
CA Governor Signs Bill Allowing College Athletes to Profit from Endorsements - DesaiAshu
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/30/765700141/california-governor-signs-bill-allowing-college-athletes-to-profit-from-endorsem
======
jedberg
The NCAA has an interesting choice to make here.

Option 1, they remove the California teams from the NCAA. The Power 5 have
been talking about a "division 0" league for a long time. Chances are that
would push them all to leave the NCAA and create their own organization.

Option 2, allow California to be the exception. This would be great for
California, because if you're a top high school athlete, would you rather play
in California where you could potentially make millions, or anywhere else?
Presumably a bunch of other states would pass similar laws and demand the same
exception, until the NCAA was forced to allow paid players everywhere.

Or Option 3, just change the NCAA rules to match California, and let players
get paid.

If sounds like the only winning move here is for the NCAA to allow paying
players. I think California just forced their hand.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
Option 4: you're a member of a voluntary organization, and your state can't
change our bylaws.

Which is what's probably gonna happen.

~~~
lacker
I think the state _can_ change the bylaws of a voluntary organization, or at
least make them illegal.

From the official digest of the bill at
[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB206)
:

 _The bill also would prohibit an athletic association, conference, or other
group or organization with authority over intercollegiate athletics from
preventing a postsecondary educational institution other than a community
college from participating in intercollegiate athletics as a result of the
compensation of a student athlete for the use of the student’s name, image, or
likeness._

AFAICT this law would make the current NCAA bylaws illegal in California. Any
California player who accepted an endorsement and was subsequently prevented
from playing would be able to sue.

~~~
toast0
That only applies to the NCAA if the NCAA continues to operate in California.
If they decide that their current rules are more important than the
participation of California schools, they can leave the state and prevent
their member schools from playing in California or with teams from California
and avoid California's legal jurisdiction.

~~~
thenewnewguy
Correct, which is option 1 from the parent post. MisterBastahrd seems to
believe that the NCAA can just say "you have to follow these rules if you join
us even if you're from CA", which is not true because the bill outlaws those
rules.

The 4th option that they're suggesting only serves to open them up to lawsuits
should they ever try to enforce the rule for CA players.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
This is why the bill is unconstitutional.

From Miller vs. NCAA, P 28:

'Under Brown-Forman, 476 U.S. at 579, 106 S.Ct. at 2084, when a state law
directly regulates interstate commerce, it can generally be struck down
without further inquiry. The Statute directly regulates interstate commerce
and runs afoul of the Commerce Clause both because it regulates a product in
interstate commerce beyond Nevada's state boundaries, and because it puts the
NCAA, and whatever other national collegiate athletic associations may exist,
in jeopardy of being subjected to inconsistent legislation arising from the
injection of Nevada's regulatory scheme into the jurisdiction of other states.
Because the Statute violates the Commerce Clause per se, we need not balance
the burden on interstate commerce against the local benefit derived from the
Statute.'

Replace Nevada with California and you've got the same issue. A state is not
allowed to unilaterally make special statutory carve-out demands on a national
organization.

They can say "hey universities, your student-athletes must be allowed to
profit from their own likenesses." Totally within the state's power.

They can't say "hey, NCAA, screw your rules, we decided to make up our own for
you and you have to deal with it."

------
dfsegoat
_Southpark_ nailed why this needed to happen in their episode "Crack Baby
Athletic Association" [1], where Cartman essentially poses as a Slavery-era
plantation owner, and wants to ask the University of Colorado for "business
advice" on how to make people work without paying them - like their college
athletes ("slavery"):

>> _" Now when we sell their likeness for video games, how do we get around
paying our slaves…erm - student-athletes then?"_ \- Cartman

 __NSFW / Trigger warning etc: I realize Southpark isn't for everyone. But on
this issue I feel like they nailed it by showing just how ludicrous the NCAA
really is.

[1] - [https://www.businessinsider.com/the-crack-baby-athletic-
asso...](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-crack-baby-athletic-association-
cbaa-2011-6)

~~~
macspoofing
>Southpark nailed why this needed to happen in their episode

Yes and no. The problem is that the NBA and NFL had an implicit requirement of
college before making to the league. This meant that players with no interest
in college were nevertheless funneled through the college system. That's not
fair to the players that wanted to start earning money from their profession.

