Out of Bounds Podcast with Chris Ballard cover art

Out of Bounds

The Battle for the Soul of College Sports

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Out of Bounds

By: Chris Ballard, Peter McDonnell, Spencer Gordon
Narrated by: Chris Ballard
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About this listen

 On July 1, 2021, sports in America changed forever. After decades of protests, sanctions, and challenges, the NCAA fortress finally crumbled. The Supreme Court struck the decisive blow, ruling unanimously that restrictions on “education-related benefits” for college athletes violated antitrust law. At the same time, a host of new state laws took effect that - for the first time - gave college athletes the opportunity to earn money from sponsors. Immediately, college stars in football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, gymnastics, and many other sports began signing deals. The move minted instant millionaires, decriminalized a host of actions, and opened the floodgates for a whole new economy, creating ripple effects that will play out for decades while igniting long-smoldering controversies about equity, race, gender, and the values and power structure of “amateur” sports in America. In this first season of Out of Bounds, we take a deep dive into the hot-button issue of money in college sports by telling the compelling inside stories of those who were impacted the most. We follow six diverse athletes - three from the past and three in the present–across a range of sports. We look at all that was lost and risked in the era before the rules were changed - the sanctions and witch hunts, the vacated titles, reclaimed trophies, and the billions in income - while looking ahead to the enormous paydays and thorny questions this revolution entails. Along the way, we weave in the history of amateur sports in the US, the evolution and unchecked power of the NCAA monolith, and the long-brewing battle to provide fair pay to college athletes. It all relates to one huge overarching question: Is this finally the end of amateur sports in America?©2022 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2022 Audible Originals, LLC
Episodes
  • Out of Bounds - Trailer

    Out of Bounds - Trailer

     The Battle for the Soul of College Sports
    Mar 15 2022
    On July 1, 2021, sports in America changed forever. After decades of protests, sanctions, and challenges, the NCAA fortress finally crumbled. The Supreme Court struck the decisive blow, ruling unanimously that restrictions on “education-related benefits” for college athletes violated antitrust law. At the same time, a host of new state laws took effect that - for the first time - gave college athletes the opportunity to earn money from sponsors. Immediately, college stars in football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, gymnastics, and many other sports began signing deals. The move minted instant millionaires, decriminalized a host of actions, and opened the floodgates for a whole new economy, creating ripple effects that will play out for decades while igniting long-smoldering controversies about equity, race, gender, and the values and power structure of “amateur” sports in America. In this first season of Out of Bounds, we take a deep dive into the hot-button issue of money in college sports by telling the compelling inside stories of those who were impacted the most. We follow six diverse athletes - three from the past and three in the present–across a range of sports. We look at all that was lost and risked in the era before the rules were changed - the sanctions and witch hunts, the vacated titles, reclaimed trophies, and the billions in income - while looking ahead to the enormous paydays and thorny questions this revolution entails. Along the way, we weave in the history of amateur sports in the US, the evolution and unchecked power of the NCAA monolith, and the long-brewing battle to provide fair pay to college athletes. It all relates to one huge overarching question: Is this finally the end of amateur sports in America?
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    2 mins
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  • Episode 1 - The Mogul Man Vs. The Machine

    Episode 1 - The Mogul Man Vs. The Machine
    Mar 15 2022
    When the NCAA told Olympic skier Jeremy Bloom that he could only play college football if he dumped out of half a million in skiing sponsorship deals -- it ignited an early showdown in what would become a full-on battle between college athletes and the faceless empire of the NCAA.
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    43 mins
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  • Episode 2 - The Quarterback and The Revolution

    Episode 2 - The Quarterback and The Revolution
    Mar 22 2022
    When a Texas kid named D'Eriq King set his sights on being the best quarterback in the game, he had no idea he that his rise to the top level of Division I football would coincide with a sea change in college sports, giving him and other athletes room to run through a new field of opportunity. King, however, would face some unexpected obstacles.
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    40 mins
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Go Behind the Scenes of Out of Bounds

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About the Co-creator, Writer, and Narrator

Chris Ballard is an author, teacher, and Contributing Writer at Sports Illustrated.
Chris has written four books, including One Shot at Forever and The Art of a Beautiful Game, and contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and numerous other publications. He has written for Sports Illustrated since 2000, penning features, narratives, profiles, and columns. Six of his stories have been optioned for film and seven have been reprinted in the Best American Sports Writing anthology. He was a finalist for a National Magazine Award, appeared in The Best American Magazine Writing, and won the 2018 Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting, given annually to the best feature story in the country. Since 2016, he has taught courses on narrative writing and sports reporting at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
Once upon a time, Chris played college sports himself, if not especially well, and now invests his energy in coaching his daughters in basketball - at least when they let him.

