Amplifying The Student-Athlete Voice With Athletes.org’s Brandon Copeland

Summary

• - You played 10 years in the NFL; before that you were a student-athlete. While playing in the NFL, you created a financial education program - for athletes or for people in general?
• - What was missing from your internships, from the classes you took at Penn?
• - The college course is 16 weeks - is the high school course similar?
• - Athletes.org was created to give athletes a seat at the table in order to negotiate their value. Tell me more.
• - You asked, "Is SAAC equipped to negotiate on behalf of all student-athletes?" Is there an organization that is?
• - In players organizations on the professional sports side, all players are essentially the same level of player; when you talk about college athletes, not all players are on the same level - there are so many subgroups (Divisions, FBS versus FCS, etc). Tell me about that aspect because the analogy of a professional league doesn't really fit into college sports.
• - When you say "conference representation," are you talking about all conferences?
• - So then you'll have a player on campus who's a rep?
• - So if I'm a student-athlete at North Carolina in whatever sport, the Athletes.org representatives have to get together with all the other sports and facilitate and decide what's best for us as an institution for the student-athletes at North Carolina?
• - So then the voice from UNC goes back to Athletes.org? Is it just one voice for the entire institution or the soccer voice for UNC goes to the soccer sub-group within Athletes.org?
• - So negotiations would be "per category"?
• - Is Athletes.org equipped to fight individual battles like that?
• - This is similar to a Players Association stepping up when a player is in a challenging situation with a team in a professional league?
• - Who would you be negotiating with on behalf of student-athletes?
• - Would the College Football Playoff be sitting at the table as well?