The NBA has lifted the restriction on high-school players graduating to the
NBA - so at this point young athletes can move directly to the NBA, or G
League, or play overseas. Under these conditions I think it's fine to leave
NCAA as is, since college is no longer mandatory.

Professionally-oriented football players don't really have that option, and
NFL careers are much shorter as well. It's not a great look that those guys
can't make any money in their college career.

~~~
dfsegoat
> _It 's not a great look that those guys can't make any money in their
> college career._

... And especially when the ones that don't make it to the NFL are basically
left broken for the remainder of their lives (position specific of course).
Once you are a valuable player on an NCAAF team - particularly offensive line
- your body and academics pretty much go out the window in favor of your
performance. These guys are broken and have no long-term healthcare, no
financial incentive, etc. [1,2,3]

To top it off - we have entered a bizarro world where the NCAA now SELLS
INSURANCE [4] to student athletes so they can protect against future earnings
losses as a result of injury in college.... It's just crazy to me, but hey
they have this going for them:

>> _Student-athletes approved for this program are automatically eligible for
a loan... The interest rate is very competitive, and a co-signer is not
required._

... which is nice.

1 - [https://kdvr.com/2015/05/13/masking-the-pain-toradol-in-
coll...](https://kdvr.com/2015/05/13/masking-the-pain-toradol-in-college-
sports/)

2 -
[https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/05/i-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/05/i-trusted-
em-when-ncaa-schools-abandon-their-injured-athletes/275407/)

3 -
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4628259/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4628259/)

3 - [http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/insurance/exceptional-
st...](http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/insurance/exceptional-student-
athlete-disability-insurance-program)

------
dmode
This was long overdue. Thank you. College coaches get paid millions of dollars
a year, yet when a poor athlete gets rent money for his dad, all hell breaks
loose. Let's stop pretending that college sports is anything but a glamorized
professional sporting franchise, and pay the people who make it happen.
Actually, this bill doesn't even ask the colleges to pay the athletes their
fair market value. It simply allows athletes to make money from their own
brand. Not sure how anyone can be against this. If someone is making money off
me, in a free society, I sure should be able to make money off myself as well.

~~~
byebyetech
NCAA literally has the slave model and most likely has origins in that
mentality. Just like a race horse can't ask for money because it is a property
of its owner, student athletes are not any different from NCAA perspective. It
is strange to think that such rule existed for so long in the "free" society.

~~~
thrower123
The history of how we got here is very odd. The NCAA's worship of amateurism
has it's roots in Ivy League gentleman amateurs, and for many, many years was
explicitly racially segregated.

~~~
jessaustin
The roots were very much more in the public's insistence that college students
had to stop dying while playing football. Lots of players were paid in the old
Ivy League days. Those like Theodore Roosevelt who "saved" the game did so
mostly by not letting students handle the payments. Only much later (1940s and
'50s) did NCAA take on the form it has today.

------
40acres
The players should be paid a salary, full stop. If you're an athlete at a D1
school in the primary money making sports of men's basketball or football
you're hardly a student -- most days are spent training or preparing for a
game, the athletes notoriously take cupcake classes and majors; and we've seen
enough academic scandals to know that 'student-athlete' is a misnomer. The
NCAA is another case of cartel like behavior in the American economy and I'll
be glad when this phony amateurism is put to rest.

~~~
Lukeas14
Anyone on a full scholarship at a D1 school already gets a monthly stipend,
basically a small salary that covers miscellaneous expenses. It's not much but
most student athletes simply don't provide any value to their school beyond
that. However, there is the 1% of top athletes who are worth millions of
dollars of marketing value and this bill will hopefully allow them to
capitalize on that.

~~~
crooked-v
While most of these student athletes are unlikely to make millions, this bill
allows that bottom 99% to make money in other ways that were previously
prohibited, such as providing private coaching to younger athletes.

