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Jan. 2, 2026 01:26-01:44 - CSPAN
17:55
Q&A John Feinstein
Participants
Appearances
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brian lamb
cspan 01:40
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
You cannot hold on to strict positions because you find that the perfect is enemy of the good.
Post encouraged me to be better, to do more, to find out things I hadn't known.
It was and is my home.
2025 also saw the death of sports writer and author John Feinstein, who died at the age of 69 from a heart attack.
Feinstein joined C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A in 2011 to discuss the role of the federal government in sports and the overlap of sports and politics.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
John Feinstein, author of One on One, a new book, how much impact does the federal government have on the world of sports in this country?
unidentified
You know, I go back and forth on how I feel about that because sometimes I think it would be best for government just to stay completely out of sports.
A lot of the times when Congress gets involved, the hearings are basically television shows designed to give the Congressmen and women involved exposure to a different audience when they're running for re-election, which they always are, certainly on the House of Representatives side.
But the flip side is sports is a multi-multi-billion dollar business in this country.
It has a huge effect on the lives of people, people as fans, people in terms of raising money for universities, for higher education.
There are so many different ways that sports affects our lives.
Many of the stadiums that exist are built with government funds.
So there are also times when I think the federal government should be more involved.
And in fact, there have been times when I have suggested, and sometimes people tend to ingest, but that the president appoint, for lack of a better term, a czar of sports, somebody who can sort of come in when there's a crisis, whether it's a work stoppage, which we just saw in both the NFL, football, and in the NBA basketball in the last six months, and say, okay, you're going to come to me and we're going to fix this.
We're going to work it out.
Or when we have the kind of crises we're seeing in college athletics nowadays, which are topped off, for lack of a better term, by the horrors at Penn State in the last few months.
So more and more as I get older, I think the federal government should be more involved than it has been.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
We've got a clip of you testifying in a second, but how many years is this for you as a sports writer?
unidentified
Well, I started when I was in college, so 35.
I was a college sophomore at Duke when I first started working for the student newspaper there.
I didn't just write sports.
I was always involved in the political side too and covered, when I got to the Washington Post, I was a night police reporter, covered cops, courts, politics, too.
But I've been involved as a sports writer for 35 years now, started at the Post when I graduated in 1977, and have worked there in some form for most of the last 34 years.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
What's your connection to them now?
unidentified
I am officially listed as a contributor, which means I write columns on a regular basis, but I'm not a full-time employee because really my first focus is the books.
And I work for the Post whenever I can, and I still enjoy it.
I love daily journalism.
I still believe in it, even with all the changes that have occurred.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
If I counted right in the front of the book, 28 books plus this one.
unidentified
This is the 28th.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
This is actually the 28th.
unidentified
Yes.
I've written five kids' mysteries, which are for kids 11, 12, and up, all with a sport genre involved.
They're two heroes who are budding sports writers, which I started writing mostly for my own kids.
But this is my 22nd nonfiction book.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
This testimony in 1994, you start off by saying, I didn't write testimony, I'm just going to wing it right here.
You get five minutes.
Jack Brooks, who's no longer in Congress, was a Congressman from Texas subcommittee.
Let's watch this and you can explain why you said what you said.
unidentified
Mr. Selig made the point that government should not intervene in baseball.
Congress should not intervene in baseball.
Congress did intervene, or excuse me, government did intervene through the Supreme Court ruling in 1922 when it granted baseball this exemption.
To me, I'm not a lawyer, but to me, an exemption from a law means there is a special circumstance.
If a police officer tells me I can drive my car 80 miles an hour to a hospital because my wife is about to give birth in the back seat of my car, that doesn't mean he's going to grant me the same exemption from the speed limit when I drive my wife and child home two days later, because presumably I don't need that exemption anymore.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
What were you doing then?
unidentified
You mean professionally?
Or in my testimony?
I had just written a book on Major League Baseball.
That's why they asked me to come in and testify.
I can't believe how young I looked back then.
And the subtitle of the book was The Life and Troubled Times of Major League Baseball.
And the book came out a year and a half before this testimony.
And the reason I subtitled it that was because it was clear that the owners and players were heading for a collision.
The owners had hired a union-busting lawyer to take over their negotiations.
And he had basically promised them, I will break this union, because the baseball union has been the strongest in all of sports dating back to the 1960s when Marvin Miller first started it.
And sure enough, the players ended up walking out and struck in August of 1994.
There was no World Series that year.
That's why the congressional hearings were held to try to get the owners and players back to the bargaining table.
Bud Selig, the commissioner, was actually sitting right next to me during that testimony.
