How Pay-to-Play Keeps Top Talent From Being Found | Brad Rothenberg
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Success starts with getting high school kids into college with some type of scholarship. And this year, we had 23 kids graduate. They're all going to college with some full ride and some partial scholarships and some coupled with academic scholarships. That's the first level of success. Where we are maturing now is in college. We're creating college readiness programs to help them learn how to do job interviews, write resumes, get jobs out of college. But that's just beginning. That's the next measure of success is where our alumni end up.
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Soccer in America is growing fast, but access to the highest levels of the sport still depends on too much money, exposure, and who can afford the system. Brad Rothenberg, the founder of AccessU Foundation, saw that firsthand through the grassroots soccer programs that eventually led to building his foundation. Brad has a unique perspective from growing up around the business side of American soccer to now helping underserved scholar athletes turn their talents and academics into real college opportunities. Today, we get into the pay-to-play problem, why so much talent gets missed, and how AccessU is helping kids get the shot they already deserve. Hey, Brad, what's up? Welcome to Right About Now.
Hey, Ryan, how are you? I'm great, man. Ready to kick it around? I'll admit, I know a little bit about soccer, but I have four boys. They've played some. I'm always fascinated by the fandom and the spirit and have been around it, but I'm looking for enlightenment today.
I can shine a little light on what I do. The World Cup's gonna be here soon enough, and you'll pick up a little bit of the excitement that others have. It's a little bit infectious.
I have seen that, and I do see the fandom and appreciate the educated enough to realize that soccer is the largest sport on earth. You grew up firsthand with it, literally.
I was never a great athlete, but I played every sport I could. I'm a crazy American football fan. I follow everything. I was born into the world of soccer, but really my dad was more involved in the NBA. I came to soccer, look at it as a business opportunity. And AccessU, the program that I'm running now, was born out of this massive Hispanic marketing program we created. Because after the 2000 census, we saw these huge Hispanic members and we knew that the way to get to these kids was through soccer. That's when I really tapped into my dad's, I inherited my dad's soccer business acumen. This program we ran with the support of all these brands was a free program for Hispanic kids across the country.
We produced events in 41 cities, youth clinics, coaching clinics, tournaments, and it was all free to these kids. One thing we did was this open tryout, which very quickly became the voice of the program. you know, a small percentage of those 25,000 people were coming to try out. But very quickly, we found some super, super talented kids. Many of them went on to play pro in Mexico, a few here in the U.S., a couple went to the English Premier League. But the real story we learned was there were a lot of kids good enough to go to college, never good enough to be pro, even if they were dreaming about it. And that's why AccessU was born, to help them parlay their soccer skills into college education, get scholarships, and graduate debt-free.
It's a fascinating ecosystem. The way soccer is so globally important and yet it's grown and you would have more data than me. It's growing in the U.S. as we become more acculturated and Hispanic dominated and just a lot of mixes of other worldly cultures. It comes with the territory and I think we get more exposed to it.
What challenges does the pay-to-play system create for talented soccer players?
All those things happen. But it's always been interesting to me. Why is it so tertiary? Is it just sort of one of those things where popular things become more popular, like it feeds itself self-fulfilling prophecy?
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:33
2
What challenges does the pay-to-play system create for talented soccer players?
3:33–11:56
3
How does Access U support student-athletes in their academic journey?
11:56–15:25
4
Why is the future of soccer in America still considered unfinished?
15:25–24:56
Speakers
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