 So, everyone, welcome to Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii, where we discuss the impact of change on workers, employers, and the economy. I'm your host, Cheryl Crozier-Garcia, inviting you to join in the conversation. Please call us with your questions or comments at area code 808-374-2014 or tweet us at thinktechhi. Recently, words like corruption, collusion, and obstruction have dominated the news cycle. Today, we're going to give everyone a break from discussing those terms in the context of U.S. politics and turn our attention to another big-money industry, sports. The Federation Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, has been the subject of an FBI investigation, which uncovered corruption at virtually every level of the organization. In fact, some analysts have said that FIFA is more corrupt than the government of North Korea. Joining us today is Coach Darren Vorderbrugge, head basketball coach for the HPU Sharks. We're going to discuss recent revelations about FIFA and the implications of that investigation for the sport and for all sports. Welcome, Coach. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Yeah. Now, corruption in sports, I guess the first thing we have to make clear is that in a lot of ways, sports in leagues like FIFA, the NFL, the NBA, all of the above is more than just people competing on the playing field. It's also a business, and a very big business, where millions of dollars change hands. Tell us about how that perhaps might breed an environment in which corruption can thrive. I think that's a great way to start a discussion like this, in that it is more than what most of us view is just the competition on the field or on the court. That's what we think of when we think of the NBA, when we think of FIFA, we think of all the teams around the world that play soccer, but there's huge organizations behind those. Each team has its own administrative level, and then you've got the league administrative levels. So many times that gamemanship, that competitive drive, that's funneled through players, and that's funneled up into the administration. Because it's maybe a little easier to monitor, this is a foul, or this was out of bounds for the play that happens on the court, it is harder to manage what's going on off the court and the rules and regulations. And many of the items of corruption that we've seen are not for competitive advantage. Some of them are, and we can talk about those, but the FIFA one, for example, when you are getting kickbacks to try to be part of the decision of who's going to get to host the next World Cup, it really wasn't a competitive thing, that was a greed thing. And I think that shows that a lot of times at that administrative level, it becomes, you know, how can I make a quick buck, or what can I do to further my bank account? There's a profit motive, not just a winning motive. And I think with FIFA, that was dramatically the case. Most of that was done at the, you know, the FIFA administrative level. They're just trying to promote their sport. They're not interested in who wins or who loses. They're simply looking at, hey, how do we manage and run this sport? And then some of them, how can I make money individually? Right. And there's no rule book for the administrators, is there? Every sport has a rule book that says, for example, home plate is 17 and a half inches wide. Right. Or that a basketball court must be this long and this wide and have this kind of, these kinds of lines drawn on them. But there's no corollary rule book for the administrators. Right. And it depends on the level. You know, the NCAA has legislation and rules that it monitors athletic directors and universities by and compliance officers. The professional level has that. You know, the NBA, the NFL, Major League Baseball, they have salary caps and when teams can begin practicing and when management can talk to players and it's when they can sign players. But you know, a lot of the rule book that has been broken in recent scandals are laws. It's not a competitive rules thing. It's, hey, we're giving money to this person and that's inappropriate or, you know, we're taking kickbacks on something because we've got some influence there. So you're right. There's a lot of different hands in play, whether it's competitive rules, whether it's management or whether it's just the law and then on top of that, it's just the integrity issue of it. You know what? Right. Is it in proper character? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, that's the reason why the FBI became the leading investigator and really the agency that broke the whole FIFA case because in many cases US banks were used where the kickback was paid to a person, VSA, a deposit from a US to a US bank or withdrawal from a US bank. And if the US banks were used, that's how the FBI can get involved. And because the US doesn't have a huge soccer culture, the FBI, there's no, there doesn't have to be any shame in their game, you know, as far as who gets busted, how they get busted, where the indictments go, who gets called before the courts, et cetera, because it's not, for them it's not an issue of embarrassing their favorite club or taking an action that would adversely affect a sport that's huge. You know, I just, I wonder if they would take the same action if it were NFL administrators or MLB administrators or some other sport that has a huge following in the US. Yeah. Great points because, you know, a couple of things have happened just recently. First of all, America failed to qualify for the World Cup. Right. Well, that's nothing new. Well, we have it, have not at times, but I've heard discussion that they always feel like when that happens, it sets America's soccer back a little bit because, you know, when the World Cup, as it's going on right now, people are watching it and there's always, you hear 15 years later, some professional player, when I was seven years old, I watched the World Cup and it made an impact on me. So I think that, that hurts American soccer, you know, I think it hurts any country that doesn't get in as far as promoting the culture, but you've, we've heard for years that American soccer is on the brink of exploding, that it's