of its best sports business books of 2017. Um, it’s so good to have you here.

[0:01:09 Daron] Thank you for having me appreciate it.

[0:01:10 Peniel] A Harvard Law Teoh coaching in the NFL and now heading a Center for Sports leadership in Excellence that looks at race that looks at sports that looks at equity and achievement. Uh, before I even get into a general question, I want to ask you about your story, cause this is truly remarkable story. What is your background. Um, you know what? Got you interested in both the academic side, um, Harvard Law, but also coaching, um, and sports. And you know all of this that you do, because this is so relevant. Ah, right now, you

[0:01:50 Daron] know, I appreciate it’s, um you know, I’ll start with this. I’m 1/5 generation East Texas, so I was born and raised in a town called Mount Pleasant. Um, at the time, it had 12,000 291 people, so I can still remember, Like, the signs on the highway. When I was seven, my dad took out a map of it was a surveyor’s map of Panola County. So he grew up in a town called Carthage, also in East Texas. And it showed a plot of land which had 153 acres, and it was owned by Bill Roberts. And you know, is listening out there will know 18 70. That’s only five years removed from the end of the Civil War. This is a county that sent troops to the Confederacy. And my dad said to me, we still don’t know how your great great grandfather got this land, but there’s no clue. We don’t have any records of how this black man got 153 acres, five years removed from the Civil War. Remarkable, he said. But I know he didn’t get it from sleeping in, so that was sort of my, um for me, it said, expectation on what I want to achieve. So I get to the University of Texas. Um, when I landed at UT in 97 the goal was to be governor of Texas. About 40. Um, the man I looked up to the most was Marlen Whitley, who was thestreet int body president at the time. So I come in at the I’m in the first post hop would class at UT. So all of

[0:03:26 Peniel] the union tell our listeners what

[0:03:28 Daron] U S Supreme Court case. So, um, the hop would decision, and there’s a bit of controversy. But the attorney general of Texas construe the hop would decision, um, in a very strict manner, and many people felt like it went overboard. But he decided to force all Texas public institutions to essentially dismantle um, the diversity program. So there’s a program here that was called the preview program, which is African American and Latino students would come here earlier in the summer to kind of get their their feet wet. I had cousins. We’re going to the program. I signed up for it. I walked into the first meeting and I thought, I’m in the wrong room. Not that many people look like me. Um, an affirmative action wasn’t race could be used as a factor in admissions in that year. So this was a high water mark or low water mark, I guessed. Depending on looking at the history of university, there’s a lot of racial tension. Um, law professor on campus, Lino Graglia mates and disparaging comments about black students. They were sitting at the law school, sit into the tower, and I had this African American man, Marlen Whitley, as a student body president leading the student movement. And I remember thinking, I want to be like that guy. Um, and there’s only been two previous student body presidents who were black in the history of beauty,

[0:04:56 Peniel] and what made you want to be governor at 40? What? What made you so interested in politics and policy?

[0:05:03 Daron] That’s a good question. I think that I adopted the goals of a lot of people around me. I don’t think I had a real genuine interest in it. I was in debate, I played football, but my parents were very, you know, for them football was just an extracurricular thing I did on the side. I wasn’t to look at it as any sort of post high school activity. Um, it was all academics for me, and I was in debate and was doing well. And so people said, Hey, you should be a lawyer one and you should beginning politics. And so I kind of adopted that view. So that was the goal of 18. Um, I was fortunate to win student body president My last year. I’m riding high. I think I’m the smartest guy on campus. Applied a Harvard law school. Get wait listed. So at that time, I was in a very linear if aid and be kind of beating, see type of road map, and that completely sort of derailed me a bit. I had a mentor who got a job for me on Senator Joe Lieberman staff. I go to D. C. I’m there for 9 11 I get an education in government that I couldn’t really have anticipated. And then on my fourth attempt to get in the Harvard Law School, I got off the wait list. My fourth years, I was wait listed four years in a row.

[0:06:24 Peniel] Wow. Show some real persistence.

[0:06:27 Daron] You know, I often times wonder what I have done if the answer had been no and outright rejection. And some of the research I do is around rejection now, Um, but even my mom, she’s like, Listen and I get any younger, so go somewhere else. I would give it one more try. So I got in on I was on my path to becoming attorney creatively worked a football camp. The summer before I graduated. It was the best 72 hours of my life.

[0:06:56 Peniel] And you have played football, Darren. So what? What was your position?