And at one point, I can't remember exactly what it was I said, and I like Bud Selig very much, and I talk about him in this book at some length, and that testimony, Bud put his hand on the microphone and leaned back and said, you can't possibly believe that.
And I said, I believe every word of it, Bud.
And he's the kind of guy that we went and argued in the hallway when we were both through testifying.
And the last thing he said was, okay, I completely disagree with you.
Next time you're in Milwaukee, let's have dinner.
And that's the kind of person Bud Selig was.
The law that I'm referring to, of course, is the antitrust law.
And baseball was granted an exemption from it in 1922 and has maintained that antitrust exemption.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Let me interrupt to ask you, what is an antitrust law and how does it, in Blayman's terms, how does it apply to this?
unidentified
Well, basically the way it applies to, it applied to baseball was it gave the owners the right to say to franchises, you can't move from one city to another without our approval in any other sport.
For example, when Al Davis tried to move the Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles, the NFL tried to block him.
Al Davis sued and won on the basis of antitrust.
It said, you can't tell me how to run my business.
Because baseball has an antitrust exemption.
It can say to a franchise, no, you can't move unless you have owner approval.
Now, of course, franchises do move, do get owner approval.
We've lost two franchises here in Washington through the years, and another franchise moved to come here from Montreal.
But baseball was granted the antitrust exemption for that reason to protect cities from losing teams and from being blackmailed by owners, build me a stadium or I'll move, that kind of thing.
But it also came into play in this particular strike because the owners, what the owners were trying to do was say to the union, since we can't reach an agreement, we're just going to give you this new contract and these are going to be the, this will be the collective bargaining agreement.
The union eventually did go to federal court and Judge Sonia Sodemeyer, who was then a federal court judge, ruled against the owners and for the players, said, no, you cannot invoke new rules, a new collective bargaining agreement, and that's when the strike finally ended, but it wasn't until the following spring.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Why does baseball get an exemption and not football and basketball and hockey and the rest of them?
unidentified
Because baseball asked and got it.
Judge Landis, Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who had been a federal judge, was the commissioner of baseball in the 1920s.
And they were able to get the exemption then.
Other sports, of course, would love to have the exemption, but to me, a twist that doesn't make sense, Congress has said to other sports, nope, you can have the exemption, but it has allowed baseball to continue to have it.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Do you think that'll ever change?
unidentified
It would change only if baseball did something that would anger Congress in such a way that they'd finally say, no more.
You're abusing the exemption.
I thought in the case of the strike in 94, they were abusing the exemption.
That's what I was saying in that testimony.
But the fact that it didn't happen then, it took a federal court ruling to end the strike.
And the fact that after 2005, when the steroid hearings, the now famous steroid hearings with Mark McGuire and Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa, that again government chose not to intervene in any way leads me to believe that it won't happen.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Another clip we have from that same hearing where you testified the watch.
unidentified
Faye Vincent, when he was the commissioner of baseball, made the statement that if there was a work stoppage, regardless of how it came about, that most fans would view it as a bunch of whiny millionaires taking on a group of greedy billionaires.
I think clearly that's the way many baseball fans, maybe a majority of baseball fans, view this current dispute.
That's not good for baseball.
I think if the owners do impose their salary cap, and if they break this union next spring, they will win a victory, but it'll be a Pyrrhic victory.
It's been said often that it would take an act of Congress to get the Chicago Cubs back to the World Series.
I would suggest to you now that it will take an act of Congress to get the Chicago Cubs and the other 27 teams back on the field next spring.
And I would ask you on behalf of many of my colleagues in this room who are neutral observers and yet think that you need to take this action to seriously consider taking this action.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Who's neutral about this question?
unidentified
Well, I meant neutral in the sense that we're trying to be fair to both sides.
I was not neutral.
I was clearly on the side of the players during the course of that work stoppage.
I generally tend to be on the side of the players because what happens frequently, in fact, every time there are these disputes, it's always the owners who want the change in the contract.
It's always the owners saying, we're not making enough money.
It's not that they're losing money.
In the NFL dispute that we saw play out over the first six months of this year, it wasn't that the NFL owners were claiming that they were losing money.
They just said, we want to make more money.
So we want to change the rules.
And the owners always have the advantage because, as wealthy as the players are, as I said, greedy millionaires versus greedy billionaires, the billionaires tend to have the leverage on the millionaires.
So they're probably going to end up, quote-unquote, winning, although in the case of baseball, because the union was so strong and was so well run by both Marvin Miller and Don Phere, both very smart lawyers, they won virtually all the disputes for many years until the drug issue came up between the owners and the player.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
I've seen it stated that you have the all-time best-selling sports book called Season on the Brink.