------
dhd415
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it's definitely a
distortion of the market that college athletics bring in significant revenue
and none of it beyond scholarships accrues to the athletes themselves. On the
other hand, this is essentially the legalization of paying college athletes
because wealthy college alumni/boosters can easily guarantee promising
athletic prospects a certain amount of money in endorsements even if those
endorsements don't make financial sense. E.g., a $1MM endorsement for Alumni
Bob's Radiology Practice. That's certainly not going to improve the broken
state of post-secondary education in the US.

Edit: It's going to have lots of interstate ramifications, too. If this goes
through, why would you ever go to Notre Dame if you could also go to USC?

~~~
jedberg
Yeah, I agree. This basically means paid college players. It will be far too
easy for the boosters to funnel money in via "endorsements".

But I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.

~~~
kodablah
> But I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.

It's hard to predict, but one could expect larger disparity than even exists
today amongst schools (arguably the disparity today is based on coach and
facility costs, and will grow when it includes players). That disparity is not
only one school compared to another, it's also the programs within a school
itself and the ability for NCAA and conference funds to be redistributed. So
much legislation was focused on equality of services across sports programs
and universities, this is clearly a step towards inequality (even if it is a
good step).

~~~
lostapathy
At the same time - there are a lot of wealthy alumni from schools without a
noteworthy program that would be more than happy to directly play some players
to come put their alma matter on TV for a couple seasons.

------
nradov
Seems fair. Non-athlete college students are allowed to earn money and profit
from endorsements. There shouldn't be special rules just for athletes.

~~~
Alex3917
I mean they're allowed to earn money from endorsements already, they just
aren't allowed to compete in future NCAA competitions if they do so. Even if
this law prevents CA universities from punishing students who accept
endorsements, they still won't be able to compete in NCAA competitions so what
is the actual point?

~~~
lacker
They will be able to complete in NCAA competitions, or at least they will be
able to sue the NCAA in California if they are prevented from doing so. The
law applies to both universities and athletic associations.

~~~
Alex3917
> The law applies to both universities and athletic associations.

So they made the Olympics illegal even though they are set to host it in 2028?

~~~
tssva
The IOC removed the requirement to be an amateur in 1971. The requirement of
the USOC for US athletes to be amateurs was eliminated in 1978. Individual
sport associations still prevented professionals participating in some sports
until 1986. Since 1986 all Olympic sport have allowed professionals.

~~~
Alex3917
Fair. But the IOC still bans many forms of athletes using their likeness to
earn money, which is what this bill addresses. Even under this bill, students
still wouldn't be allowed to earn money by coaching HS students or whatever.

~~~
tssva
The IOC only banned using their likeness to earn money while the games were
ongoing. They could do so before and after the games. I use the past tense
because the IOC forwarded an amendment to 40.3 to the national olympic
committees this summer to be implemented which greatly relaxes that ban.

------
spicymaki
Good, that was pure exploitation. Student athletes should be able to profit
off of their talents, just like any other student could profit off of their
own talents.

It is like when a software engineer working at a tech company comes up with an
idea at work, they could develop, release a product, and then make a fortune
... right? ... ... uh oh!

~~~
ehnto
I think that one is a little bit on the software engineer for not negotiating
that out of their contract. There are plenty of shops who won't try to own
your brain at work and at home.

------
arthurjj
Hopefully this works out the same way to how California sets clean car
standards just for themselves. California is a big enough market and it's not
worth making different cars just for California. So all cars sold in the U.S.
are manufactured to that standard.

------
mrosett
My preference would be for a world where college athletes were genuinely
student-athletes: held to the same academic standards as other students while
genuinely acting as amateur athletes.

But that's not the world we live in (particularly for football and
basketball.) The quasi-professional setup we have now, where athletes generate
tremendous revenue for schools and and capture very little of that, is
untenable. I don't necessarily think athletes should get paid by schools, but
it's hard to articulate why they shouldn't be able to benefit from
endorsements.

~~~
mlyle
Tremendous _revenue_ but not really any profit. College sports overall are not
"profitable" except at a very few elite programs. (Schools hope knock-on
effects, like increased alumni interest, make them pay off).