[0:07:00 Daron] You So I was 100 and £66 strong safety for the Mount Pleasant Tigers. That’s great. And I’ll tell you, friend thing about if we, you know, we look at race and sports. I was also in the gifted and talented program, which I actually wasn’t supposed to be. I missed the cut off in the third grade about one point. My mom was another minute elementary school principal. She went to the superintendent’s house and said, You’re gonna put my son in GT. She sort of got what would happen. No, she understood that from that third grade on there was there were these two separate tracks for classes. So how did see people who looked like me in my high school classes? Calculus AP English AP history I was one of two black students in those classes. So for me, football was away for me to hang around with guys that I went to church with, Um

[0:07:59 Peniel] And so tell me about briefly because I have a Harvard law. How was that experience and then,

[0:08:06 Daron] Yeah, Harvard law. It was, you know, the first years of grind Harvard law graduates. The second highest number of black students only toe Howard. So there was a vibrant black community. Um, I had a head up. I had three black professors that I really I mean, they sort of They were my Virgil kind of shepherd of me through

[0:08:26 Peniel] the loss of one of the

[0:08:27 Daron] oval tree was one

[0:08:28 Peniel] of us a friend that.

[0:08:29 Daron] Oh, man. I mean, incredible human. Um, David Wilkins was another one. Um, Kennedy was another one, and he can do? Yeah, he oversaw my thesis. And so, um, I was gonna practice in Houston. Nobody asked me to work in a football camp with him. I’m like, I just do it for fun. I end up getting and I get a group of 66th graders. I’m coaching. I love it. I decided I’m gonna graduate. But write a letter to every team in the NFL, get 31 rejections. Herm Edwards with the Kansas City Chiefs called me up and says, I’ve got a gig for you. So, um, I went I was a training camp in turn, uh, didn’t sleep 18 hour days. Just did whatever they wanted me to do. He hired me on full time the next year.

[0:09:17 Peniel] And what was your position?

[0:09:19 Daron] I was, ah, defensive backs coach. So the 1st 2 years, I was a quality control coach, which is just a glorified gofer. You know, people need logical get it. But I also helped the defense of coordinator looked through film of other teams and kind of pinpoint plays. Um, Kocian Detroit coach defensive back into Croix as assistant coach for two years. Two years in West Virginia with the Mountaineers. Coast receivers. One year D. B is the second year and then my last stop was in Cleveland with the Browns in 2013. And we were all fired after our first season. So you

[0:09:54 Peniel] coached defensive backs. They’re

[0:09:55 Daron] so there. I was sort of a catch. All worked with the defense of line. Uh, I was the chief of staff for the defensive side of the ball, um, and enjoyed it. But I was never home. Never saw my kids. So I decided afterwards a quick story. I get fired. I go home that day. I’m screaming eggs. My three year old son comes up to me and says, You eat breakfast. Let’s get talking about my wife said, When was the last time we had breakfast with Dylan and it just hit me? I’ve been spending all my time with other people, sons, so that motivated me to come back to you tea. And five years later, um, you know, I’m loving it, loving the work that I’m doing here in the classroom.

[0:10:37 Peniel] So tell me about the classroom. I want to talk about the center for Sports Leadership and Innovation. What do you do? What are your goals, Your ambitions. And then we’ll get into some larger questions about race and student athletes as well.

[0:10:48 Daron] So we want to change the conversation around sports leadership, and in particular, I teach us signature course here that really bulls down the leadership principles that not just athletes, but but all of us need to hone or to be effective leaders and in the second half of the course’s financial literacy management and the class we have. So I teach every freshman athlete over the course of a year, but half of the class is set up for athletes have for non athletes. So you’ve got this very 50 50 split between athletes and non athlete. So you start to see the computer science major and, um, a sociology major on the football team. Interact and I’ve had football players come up to me and say, Hey, I thought I was working hard. The girl who’s in my group has been coding for nine our street on some program, like there’s a different type of work and I’ve had the computer code or say I didn’t really respect athletes because I thought that they kind of had, You know, um, the favoritism on campuses tends to flow there. But man, this guy had to get up at 4 30 to go for a check in weigh in workouts. And so there’s a mutual respect. It’s engender there.

[0:12:06 Peniel] And we talked about leadership. Darren, What are some of the principles ownership that you?