Peter McDonnell
Spencer Gordon
Additional Details

About the Co-creator and Executive Producer

Peter McDonnell is an author and producer of audiobooks, audio series, and podcasts.
He is a writer and executive producer of The New York Times bestseller Evil Has a Name, as well as Call Me God, selected as one of Audible’s Top 10 Listens of 2019, Shootout, Brooklyn North, The Riddle of Emmon Bodfish, selected as one of Audible’s Best Listens of 2021, A Devil in the Valley, and After the Fall. He most recently wrote an Audible Original sports history series about Joan Benoit Samuelson and the history of women’s distance running called, Miles to Go. Peter is a co-executive producer of the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary Pandemic and the NBC documentary series The Forgotten West Memphis Three.
Peter runs the audio department at XG Productions in Los Angeles. He has never been a college athlete himself—unless you count playing D3 college football for one month before quitting to join a play.

About the Co-creator and Executive Producer

Spencer Gordon is an entertainment attorney and President of XG Productions.
Spencer has served as an Executive Producer on XG’s slate of Audible Originals and brings a unique perspective to Out of Bounds as a former Division I NCAA athlete turned lawyer. He’s a graduate of the USC Marshall School of Business where he played for the Pac-10 Championship Baseball Team and earned Pac-10 Conference All-Academic First-Team honors. He then earned a JD / MBA from Pepperdine University. Spencer has executive produced other sports series including All the Way Up with Baker Mayfield for Fox, *Gone Gurle with Todd Gurley, and Eto’o, the Samuel Eto’o story with Canal+. Most recently he was an Executive Producer of Indivisible: Healing Hate for Paramount+.

XG Productions

Written and Narrated by Chris Ballard
Created and Executive Produced by Peter McDonnell, Spencer Gordon, and Chris Ballard
Edited by Peter McDonnell, Andrea Bruce, and Chris Ballard
Dialogue Editing, Sound Design, Mixing and Mastering by Matt Gurgol
Assistant Producer: Sydney Sidell
Narration Recording at Whip Records
Recording Engineer: David Landon
Cover Art by Gary Neill
Executive Producer for XG Productions: Peter Clemente
Produced by XG Productions

All stars
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i really liked this book, it had an interesting story and was funny in some ways. i liked the stories of the college students. and the narrator was really good.

very good

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Chris Ballard was one of my favorite Sports Illustrated writers, so when I found out he had a podcast I thought I'd give it a listen – even though I have almost zero interest in big-time college sports. I live in Boston where college football hasn't been relevant pretty much since Flutie to Phelan, Marcus Camby might as well have played in the 1950s, and the schools that occasionally produce national champs (Boston University and Harvard in hockey come to mind) do so with surprisingly little fanfare. But Ballard is such a good story teller, and he has this incredible knack of making just about every story he writes about sports NOT about sports, if that makes sense.

As he lays out in the intro, the series isn't just about whether college athletes should be paid to play (which is what I expected.) It's about world-class hypocrisy, insane legal loopholes, sanctioned greed, racial inequity, the social-media revolution, the crushed dreams of young men and women, and how for a century the NCAA masterfully tricked the whole country into believing that the purity of college sport lay in NEVER allowing a student-athlete to receive a dime even as their school raked in millions from ticket sales and TV deals.

Jeremy Bloom, a former student-athlete who took the NCAA on head-to-head (guess who lost) is also an amazing first interview, dropping funny and insightful quote after quote. This was an awesome listen, and I can't believe I'm saying this but I now care about college sports!

NEVER knew this. Wow -- Great!

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For such a “where do you begin?” topic like college sports, Ballard and his colleagues made a rather deft opening by focusing on Jeremy Bloom. His case’s objective, it’s outcome, and even it’s timing relative to the age of social media empowerment, do a good job of explaining how we got here. It also underlines a key argument many people agree with: that athletes in college succeed despite the NCAA, not because of it. Ballard blends personal narrative and sympathy with on-field, gameday color to take the listener willingly through the drier and more confounding parts explaining the NCAA bureaucracy. Ultimately, he’s chosen his interview subjects well, as they are worth rooting for as you listen and make up your mind on this issue. Highly recommended

Informative and smartly focused

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Quite an informative tour de force on the NCAA, its history, policies, shenanigans and systematic abuse of powerless students, across all races, gender and backgrounds.

lessons on the NCAA

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Starts out ok, but quickly turns pretty biased to one side of the argument. If you want a pod cast with all angles would go another way.

Not Really Unbiased or All Facts

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