coming, that we're going to become like the rest of the world and place an importance on it. So I think that had a detriment on our soccer culture here in America. And then I don't think this helps, you know, I think not making the World Cup might have a larger impact on young people because they see that or don't see it on TV. Most of them aren't reading the newspaper or following the news or even see the blip that this makes on Sports Center, but it definitely is not going to help, you know, America as it tries to grow in the soccer culture. You make the interesting point, what if this was a different organization? And we've seen some of that. We've seen the national anthem, I don't know if you'd call that a scandal, but you know, we saw that, boy, the NFL went to great lengths to jump on, you know, this is an administrative thing. Are the owners allowing this or not allowing this and there's a differing there and what's the stance of the front office going to be? So yeah, I think had it had it been nearer or dearer to America's heart of the NFL or the NBA or NASCAR or something like that, had it hit a sport closer to home, we would have seen more in the news about it and there'd have been more of a temp to spin it properly. You bring up two interesting points with that statement. First of all, is NASCAR a sport? And I'm not, I don't know, we could talk about that. Well my son says no, but my son also says golf is not a sport and I believe that they both are, so I think the sport is in the eye of the beholder. Okay, I would kind of agree that maybe golf is not a sport. It's certainly a game, but I don't know that it's a sport. Something you can do with a cigar between your lips and a beer in your hand, I'm not sure. Where you don't even have to carry your own equipment, not really sure that that qualifies. Let's just hope that the NASCAR guys are driving with a cigar in their lips or a beer in their hand, that would be tragic. Well, I don't know, I've got family in the U.S. South who would not only say that NASCAR is a sport, but they would also say that it should probably be the national sport. That's right. I don't like it is like an enemy of a very passionate band. That's right. I wondered when I visited them, for example, it's not unusual to see numbers on personal vehicles and I thought to myself, I looked at that and I was like, man, there's a lot of fleet cars around, you know, thinking that they were company's fleet cars. That was Dale Jr.'s number. That's right, it was always a three. I was like, what's up? Well, apparently, I was schooled most energetically by relatives who said, no, no, no, no, people put the numbers of their favorite driver on their cars and a lot of times it's Dale Jr. So yeah, and now we're completely on topic because my thought, what was I thinking? Oh, soccer. You know, you talked about little kids maybe looking at the U.S. not getting into the World Cup and maybe being less motivated to pursue soccer as a sport. I don't know, though, I mean, I could see maybe where the boys might be getting, becoming more interested in, say, another sport rather than soccer because of the World Cup. But when we look at female athletes like Mia Ham and Brandi Christensen, I think we see a lot of girls saying, I want to be like her. Right, and I think you're right on. I think we're saying the same thing because, you know, Mia and Brandi are kind of past their prime now and I'm not sure we've got, we've had that, but that we've had that recently, but the impact that they had when Brandi took her top off and slid on her knees and, you know, Mia was so marketable, that pulled people into the sport. And I think that opportunity would have presented itself had America been in the World Cup. Who knows who that guy would have been that hit that game-winning goal or had that look about him or some fancy post-goal dance that he does. And we'll miss out on that now. I mean, that guy might be out there, but young Americans don't see that. And I just think back to when I was a kid that, you know, looking at Larry Bird, he was a few years older than me. We all had players that we looked at and it inspired you to get into that sport when you practiced. You thought of them and, you know, kids still do that today. Kids love Steph Curry. Everybody, you know, because he looks young and he's got a mouthpiece hanging out of his mouth and he kind of does little dances when he makes baskets. And I think that's where I've heard the consternation about, you know, that won't happen with this year's World Cup in America. And for a lot of young people, that's the only soccer. That's the only time they watch the American team play soccer, unless you're already a hardcore fan and you're following the MLS. Yeah, I remember attending a World Cup final game viewing in 2010. It was Germany versus Uruguay. Yeah. Yeah. The only reason I was there was because I was at the Shurm Society for Human Resource Management International Conference. And as a person who has a global HR certification, I was invited to the last party. And everybody that had the same certification was invited to that viewing. And it was the folks in San Diego who hosted the conference, did it, you know, and we watched on a Sunday morning. And I was amazed at the amount of loyalty people who followed the German team or the Uruguayan team had. And it was not—there weren't a lot of German HR people there, but there were a lot of folks internationally who supported the German team. Similarly, there weren't—I don't think there was anybody from Uruguay there, but there were supporters of the Uruguayan team, and they were all over it, man. It's unique. Americans, we don't completely comprehend the world football culture and that scene. This weekend, just, you know, and I'm not a big soccer fan. I don't follow it closely, but because it's the World Cup, I watched Germany and Mexico in Russia. Right. You're watching Germany and Mexico and Russia. And the fans, you know, it was crazy. And along with you, not all of them were from Germany or Mexico, but, you know, you got to think there were Russians and other people there who, hey, I've chosen to support this team and the audience participation is impressive. You know, the Mexican team got