[0:12:11 Daron] So I started with Bernet Brown’s work around vulnerability and empathy, um, and vulnerability. We really spend some time on How, How? What are the steps towards self awareness, like, How can you take an honest inventory of where you are now? Empathy? How can I put myself in the shoes of someone else? May not be from your same part of town. We may not have the same eye color. Parents do different things, but can I Can I at least see how you have arrived at this particular position or viewpoint, regardless of whether or not I agree with it, we talk about subconscious bias. Um, they have to take the implicit association test. Really. It identifies the different biases that you have, and it becomes this moment where people look around, Think I didn’t even know obviously that I held these beliefs. Um so that’s been a transformative class for me and then that for four years we also trained high school student athletes with same curriculum that we use in the classroom. Um, we were with college coaches, were now working with some NFL players who are transitioning out of the league. So

[0:13:25 Peniel] no, this is all great. This dovetails into what I you know, when I thought about inviting you on, I wanted to talk to you about really race and sport in America, NFL, You’ve coached NFL. I want to talk to you about Colin Kaepernick and now not just Colin Kaepernick put people like, you know, Nick Bosa and and and you know, um, president of United States. And it’s so interesting to me that race has always been something that is a dividing line in America. But also, at times we think about Jackie Robinson breaking the color line 1947 or even a Jack Johnson and then a Joe Louis. It’s also been when black excellence and black genius and sport has been a way of, at times transcending those differences in certain moments, Um, you know Bill Russell you think about in 19 sixties and Bill Russell was interracial, married, a big, staunch champion of civil rights, Um, and winning all those titles in Boston

[0:14:22 Daron] and Boston played

[0:14:24 Peniel] 13 years, but Bill Russell has been very open about how much racism and and ah, discrimination he faced and the politics and challenges of white supremacy that he faced. Mohammad Ali is venerated in 2016 really a three day state funeral. But Ali was really viciously, viciously enunciated for refusing to fight in the Vietnam War. And you can go on and on about Serena Williams and sort of black women athletes and their bodies and how they’re denigrated. If I want to talk about race in sport, Um, and what is that? You know, what does that mean to you? Especially somebody who’s coached at the highest professional level? Also, um, in college, but also now being at UT, where we have these world class female and male athletes of all races and all backgrounds wanna Tong Lam,

[0:15:16 Daron] Um, I teach a class called leadership Strategy and sports. It’s a small seminar course. The first book we read is William rodents. $40 million slaves. Eso for listeners out there if you haven’t read it. This is something you get today. Um, there has never been a point in the in the story of American sports where, um, blacks have not figured prominently into the landscape. We could be talking about, um, plantation relay races, right to plantations and closely situated bring a team of slave together and they will run. They had track events. Essentially, um, you know, two weeks removed from the Kentucky Derby. People don’t remember that the majority of the early winners So 75% of those early winners black jockeys until the rules were changed. That kind of

[0:16:17 Peniel] And there’s a whole great scholarship on this interview. Civilians have really paid attention to what you just said about black jockeys.

[0:16:24 Daron] Yes, so it’s It’s interwoven in so many different places. And so I try to first make the point that there is no separation. Um, you can’t. You can’t. There isn’t a point in the genesis of sports in America, where the black athlete Lee has not figured prominently into that narrative.

[0:16:41 Peniel] Why is this so transformative now? Because when I think about black athletes in the 19 sixties, there was all this protests and disruption for a time, including a University of Wyoming team and a football team, that multiple black players lost their scholarship because they refused to play a game. You flash forward over 50 years later. University of Missouri, um, black athletes that we’re not gonna play. And they got the president and the chancellor eventually fired and lost their jobs. Um, why is it it seemed like in the 19 eighties we had a lull where we had sports icons like Michael Jordan in the nineties. Tiger Woods. You think about Carl Lewis in the Olympics who weren’t really vocal about not just racial pride, but by advocating for racial justice and right, they really thought to themselves and publicly, Michael Jordan said, Well, Republicans by shoes, too. And he refused to, um, um, speak out against Jesse Helms in his home state of North Carolina. The segregationist set the former senator, um, why the change? Why Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James, Chris, Paul, Serena and Venus Williams, where people are vocally speaking out about justice and these are people who are multi millionaire. Some of them are on their way to becoming billionaires.

