Supporting Young Athletes: Advancing Beyond in Sports (ABIS)

In 2016, the NFL player and my fraternity brother Colin Kaepernick made headlines for kneeling during the national anthem. His act of protest was meant to raise awareness about police brutality against Black Americans. After that season, Kaepernick left his team, the San Francisco 49ers, and he never played in the NFL again. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Kaepernick has argued that he was effectively black listed from the league for using his voice to speak out about structural inequity.

This was a high profile controversy at the time. Since 2016, and especially after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, there has been a movement to address racism and inequity in pro sports. But so many of the systemic problems that affect Black athletes are hard to spot. Some of the most vulnerable Black athletes are students in high school and college who are working to reach the professional level. Unfortunately, for many of these young Black and brown people, athletic talent is the best shot at improving your social and financial mobility. When that’s your family’s only option, the pressure is immense and the price of failure can be devastating. My name is Charles T. Brown and this is Arrested Mobility.

Today, we’re talking about Renae Myles Payne, chief people officer of ABIS, which stands for the Advancement of Blacks in Sports. It’s an organization founded to address the gaps that other civil rights groups haven’t covered in the world of professional sports. Most of their work focuses on young Black males who are navigating the pipeline from school to an athletic career. Renae has spent 27 years working with student athletes and she’s seen firsthand how structural inequities create vastly different experiences for Black and white student athletes. That’s why ABIS is creating new pathways for young Black athletes to be successful before, during, and after their time in the professional sports industry.

My name is Renae Myles Payne. I am the chief people officer for ABIS, which is the Advancement of Black in Sports. In 2020, most of the country was reeling from the murder of George Floyd. Gary Charles, who’s our CEO, has been a part of grassroots basketball. His nickname is The Godfather of Grassroots Basketball. Many of the NBA players have come through his AAU camps, his grassroot basketball teams. He said, “I can’t just sit by and sit idle in this space right now.” He pulled together several of his really good friends. If you go to our website, there are a lot of great people with great connections in this industry within sports. And pulled them together and said, “Hey, we need to have a voice in this time. I want to start an organization that will stand the test of time, but also that can speak directly to some of the issues and situations that are happening within the sports industry that may not get a lot of attention.”

Especially at the professional sports side, you hear the Colin Kaepernicks, things of that nature. But there’s some smaller microaggression type things that may happen on college campuses, in high school, even in middle school that doesn’t get as much attention. There’s no specific organization dedicated to sports that was handling those kinds of concerns. ABIS was started out of, yes, the cry of the world was happening around George Floyd, but there was always a need for a niche organization separate from the NAACP that was directed at what was happening in the sports industry. That’s how ABIS was born.

I have been involved in college athletics for about 27 years. I’m also certified in diversity, equity, and inclusion training. That was not a thing before. I was doing the work, I would say undercover a little bit, but it wasn’t a thing. Then when the murder of George Floyd occurred, it became widespread. People started having positions within athletics dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion per se. When we started doing a lot of training, I think I counseled with and advised about 27 institutions, I’m saying institutions, athletic departments within college institutions, during that timeframe.

It stuck out to me that while this has been underlying in athletics for a long time, and we’ve just went along because sports is the great equalizer. We play, we have the team dynamics where it doesn’t matter your race, color, or creed or nationality, can you play? That’s the equal footing. But even in can you play, there were dynamics that were not being dealt with, or struggles and challenges that were not being attended to. I started to find student athletes, and also just staff as well, coaches, just not comfortable talking with students about things other than sports.

Then when I became a part of ABIS, that mission was broader. It wasn’t just college, it was professional sports and it was young people in high school. How do we take the detriment of a man’s life being lost and make it something that could be of impact for the entire industry? ABIS stands at the spear of trying to be that organization to engender those types of conversations.

For the first time, I would like to introduce my oldest son, Christian Brown, who aspires to be a professional athlete, entrepreneur, and attorney one day. I’ve asked my son to assist me in asking Renae some key questions here today. Here’s Christian, age 15.

Hi, Renae. What are some of the specific challenges that student athletes of color face?

Yeah. It’s really cultural. I’ll give you an example. I worked at the University of Miami as well. I was called down one day to assist in a conversation with a student athlete who was in the training room getting a knee taped, but was having a conversation on the phone to, and I’m going to say this, two baby mamas. Juggling that type of conversation with the student athlete while they’re getting taped, and them being really distressed about how to deal with what they were going through.

Very often, it takes someone who looks like them to be able to have the type of conversation that will bring them to a calmer spot. You don’t want things to escalate to a space that cannot be handled or you’re having to call authorities, and things of that nature. A lot of times, the challenges that they’re facing are cultural, and then they’re also generational from home. Things that sometimes is really not their fault, but they bring that baggage with them to these institutions of higher learning. Because they can play well, because they have a God-given gift, it’s masked sometimes, the other things that they may be experiencing and things they may be dealing with.