~~~
moate
If that's accurate, and college sports in aggregate have no net positive value
to the schools (through alumni donation, local economic stimulus, etc.) that's
all the more reason to not support the status quo. That would mean these kids
are making lots of money that's not benefiting anyone except the NCAA and
others able to siphon value off.

~~~
mlyle
Oh, I totally agree.

I don't know how to fix it, but I don't like how education and competition
teams are tangled up in the US. In lots of Europe, schools don't do that, and
there are a greater number of local recreation centers that have quality
competition teams both for kids, college students, and adults for very
reasonable, low fees.

It seems like a better model, but we're used to doing it the current way _and_
have built up large facilities at high schools and colleges.

------
bonoboTP
Seen from Europe, the whole concept of college sports is just strange. What do
the two have to do with each other? One is a place of study, the other is
sport. Here if you want to be an athlete, you join a sports club. If you want
to be a computer scientist or historian, you go to university. You can also do
both but they have no interactions. Apparently one of the ways to get a
scholarship in the US to pay the high tuition fees is through good sport
results. But what does swimming really fast have to do with someone's aptitude
for studying biology or astronomy or finance?

~~~
NTDF9
As is the answer with almost anything in the US, the answer is: "There are
some who stand to make money from it at the expense of others."

US is fundamentally different from most other countries. In most countries,
govt designs (or tries to design) laws and systems for the public good. Not so
in the US.

~~~
bonoboTP
> US is fundamentally different from most other countries. In most countries,
> govt designs (or tries to design) laws and systems for the public good. Not
> so in the US.

I think this is overly simplistic. There's plenty of corruption in many
European countries as well, it's just in a different form.

It seems also deeply cultural. What would count as greedy and offputting
behavior here, is seen as laudable and ambitious in the US. People are
supposed to be pushing for more and more money and they are considered
successful to the extent they can make it.

This results in good and bad things alike. Most of the other parts of the
world suffer from some form of the tall poppy syndrome: if you want to be
socially accepted, you aren't supposed to be deviating too much from those
around you. Meaning that entrepreneurship is much smaller and also that many
things are just not considered to be for sale in good taste (private prisons,
expensive private schools, expensive hospitals).

~~~
NTDF9
> I think this is overly simplistic. There's plenty of corruption in many
> European countries as well, it's just in a different form.

Not denying corruption doesn't exist in other countries, including EU.

However, if you look at it closely from a 3rd person perspective, you'll see
that the laws in US are designed to snatch rights away from citizens vs laws
in most other countries are designed to give rights to its citizens.

One may ask where it comes from? It seems comes from a place of profit for a
lobby.

No payment for student athletes? NCAA and others suck in value of labor of
young kids by denying right to earn money for their labor

No universal healthcare or clean competition in healthcare? Private insurance
and healthcare institutions suck in value of humans by denying right to get
basic healthcare as a service.

No cheap education? Lenders racketing on student's worth by denying students
access to low cost capitalistic education.

No rights for private prisoners? Immigrants? Civil forfeiture? Every thing is
designed as a system to take away rights for the benefit of a few.

The US govt and private industry are a nexus of money making for large
lobbying groups.

This won't fly in another non-corrupt democracy, let alone in EU.

> It seems also deeply cultural. What would count as greedy and offputting
> behavior here, is seen as laudable and ambitious in the US

Yep, there's another way of looking at the fundamental difference. The govt
exists to make money for a few at the expense of others.

~~~
bonoboTP
Part of the reason could be that the stakes are just much higher in a single
country of the size of the US and the lobbying takes less effort. Even with
the EU, Europe is just much more fragmented and there's less chance for some
business oligarch or parasite corporation to have good relations with all the
different governments across all ~50 countries of Europe, each with their own
slightly different systems.

~~~
NTDF9
But even then, you would think lobbying inside Germany would be crazy.

But it isn't. Why? Because people (rich people included) see society as
something to be shared. Not something to be taken from others by hook or
crook.