[0:18:00 Daron] Yeah, I think that there is a sense and I agree with this, um, assessment. I think if you look at the arc of activism among black athletes, there is this low period between the mid seventies to probably the early two thousands, where you get the sense that high profile African American athletes in general swamped capital for advocacy. The Derek Jeter there exactly. But there was a very conscious planets said, Okay, listen, I can’t monetize my skill set and advocate publicly, um, on on black issues because there’s a there. So this false dichotomies a 01 game and then you have this resurgence, and I’m not sure of the why. I think I think this new age of athlete, the LeBron James and you know the list goes on and on. I think at some point they understood that their value transcended sales, and if they could influence the market in a way, the any minor sort of falls and sales with what kind of overcome I think I got like LeBron James knows that he is the most prominent athlete on the planet, and so he’s willing to. He’s willing to be at the forefront of the conversation. Um,

[0:19:24 Peniel] and I also think it’s how athletes are. Black athletes historically respond to social movements. Yes, because I think that what we usually think the the other way around. We want celebrities, whether they’re musicians, whether they’re athletes, we want them to lead. But what really leads or social movements which impact we think about Dr King in this sense, Dr King and the civil rights movement and Fannie, Lou Hamer and the other folks who were involved. They’re the ones who impacted the entire world. And so then presidents had to respond. Kennedy Johnson responded. One way. Presidents like Nixon and others were spotted in other ways, right? But it’s the same with athletes. I think the reason why these athletes are getting so involved is that their response to black lives matter. Their response to social justice has been where it’s touched their hearts, and I think it goes back to what you said. I think brilliantly about leadership in terms of empathy and and reading. Burn a brown and reading William C. Rhoden, Um, and and reading all this, this scholarship and this these this this intellectual and pedagogical information that really says that look, movements, impact people and then leadership is having a capability to really search within yourself and say, How is the, for instance, the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012? It was LeBron James who’s there wearing T shirts. They’re wearing T shirts and some. We’ve had black women and basketball players. They’re wearing T shirts. Don’t arrest me. They’re wearing T shirts, I can’t breathe. And that was leadership. That LeBron James. At that point, he doesn’t hold a press conference. He’s just saying, Look, and he’s telling everybody I’m gonna wear the shirt and everybody says, Well, if you’re gonna be

[0:21:01 Daron] Oh, yeah, you know, and it’s It’s so you know, I think that oftentimes think of that said you you know, LeBron and the and I can’t breathe, sir. And I think of the Clippers response to Donald Sterling’s the audio recordings, Um, where he’s using racial slurs, and I’ve often times thought, you know, the Clippers response was to where there pre game jerseys inside out? Yes, and I asked my class this wonder if Blake Griffin says Order of Blake. Griffin says, I’m not playing. I’m not playing tonight, right? What if one of the starting five say we’re not playing tonight? In the play in the Game three of the playoffs? I said, I guarantee you concessions would be made across the board from the NBA headquarters on down to the club level because they gotta have that game go off right? And I’m not judging their level of of activism. But I always wonder. I think we’re getting closer to this point of realization where athletes understand that they really move the needle. And you mentioned the Universal Missouri’s case from 2014. That, to me is may be the strongest. If I look back over the last decade, student athletes at a public university who are beholden to the scholarship call out the administration within 48 hours of a tweet. The chancellor and the president are gone. They say. We’re not playing BYU this Saturday at Arrowhead unless something changes 48 hours that top to the top, the top two folks and at the helm of this educational institution gone and I show our athletes and I see Look at this. I mean, look, you’re generating all this revenue for the institution. Absolutely. Think about what kind of power comes with that. So

[0:23:02 Peniel] I want to talk about when we think about black student athletes, and I know your course deals with this. What do you think, Um, are the stereotypes that are attached to that black women and men? And where do you think both the work you’re doing is trying to shatter the stereotypes, but also empower on these student athletes is sort of leverage, both educational and the networking opportunities they’re getting while they’re here. But they also understand how they’re being utilized in the context of this institution, you know? Yes. So, actually institutional. Add that we are only 4% African American undergraduates. But when we think about what if anybody comes to University of Texas at Austin and looks at the football team and looks at the basketball team and some of these other teams, black athletes make up much more than 4%.

