Advancing Athletes’ Rights: An Interview with Malaika Underwood

Malaika Underwood (Sandlot Technology Incorporated, USA)

The “Women Leaders Series” of INTA’s podcast, Brand & New, hosted in collaboration with the Women’s LeadershIP Initiative (WLI), celebrates the unique leadership qualities of women, including their collaborative and empathetic approach to success. It brings together women leaders in diverse roles and highlights various organization types in the brands and intellectual property ecosystem. These women are at the forefront of industry trends and the conversation around how the landscape for women leaders is being shaped today.

The first episode in this series features a conversation between 2020 INTA President and WLI Executive Champion Ayala Deutsch (NBA Properties, Inc., USA) and Malaika Underwood. Ms. Underwood is CEO of Sandlot Technology Incorporated. She also retired from USA Baseball’s Women’s National Team last year with the record for longest-tenured player (man or woman) on a USA Baseball National Team. Currently, Ms. Underwood is an Assistant Coach for USA Baseball’s Women’s National Team.

In 2021, Ms. Underwood was named one of Sports Business Journal’s “40 Under 40.” In the same year, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in NCAA v. Alston, paving the way for college athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights for the first time. Unlike professional athletes, amateurs cannot be paid for their contributions to a team. While this has not changed, the NCAA changed its rules regarding the name, image, and likeness rights of student athletes. This has been a game changer for sports. Ms. Underwood is not only an expert on the topic, she is deeply passionate about it!

Below is an excerpt from Ms. Underwood’s Brand & New podcast interview. It includes some minor edits to improve readability.

Can you talk about how your experience as a student athlete led to a career which currently includes a big focus on athletes’ rights and how those rights are pursued and commercialized by the athletes?
I think that my experience as an athlete, and especially at the collegiate level and as an amateur playing for my country, has given me an important perspective on athlete rights. That perspective has helped open some doors in my career. I honestly never set out to land where I am. I thought I wanted to be an athletic director—I’ve since knocked some sense into myself—but I think, ultimately, following your passion and interests will lead you somewhere.

It’s not always the place you intend to go, but if you have that openness and you continue to support yourself into it—which is easy when you’re passionate and interested in something—you’ll end up in a good spot.

Can you paint us a picture of the name, image, and likeness rights issue prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling in NCAA v. Alston? What was the situation for student athletes in terms of those rights?
I think it’s important to be clear here that the Alston case ruling didn’t require the NCAA to change its NIL policies, but instead what it did was shake the NCAA’s confidence in its antitrust protections. Then in response, the NCAA changed its NIL policies. It’s also changed some other policies and rules, including their transfer rule, now allowing athletes to leave one school and join another without any penalty.

The convergence of these changes coming at the same time has had a dramatic effect and really reshaped the college landscape as it relates to NIL specifically. College athletes were not allowed to capitalize on their achievements and their success as elite athletes. They weren’t allowed to promote brands or make money from products that included their name, image, and likeness—like a jersey or their inclusion in a video game.

I always thought it was unfair. A member of the school marching band, for example, could make money playing sax at a local bar, but an athlete at that same school couldn’t make money giving lessons in their hometown while they were home for the holidays.

For many of these athletes, this is the pinnacle of their sports career. Having the ability to now leverage that success and benefit from the sale of products that use their name and jersey number, or to be able to create a side business that helps them generate at least a little revenue to pay for books or something like that, is an important change.

It’s now been a few years since that change went into effect. In practical terms, how has the landscape changed for student athletes?
College athletes can now be compensated for the use of their name, image, and/or likeness. Most folks have probably seen or heard about that top 1 percent of athletes making a ton of money, or they’ve heard of NIL collectives that are using NIL to recruit athletes to a particular school. I think what you hear less about—but which is just as important, if not more important—are the 99 percent of athletes who have the opportunity to make money, if they choose to pursue it, when someone, for example, wants to use their name and number on a t-shirt, or if they want to give lessons while they’re home for the holidays. As a matter of fact, at Sandlot, we’re empowering athletes, including college athletes, to become instructors and coaches with our platform.

There are still some obstacles and challenges. This is a very new landscape. One of the biggest, if not the biggest obstacle, is that the market is so fragmented and there is consistent turnover. You have athletes who, in a best-case scenario, are in college for four to five years. Many of the most successful ones, who have an opportunity to go pro, will be there for less time. Brands are still having a hard time figuring out how to navigate that landscape, but I do think the change is a very positive one for athletes. We have to remind ourselves that these are early days and things will settle. Some of the things that seem so striking now will become more normal soon.

You’re obviously a huge advocate for girls playing baseball. How does playing sports help form leadership qualities in young women?
There are just an endless number of lessons that come from sports that carry over to the boardroom. The most important one is learning how to fail and keep going. It’s so easy to let failure defeat you, but athletes learn and experience failure on almost a day-to-day basis—failure that becomes motivation; failure that becomes a lesson. How to then put one foot in front of the next, when you carry that mentality into the boardroom as a leader or even just as a coworker, can be so impactful.

How about mentoring? That’s obviously really important in terms of leadership and advocacy for women. How do you think your mentorship relationships have contributed to your overall success, and how does mentorship contribute to the overall success of women in leadership?
I actually experienced the impact of this just recently. I left OneTeam Partners last summer and I was able to tap into a network of mentors, including some friends of my mentors, who helped me figure out what I wanted to do next. They were such a good sounding board, but that isn’t even the right term, because there was feedback too.

They weren’t just listening to me, they were challenging me with questions. I was trying to figure out the next step. What does that look like? What do I want to do? Being able to hear other perspectives really helped me think through all of that. It absolutely contributes to the overall success of women in leadership.

What did you learn about work-life integration from your years as an elite athlete, and how did you apply that experience to this phase of your career?
This may be both a lesson from sports, but also quite literally from the hard knocks of being a working mom. It’s simply that you can’t do it all. You have to prioritize, and sometimes you’re going to let balls drop and you’ll figure out a time to pick them back up later. But you’ve got to prioritize.

There are certain times when things will be in focus for you and you need to handle those things, and those other things will just have to wait. I really like your use of the word integration because so often we use the word balance. But work-life balance like that doesn’t really exist. In reality, integration is so much more fitting.

You’ve been a pioneer throughout your professional life. How have you approached risk, and how do you think pioneers and other leaders have to view taking risk as part of the path to success?
I am not a thrill seeker. You will not find me jumping out of a plane anytime soon! But I do think that taking smart risks and getting out of your comfort zone is essential to your own personal growth and to professional growth. Risk is part of it.

Taking smart risks can help move you forward and knowing that puts you in a good headspace to evaluate those risks. There are ultimately going to be some risks that you don’t take and there are going to be some that you do take. I think the challenge is knowing what those should be. I do like to make a point of saying “smart risks” because there are certain things that are dumb, and you shouldn’t do them!

What about disruption? Is it necessary to bring about change?
I think disruption can be a useful tool. That’s what I think of it as: a tool. When things get stuck, disruption is the way to break through that. Sometimes it takes that hit to really break things up and reset and look at things differently.

But I don’t think it’s the only tool. You also need to have an awareness of when you need to come in and knock things around and change everything, as opposed to when another tool like learning or openness or listening can get you to where you need to be in terms of growth and change, and all of those things.

I don’’t think all change has to come from disruption. I think it’s a tool, and the smartest among us figure out how to use it to change things that are stuck. That’s the trick.

Listen to the full conversation with Malaika Underwood on the Brand & New podcast.

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