fined, right? No, I didn't know that. They got fined because there's a particular song that supporters of the Mexican team sing to the goalie of the other team. And it's sung in Spanish and... It's not complementary. Not at all. In fact, it's extremely homophobic, the song. Oh, really? Yes. According to my husband who understands such things. And so the Mexican team was fined for the behavior of their supporters. That's always a unique thing. You know, you always wonder, is that fair or... But how else do you, you know, do you set a tone that something's not going to be acceptable? In basketball, that happens as well, that if something is thrown on the court, sometimes a technical will be assessed to the home team. Even if it was somebody in the stands that did it? Yes. Yeah. If the crowd gets to a certain point where they're throwing things on the court or, you know, there's some type of behavior like that that causes a delay or is inappropriate, you can award a technical foul football. I've seen the same thing happen, that the crowd, so you could, if you were devious enough, go to a visiting, be a visitor team, go to the home team and probably get them a penalty. But I think you'd probably get caught. But I think I cannot imagine athletes indulging in such shady behavior. But it just goes against everything I was taught as a young high school and college athlete. I bet it goes against everything you were taught. Yeah. You know, in the crowd, I mean, athletes make mistakes and athletes look for advantages and athletes lose their cool, too. But, you know, typically, athletes want the fans to enjoy the game and definitely not cause a penalty for either team. Yeah. But it just, as you mentioned, that song from the Mexico, and that's interesting because that was a neutral side game, but they knew whose fans were singing the song and they knew it was inappropriate and so they find that team. And the hope is that that hurts that team enough that they will somehow reach out to their fans and say, listen, this is inappropriate, we won't tolerate it. And that's the only way, because how do you, you know, they have no leverage over a group of fans. Right. So you have to go after the team. Right. I remember a case, again, I was there, I don't, I'm not a fan of many teams or sports in particular, except that I really like the Minnesota Twins because they have hope. They play with hope. Anyway, I was at a particular game where the Twins were the home team and they would have had to do about 100% better in order to suck. I mean, they were just, they were giving the game away and there were a group, it was a home game and there was a group of people that came, not with me, but from the college I was teaching at and they were tossing pennies onto the field from high up so that if they hit one of the athletes, they would have done some serious damage and the umpires called the game and said, this game is not continuing until we are sure that there isn't going to be any more of this kind of action on the field. And the group of students that did it were escorted from the arena. And I will tell you what happened in 60 seconds, because we need to take a break. I just heard from the, from the booth. So we will be back in 60 seconds to talk more about misbehavior in sports. I'm Cheryl Crozier-Garcia with Coach V and this is Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii. We will be right back. Hey, Aloha, standing energy man here on Think Tech Hawaii where community matters. This is the place to come to think about all things energy. We talk about energy for the grid, energy for vehicles, energy in transportation, energy in maritime, energy in aviation, we have all kinds of things on our show, but we always focus on hydrogen here in Hawaii because it's my favorite thing. That's what I like to do. But we talk about things that make a difference here in Hawaii, things that should be a big changer for Hawaii. And we hope that you'll join us every Friday at noon on Stand the Energy Man and take a look with us at new technologies and new thoughts on how we can get clean and green in Hawaii. Aloha. Hi, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark and every Monday at one o'clock I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's research in Munna. And at that program we bring to you a whole range of new scientific results from the university ranging from everything from exploring the solar system to looking at the earth from space, going underwater, talking about earthquakes and volcanoes and other things which have a direct relevance not only to Hawaii but also to our economy. So please try and join me one o'clock on a Monday afternoon to Think Tech Hawaii's research in Munna and see you then. Hi, Cheryl Crozier-Garcia here again. This is Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm here with Coach Vee and we are talking about sportsmanship in all areas of life. And I just, you and I were talking about baseball. So let me finish the story. The students that had done this particular behavior were escorted from the arena. And so I was in class the next day and we were, people were kind of talking about it and I was, and I found out that those kids were, some of them were in my class. They were so upset that they had been essentially kicked out of the game. And I looked at them and I said, you know you could have killed somebody, right? You know that when you drop something small like that from a height where you guys were sitting, when it hits the ground it's doing 110 miles an hour. And that's fast enough to put a hole in somebody's head and kill them. You know that, right? And they're like, well they suck, no, no. It's not about them sucking at this point. That's a criminal behavior. You're damn lucky that you weren't escorted out of the arena and into a holding cell. You could have been arrested for that. Yeah, and it's prevalent all across the country that there have been incidences with snowballs, ice balls that are thrown at football games, very famous ones where people have been hit. It used to be beer bottles, but now I think most arenas and stadiums have gone to only the aluminum cans or even the cans that kind of are in the bottle shape. Because a big, you know, a glass