[0:23:55 Daron] Yeah, in the seventies, right and so so week. Three of my course, I asked the students, all of the students in the class I say Write down for me, which sports at the University of Texas are profitable by that I mean, they generate more revenue than they spend. And I ask for them and I’ll get answers like golf, uh, swimming and diving, volleyball, men’s basketball, women’s basketball. And then I will pull up. The Texas Tribune does a great piece each year where they do an open records requests for all the public institutions, and they show the numbers by public institution for each sport. The only two sports in the black at the University of Texas, by the way, just just just, um, was just named the most valuables college sports brand about a $1,000,000,000. The only two sports football men’s basketball. Every other support. The University of Texas loses money every single year. That’s amazing. So they everyone pauses from my from my non athlete to athlete, and then I said, Well, what does this say? And I’ll have football players say we were funding this operation. We’re essentially funding the rowing team when it goes up to immerse and compete in the regatta bets, football money. It’s true. So what does it say about your agency in your ability to influence and make change in this? When I bring in the Missouri situation. That’s it. Look, my job is to tell you what I think you should do. I just want to show you the ways that people have leveraged their capital and you think through how you want to respond, whether it’s a tweet or whether it’s, um, you know, a video on instagram on on a certain topic, I said, You need to just know that you have options as it relates to expressing your viewpoint on things that you see.

[0:26:01 Peniel] Absolutely. Because I think one of the things that are black athletes especially don’t realize is their self worth. Um, and I in that sense, I wanna be sure to disaggregate this from just ah, an economic or monetary worth just their self worth. What? What are they worth as human beings? What treatment, Um, should they be willing to accept, what treatment should they be willing to give to others? And that’s where your whole discussion of company comes in. And I think once you have your real self worth and I remember people like Bill Rhoden growing up, but also, um ah, the late Ralph Wily, um and ah, whole team of black journalists who were talking about this. When we were in high school and we were in elementary school, they were talking about the value of black athletes, both in terms of their personal worth. But what was their value within the context of liberal democratic capitalism? Were now neo liberalism right? And where everything our whole lives are now brands. I’m not saying that this is how it should be, but this idea of monetization privatisation commodification and this is connected to Instagram. It’s connected to Facebook. It’s connected to even wellness is connected to mass incarceration, but it’s also even connected to people who are against mass incarceration. So Bryan Stevenson, who I love, I think, should win the Nobel peace price. But he has a brand to I’m not saying he’s done it, but equal justice initiative. And then the lynching memorial is a is a brand. It’s a brand, right? So everything is monetized, right? And so once weekend, if we could figure out a way to turn these young people into critical thinkers, like you said, they’re in. We’re not trying to do remote control, but it’s gonna be interesting to see what are their responses toe understanding their self work,

[0:27:47 Daron] yes, and that you know that self worth that identity for closure, that you can trace back to the first time one of them hit a home run or or score three touchdowns. And I’ve seen this in my small town of Mount Pleasant. All of a sudden, your social validation comes from last Friday’s production. At no point did someone come up to me and say him and I heard you got the chemistry Academic award. That’s great. They did know if I had an interception in last Friday’s game, I could get a free burger at Dairy Queen if I had an interception, right? So I think this identity for closure, what happens is if that’s the validation that I’m getting from people around me. I start to see myself as athlete and not as student, not as brother, not as a member of the community. My value is coming from this from this activity that I do, and so a large part of my classes. Let’s look at your skill set beyond the field. Take that away. What do you what do you bring the society that is separate from what you do on Saturdays and It’s an eye opening experience and we I mean, we get really deep within vulnerability. You see, some guys and gals start to question like, What am I doing? Like my dream is to. You know, my dream was to be a videographer, but I had a scholarship, and so I came to you, t. But to what extent? Because of the time demands of my sacrificing my ability to home that craft because you can’t You can’t lift weights and shoot videos at the same time, you know? So, um, I will say that I’m hopeful because I think that there is going to be a another wave of, um, there will be another record name, especially the collegiate level. I think that the NC double A its structure there are already a lot of structural cracks there. I think we’re gonna It’s gonna be interesting to watch over the next decade what we saw with O Bannon, I think there will be a second wave of litigation that I hope brings about some some structural changes that I think are necessary.

[0:30:09 Peniel] Of course, Ed O Bannon is the forward who used to play at U. C. L. A who filed a suit, Um, about NC Double A using his image. Um, uncompensated. You know, Ed O Bannon’s image was in there, And how was that? So

[0:30:26 Daron] So it was settled. And so the basic Here’s here’s what the status is now. Incidentally, athlete cannot monetize his her own likeness or image while they are playing the cleanest board. And I always use I wrote this piece up a couple of years ago. I said, Look, I’ve had I had a computer science major, my in my class, Um, within our first semester, she didn’t like it here and she wanted to go to Penn State. She reapplied to Penn State. They said she could get in. She told me he was been It has been a great experience, and she left Sue in North. No, Dean’s here. You t had to sign off on it. There were no waivers required. She’s left. I’ve had students who’ve raised money, had one student who raised over 500 K for her start up from wealthy donors, some in New York’s of a hedge fund. No scrutiny if, um, a woman on the softball team goes to Starbucks with an alum and that alarm buys a lot for her $3.19. That’s an extra benefit. And so she is in violation of incidental a rule. There’s a problem with that. I mean, this is these. These are the formative years where you’re starting to build that foundation for a network, and you’re not allowing I would say a lot of the people who need it most because their time is so limited. They need even more of those connection to be made. But But there that isn’t an option for the fear of contravening, incidentally, ruled.