US used to be more sharing, like under FDR. But it is more and more like
flawed democracies.

~~~
bonoboTP
Arguably the car industry gets away with a lot in Germany. But that lobbying
isn't as open and overt as in the US for sure.

------
scarejunba
Low quality reporting. Two things that should go in the top few sentences:

* Name of the Bill: SB 206

* Link to bill text: [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB206)

Instead the bill is only accidentally named in the embedded tweet.

------
DeonPenny
California from the contractor law to this has made it habit to muscle large
organization to doing the progressive and right thing. Pretty interesting to
see one state change so much nationally.

------
rb808
Honestly I dont understand what College Sports is there for. If they're going
to get paid its really stupid to have the athletes paid more than the
professors.

I've heard the justification that the sports brings in money to the school,
but if they athletes get paid that wont be much.

~~~
honkycat
Colleges put an ABSURDLY high price on the value of athletics and the "school
pride" they bring.

Does it actually improve the common student's education? Probably not.

I assume the teams actually make money, since people would not run them if
they were run at a loss. I've heard that the "sports teams pay for
themselves." I assume this is bullshit and colleges like to have their vanity
projects in the form of big stadiums and athletic teams.

------
dannykwells
California has been on an absolute tear with progressive legislation recently.
Love it or hate it (I happen to be the former) it's definitely an experiment
in how efficacious modern progressive policies will be.

------
Lukeas14
The NCAA's main argument against paying college players is completely bogus,
which is that there is an uneven playing field between "amateur" and paid
players. In reality, some players already claim that advantage by coming from
rich families, which according to NCAA logic is unfair.

The real separation between college and professional athletics is being a
student. Rich and poor students both only have 24 hours in a day and as long
as a significant portion of that is dedicated to classes, then that's fair
enough for me. 12 units / semester is the current minimum.

~~~
lostapathy
There's a lot to family background. I went to a division 1 school and while I
didn't personally know any of the "big name" players, it was obvious life was
a lot less comfortable for many of them (even with a certain future in the
NBA) than the walk-on with no professional ambition but a surgeon for a
parent.

------
dbg31415
No doubt we aren't doing enough to compensate our college athletes. We treat
college Football like the AAA farm system for Baseball, and these kids have
incentives to go out and hit hard and stand out so they can advance to the
NFL. All without much of a safety net.

I have a friend who was on an athletic scholarship, but he blew out his knee
and was cut from the team. Luckily his parents found a way to cover the cost
for his final year, but overnight he went from having access to tutors,
trainers, and special classes, to being tossed in with everyone else and
having to cover his own knee surgery and rehab costs.

Now I'm not saying this is good that athletes got special treatment, but it
really drives the point home that they are given special treatment when you
deprive them of it right before the graduation finish line... My friend
struggled; this is actually where I met him, as he was seeking tutoring.

He was trying, like really trying. Putting his all into academics to try and
get caught up. There's only so much you can do, and he had been given such an
easy pass to that point he simply wasn't able to do any of the work. He was
depressed, felt like his whole life had been taken away, felt like his parents
had sold everything they had to help him at least come out with a degree...
and he didn't want to let people down.

This was all in the early 2000s, so I don't know if it's changed... what I
think would be good:

* Make scholarships irrevocable due to injuries. If you get football scholarship, you get to stay no matter what. With full access to team tutors. A school can't offer someone a life-changing education, and then rip it away just because that person got hurt trying to help entertain the school's athletic audience.

* Make health funds available. Any injury you get while at work, work is liable for. You get hurt playing football, the team has to pay your insurance premiums and provide trainers for your rehab. Like a pension fund. Not like these programs don't have the money...

But paying athletes... slippery slope. It feels like then we really should
split sports out into their own AAA systems, rather than relying on schools. I
recognize that the drive to be a top athlete can permeate into other areas of
a person's life, and sports built team mentality and promote physical
fitness... It's just such a sketch gray area when you think about the NFL (and
sure, others) diverting risk and responsibility for these kids to the NCAA.

~~~
moate
The school isn't paying the athletes. Yes, there might only be a whisker
separating an "alumni sponsorship" and the school itself paying, but that's
the alumni's choice. You can't spin out an NFL or NBA minor league at this
point, because you'd just have to rip sports out of college entirely.

The issue is that the NCAA's amateur rule prevents players from capitalizing
on their likeness. There's no reason for that rule to stay in place. If you're
working in any other field, like say Comp Sci, you can go out and get work in
that field while going to school. Why shouldn't athletes? You're a QB, you can
sell your likeness to NCAA 2K19 or whatever and make some money. You can sell
merch or do jersey signings. That all seems extremely reasonable.