Is that still true?
unidentified
Actually, another book that I wrote, A Good Walk Spoiled, which was about professional golf, sold more than Season on the Brink.
It went past Season on the Brink.
Season on the Brink was my first book.
It was about Indiana basketball coach Bob Knight.
It came out exactly 25 years ago, which again was the reason for one-on-one.
I kind of wanted to look back on my 25 years of writing books and go back to many of the people I'd written about in past books, many of whom I hadn't seen or talked to for years, because I frequently get asked, whatever happened to this person or that person, because many of the people I've written about are famous, but many of them are not.
And so that was sort of the purpose of this new book.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
How many copies has it sold?
unidentified
Season on the Brink.
I'm told worldwide it's somewhere past 2 million because it's been sold in Japan and in Italy and in Australia and in Great Britain and obviously here in this country too and it still sells in paperback.
In fact, the publisher just put out a 25th anniversary edition to commemorate it.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
So I was very lucky.
How have you changed?
Because when you wrote that book.
unidentified
You start gaining weight?
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
Well, there are a lot of things that have happened in your life, but how have you changed the money alone?
I mean, you're undoubtedly at this stage a wealthy man.
unidentified
I don't know if I would say wealthy.
I'm divorced.
So those of us who go through divorce tend to be far less wealthy after than they were before.
But no, I have absolutely no complaints financially.
I mean, the irony of Season on the Brink was the advance on that book was $17,500.
I had to take a leave of absence from the post to go to live in Bloomington, Indiana during that basketball season.
I expected to lose money doing the book.
I just wanted to do it.
I wanted to write a book.
I thought this could be a good book.
And my goal in writing it was for it to do well enough that someone would give me a chance to write a second book.
I never dreamed of anything beyond that.
The initial book tour for Season on the Brink was two days in the state of Indiana.
They sent me to Indianapolis, they sent me to Bloomington, and that was supposed to be it.
But then when the book took off and became the number one bestseller, obviously I was sent to a lot more places to do a lot more promotion.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼
You say in the book that because of that book, two NCAA National Collegiate Athletic Association rules have been changed?
unidentified
That book and the next book I did A Season Inside because I had complete access to Indiana.
I was in their locker room.
I sat on their bench and I had total access throughout the season.
The NCAA after that book passed a rule that said that no member of the media could be in the locker room of a team before or during a game, halftime, obviously.
And that if one member of the media was allowed, then the locker room was then open to all members of the media.
So by that rule, if I'm in the Indiana locker room before their NCAA tournament game, everybody who was in the Syracuse Carrier Dome, which is where Indiana played that year, with a media credential, would have been allowed in the locker room.
Clearly, that can't happen.
The other rule that was changed, when I did my second book, A Season Inside, I went on recruiting visits with coaches.
I went into the homes of high school kids they were recruiting to hear their pitch to the families.
And after that book came out, the NCAA created a rule which said no member of the media may go on a recruiting visit with a coach because they deemed it to give that coach an unfair advantage because it implied if you come to my school, then you'll get more media coverage because here's this guy coming on this trip.
And I asked the friend of mine at the NCAA who called me and said, well, what if I went on every visit that a kid had?
You're allowed to have five coaches come into your home.
What if I went on all five visits?
Then there'd be no advantage.
He said, we'll think up a rule for that one, too.
And now more of our day-long marathon remembering notable figures who died in 2025.
Coming up next, NASA astronaut James Lovell, part of the first crewed flight to leave Earth's gravitational sphere and orbit the moon, speaking at the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, as part of a reunion discussion in 2009.
Then Clint Hill, who served as a Secret Service agent for five presidents, speaking to C-SPAN in 2012 about the Kennedy assassination and the rest of his career in the Secret Service as part of our series, Q ⁇ A. That's followed by Alvin Poussin, who studied the effects of racism on the black community and spoke as part of a panel focused on the success of young black men.
After that, Cecile Richards, who served as head of Planned Parenthood, speaking at a Texas summit for Democratic candidates, followed by her appearance at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
C-SPAN's day-long marathon, remembering notable figures who died last year, continues.
Also passing in the year 2025 was NASA astronaut James Lovell, who, along with fellow astronauts Frank Borman and William Anders, was aboard the Apollo 8 space mission, the first crewed flight to leave Earth's gravitational sphere and orbit the moon.
The three members spoke at the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, as part of a reunion discussion in 2009.
Let's walk through the flight.
I said a minute ago that the previous Saturn V that had been launched prior to you guys, it was a few months, had had a lot of problems.
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