[0:32:10 Peniel] Well, this is, ah, leading up to my I’ve got to final, um, What’s the future of both student athletes? And this is disproportionately affect black athletes. When you think about football and basketball of getting some kind of compensation from the N. C. A. A and what I mean here by compensation, however, you want to measure it it Could it be a lifetime of medical and health benefits for students and their families. That is pristine. The kind we get at UT or veterans that professors, um um, could it be a stipend? Could it be, um ah, 41 K that’s built over the four years that you’re in college or the two or three years that you’re in college. Um, what do you think in terms of what’s the future of compensation?

[0:32:57 Daron] I think you know, you mentioned some options, and on that on that spectrum, I think what probably so two years ago, there was a cost of attendance overhaul in which, right now for your UT football player or women’s basketball player, you’ll get $4000 from the university, and that was sort of an appeasement tool in response to O Bannon. We’re not gonna pay you, Uh, what you’re what you’re worth, but we’ll get all of you the same amount to adjust for travel to and from home, etcetera. I think the next way will be the insurance benefits, but I think that’s a kind of a low lying fruit for institutions. So we may see, um, litigation kind of ramps up that there’ll be some lifetime sort of health benefits. Um, the last frontier will be compensation. I think if you zoom out from what’s happening in America Brexit like this, this wave, um, across the world as it relates to inequity. I think that those clouds will sit over B and C Double A and collegian athletes. And I think there will be some legislation in some jurisdiction that’s gonna force some sort of compensation model. It may end up in a trust fund. Um, but I just always tell always so people said, You know, I can’t think of any other industry or sector in the marketplace where people aren’t compensated based on their value. They may be under compensated, but there is some level of real compensation. Um, the fact that Vince Young’s pictures down at the the UT Coop, the first thing you’re going to see is him holding the ball over the Pilon from the 05 national championship game. That money doesn’t go to him, comes UT. He’s got a UTI helmet on. That’s you tease money. So Nikes paying you t like he’s not paying number 10. That’s a problem in terms of equity.

[0:34:57 Peniel] These u T final question duty do enough. Ah, in terms of preparing our black student athletes, all our student athletes, but really our student athletes of color, we’re in a different position for success. Yeah, post their collegiate experience.

[0:35:14 Daron] I think we have work to do. I will say that. You know, I’ve traveled around the country the last four or five years. Um, some people may say I’m biased because I’m gonna love. But if you look at the work of the division for diversity and community engagement, um, the black student athlete Summit that’s held every January, but even smaller interventions pulling men and women of color into small groups and helping them navigate the collegiate process of the four years, I think we have as robust of, ah, sort of of, ah, ah, bundle intervention and support programs at UT than anywhere else. Um, I think that we all acknowledged that there is a lot more that we can do. I think particularly for me, there a lot of problems, but we need to find some better ways to get folks connected toe people in the community in the UT community that can help them in the future, not just for monetization standpoint, but from advice like we’re not doing a good enough job of bringing those folks together and kind of cultivating those relationships. Um, so that’s one front that I think that we can improve on

[0:36:30 Peniel] all right, you’ll have the last word. Darren Roberts. It’s been great speaking to you. Ah, Darren Roberts serves as founding director of the Center for Sports Leadership and Innovation and here at the University of Texas at Austin. Ah, he is a former NFL coach graduate of Harvard Law School. Ah, and the University of Texas at Austin and author of the bestselling Call an Audible. Let my pivot from Harvard law to NFL coach Inspire your transition, and it’s been an inspiring conversation. Thank you.

[0:37:01 Daron] Thank you for having me, Dr Joseph. Appreciate it.

[0:37:03 Peniel] Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph. That’s P-e-n-i-e-l  J-o-s-e-p-h and our Web site, CSRD.LBJ.utexas.edu and the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you.