------
rb808
To me athletes should be able to go pro (NBA, NFL) straight when they're in
high school. College is a waste of time for these guys. Problem solved.

------
leoh
This strikes me as somewhat dystopian. It is going to enhance the incentive to
become a student athlete without helping students that are currently having
difficulty affording education without loans, thereby potentially enhancing an
already not insignificant sense of discord between athlete and non-athlete
students on college campuses.

------
tracker1
Amazing how much the TV series "Ballers" seems to reflect what's going on
behind the scenes in sports. I've felt for years that NCAA rules has treated
the athletes like a virtual slave class, while everyone, other than them,
makes huge amounts of money.

------
zarro
The sooner we can separate sports and education and allow the market play
itself out, the better.

------
yumraj
Can someone share some light on why NCAA doesn't want the college athletes to
be paid?

~~~
colechristensen
Because it's really odd to associate a university with a professional sports
team and not paying the athletes was the last straw after stadiums in the
hundreds of millions, coaches salaries in the millions, television deals, etc.
etc. already all made it seem like a joke.

There's nothing wrong with being a sports fan or being a player, or competing
while at university, but the levels that football and basketball have gotten
to are plainly ridiculous. Those games and how much money is sunk into them
are just ridiculous to have at a university.

There is no reason they should enjoy any tax benefits and their presence
distracts and overshadows the purpose of a university.

------
notadoc
College athletes already were getting paid with free tuition, room, board,
meal plans, expenses, etc.

------
andrew_
Interesting that no one has raised the implications of this on the taxable
income in the state. Given budget shortfalls in the state, and 50-some NCAA
institutions with several power programs, this would surely be a welcomed
source of revenue for the State government. It begs the question of intent
behind the law.

~~~
holler
This is precisely what I just thought about. CA has some of the highest income
tax rates in the US with 10.3% for income over $275k -> 13.3% for income over
$1million. From a tax revenue standpoint, this is a no brainer. If other
states end up adopting this rule successfully and I were an athlete, I'd
probably consider playing in a state that has a more favorable income tax or
none at all like NV, WA, WY, FL.

~~~
dmode
CA has a $200bn budget. The tax gains from this will be barely noticeable

~~~
holler
I mean, they could have proposed this at any time in the last X decades, why
now?

------
avip
In case you're lacking context (not all readers here are US basketball fans) -
John Oliver has an excellent take on NCAA salaries issue
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX8BXH3SJn0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX8BXH3SJn0)

------
jpadkins
America likes its markets free, but it's sports socialist (unpaid college,
revenue sharing, salary caps, drafts, etc). Funny how it's progressive CA is
going to cause college athletics to a whole lot more market oriented....

~~~
moate
If you somehow think that "unpaid laborers" in college sports is a socialist
ideal, I think you need to do literally any reading at all about what
socialism is.

How do the workers have any control over the "means of productions" in that
situation? How is that a confederation of laborers setting the market
collectively for their efforts? You do realize that markets exist in a
socialist paradigm right?

Progressive California is going forward for the right for laborers to make
money off of their labor, which is an extremely socialist ideal (as opposed to
being paid in "exposure", sorry, "college education" as if that's a real
commodity)

------
kennickv
Good.

------
thedudeabides5
Good for liberty. Now all we need is a way for college atheletes to sell some
of their income in a securitized way on the blockchain. Anyone have an example
of a startup trying to do this?

------
reaperducer
So is this just for people engaged in the rapid movement of balls, or does it
apply to all athletes?

It would also be interesting to see this expanded to other scholastic
competitions, like the chess club, or the debating team.

"Scotts, the official pre-moistened hinge of the Shippensburg University
Philatelist Team."

~~~
dragonwriter
> It would also be interesting to see this expanded to other scholastic
> competitions, like the chess club, or the debating team.

When I did intercollegiate speech and debate, no one prohibited me from (or
threatened my continued eligibility for) getting paid endorsements, or from
engaging in paid professional speaking or argument.

Now, there weren't exactly piles of opportunities, either, but I was free to
take any I found.