bottle, you wing one of those in somebody, they can really do some damage. I don't think you see bottles sold anymore or they're poured in a cup, a plastic cup. So, you know, I think they've taken a lot of precautions because officials and everybody knows that regardless of the outcome of the game, the safety of the spectators and of the athletes are primary concern. Right. I think, Coach, that you and I would agree that doing things like throwing stuff at the players and things like that would be representations of incredibly poor sportsmanship. Yeah, and typically it's poor sportsmanship, it's poor judgment, and about 95% of the time it's alcohol-induced, which is just a part of sports as well. That's a topic for another show, but, you know, that's a little bit of liquid courage that some people usually get when it comes time to let something fly in the arena. Or liquid stupidity. Yeah, exactly. But for every example of poor sportsmanship like that, there's an example of good sportsmanship, and we have a tape that has gone viral in social media that the guys in the booth are getting ready to spool up for us and play. Let's take a look at that. And we can narrate over what we're seeing. So this is a high school baseball game, some place in the continental U.S. And you see the pitcher struck out a friend of his, and it allowed them to win the championship. And for just a minute there, he started celebrating, and then he makes his way to home plate and hugs a friend. So really touching moment. Yeah. That's the kind of sports I would like to see. And we've seen other examples of that. There was the case of the female softball player. Up at Western Oregon, we were talking about that earlier, where a female hit a home run to win the ball game, and she was rounding first. I believe I've got the facts right, and when she rounded first, at a slow pace, because when you run a home run, it's just a trot, you're not being chased, and hurt her knee and was unable to go around. And the rule book says that to score that run, you have to touch all the bases, including home plate, and so two opposing players picked her up and took her and touched her foot on second, third, and home base for her to win, for that team to win, and for her to complete it. It would have been illegal for her to get assistance from her own team. And I happened to know the Western Oregon coach and had a little insight. That went viral, and they went on a nationwide tour and spoke at schools. They went to the White House. As people thrive on that, as much as people love to watch their team win, and they love competition, and you love bragging rights, those moments where sports becomes more about humanity and more about our interconnectedness as people, it's even more valuable. Just about a month ago went to China for three weeks and trained with the Chinese national team, the under 18 team. And then we took that team to a Mannheim, Germany, and played in a tournament. So if you can picture me, tall, skinny, long-nosed guy with the Chinese team going in Germany to play against the Egyptian team or the Italian team, we have this very international flavor. But what spawned me to mention that to you is that really for me at my old age resonated just how sports can connect people. And I don't have a great story of good sportsmanship there other than just those young men interacting and meeting each other and connecting and, you know, hey, you're from Egypt, I'm from China, I'm from the United States, but we all have this together and it forms a unique bond. Were they tall, those Chinese pairs? Yes, the Chinese players have some very tall teams. I know that, you know, there's a little bit of a stereotype there that, you know, that the Asian culture, I think some of the other Asian cultures, countries don't have that. But the Chinese have some big players. I got to meet Yao Ming, if you remember, the seven foot six, he came and watched our practice one day. Wow. China and in the cafeteria at the training center we were at the women's team. Now I was with the men's team 18 and under, but the women's national team was there. And so they were in their 20s mostly. And there was tall as me, they're 6'4", 6'5", so there's some tall, very talented Chinese women as well. Well, good. So there's hope for the future. Yes, they're excited. So basketball is alive and well and has future athletes coming up along. It does. And China in particular loves the NBA. It is their favorite sport. Most Chinese people could not name a single college. They've never heard of Kentucky, they've never heard of Kansas, but they can tell you players on the Lakers team and they love LeBron and Steph Curry and they really followed the NBA. Wow. Well, maybe I should start following the NBA too, but no, but no, I'll stay with my Twinkies. Okay. They play for hope with hope. That's right. And playing with hope is important because they don't give up. That's right. And hopefully, the soccer players in the U.S. and abroad won't give up hope either. There's hope for their sport. I think so. I think, you know, we started this discussion looking at corruption in athletics. There's no different than corruption on Wall Street or corruption in any industry. And other industries that have that bounce back and survive, and athletics will continue to have corruption just like all other industries will, but hopefully it's the athletes and the coaches that have the passion for the game that will overcome the greedy motives at the top. You know, that's a great place to end this discussion. We could go on all day because you're fun to talk to, but we are running out of time. And so what I'd like to say today is to those of you, especially little kids out there, you future athletes, you look at soccer or you look at whatever sport and you idolize the people that you see playing that sport, don't let the business corruption and the administrative mistakes stop you from going out and playing with your team and being the absolute best athlete that you can be because you have an opportunity to change the face of your sport. So that's all the time we have today for Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Cheryl Crozier-Garcia and we will be back in two weeks. Till then, take care.