Then if you have some coaches or some administrators at that level who are really just about the bottom line, are really just about how do we win these games, they don’t have time to parse out those other things. Now, you also send the student athlete from an institution to an NFL or NBA or MLB, and they’re still dealing with little Johnny, the things generationally that they went through that they were able to just mask the entire time through college. Unless they run into administrators or administrators within ABIS, or a sports executives within ABIS who understand how to help them manage those moments, those times, those situations that arise that have nothing to do with their God-given gift.

What happens to developing students that suddenly find themselves no longer on the path to a pro career? Do they just fall through the cracks?

That is actually very common. That’s what they’re there for. Meaning they have not been able to find any meaning in life outside of their identity as an athlete. One of the things ABIS tries to do, we have what we call a Brand You Academy that really covers the entire student and tries to give them the workforce development things. Making sure a resume is done. Understanding their DISC assessments, their behavioral. Who are you actually, you know what I’m saying? How do you learn? How do you cope?

Sometimes they haven’t been asked those type of questions. The layers have not been pulled away yet to get to the core of who they are as a young Black male, young Black woman. They haven’t gotten down to that to identify that. They only do the identification with the athlete part of themselves, not the other pieces. ABIS, we’ve been very clear with the young folks that we talk to and work with to help them identify that person. We already know you’re an athlete. Many of the students that we work with have name, image, and likeness deals. We already know that you are that kid, you are that athlete. But then, we need to find out who you are because that’s just a part of you, that’s not the whole of you.

There was one thing that I wanted to bring to your attention, too. On the youth side, in the high schools or middle schools, those young people, we get an email or a text or a call about things having to do with their hair being cut, or being told they couldn’t be on the swim team because they have dreads or locs. We’ve been pretty adamant about reaching out to even high schools and saying, “Hey, can we have a conversation?” Don’t get me wrong, a lot of people don’t take us up on it and we can’t force the conversations. But we do want people to know that there is an organization out there with a staff and facilitators across the country who are willing to have those types of conversations so your student athletes, your students don’t get left behind, don’t fall through the cracks, don’t just identify with the athlete part of them. They identify with who they are as a whole person.

Systemically, a family that is depending upon this great guy to be a football player, they’re putting all of their stake in that kid making the team. They know that they’re going to be on a great team and they’re going to play for the Hurricanes, and NFL is near. Structurally, that is it. There’s only one outlet. There is only way to get it done. Whereas in my opinion, in families of even white football players, there are multiple streams and ways that they can couch their success.

A lot of that is already inherent and built in, that they didn’t work for it, they inherited that particular lane of success. Whether their parents own a business already, or whether they have stock. You know what I’m saying? They’ll get something. When they turn 21, they get a nice chunk of change. Some of those things are already inherent in them where they don’t mentally, physically put themselves on the line for what they can say football success or sports success. They understand that there are other lanes for them.

A lot of our Black males, specifically Black males, and I’m going to say football specifically, too. A lot of them don’t see the other lanes until it’s too late. We’re trying to, at ABIS, trying to catch that beforehand. I’ll just say, with this name, image, and likeness right now, which is truly life-changing for some of them who are really gifted and are really, really talented, it is actually helping them to see other lanes. They understand that they’re getting this money because they play well. We know that’s what people really want to say, but they’re playing well. They get this money for that. But now, they are seeing other avenues to how the money, they have it now, that can be useful to them and to their whole entire family to open up other lanes.

Now, I’m opening a business at 20 in college while I’m still playing. I’m trying to be a franchisee of Chick-fil-A now instead of maybe waiting, “Okay, I’m done playing, I don’t have any other options,” X, Y, and Z. Now I’m saying, “Let me do these other business ventures and use this money. I still want to play football, I still want to get to the NFL or NBA, but if I don’t, I also have these business ventures that I’ve started that’s going to help me and help my family regardless of if I go down this other lane.” In that regard, if you understand it or you say you’re an athlete, you know the conversation I guess that’s around that right now in the hemisphere, is them getting this money. It can be helpful, and then of course, some ways it has been hurtful. Not the money itself, but the structure of it and how it’s happening.

I think they have been now, they’re opening other lanes for them. Before, there was only one and that everybody was riding the back of that son, that daughter to do well. Now, there are other lanes. Then of course, I think white families have always had other ways to count that success, that they don’t put their bodies and their minds and stuff on the line in the same way.

How do you measure success at ABIS? How do you know when you’ve helped a student athlete?

Yeah. I’m going to specifically speak to what we’re doing in this financial coaching space because we have a group of students that we worked with. We give them these financial tools, and then we measured them over a course of eight months, eight months. I don’t know, eight months, nine months, something like that. We measure how they’re spending, how they’re saving. How they’re investing, how they are preparing themselves for the workforce, whether it’s an internship or an externship.

We have successes in terms of about being able to follow the group of students, over 100 or so students within this past year that we work with. Seeing them financially solvent, no debt. Again, you can say, “Well, they had no debt because they had a scholarship from college and they graduate, now they’re in a job.” Great, wonderful. But I also know that there are people who don’t look like them who, once they graduate from college, they also have no debt and it’s because, one, that their parents paid for it. Then two, they get another check for a house, to buy a house.

For us, in terms of people in our community, the successes of graduating with no debt, and then the ability to have stock or whatever that you have done. I didn’t get that when I came out of college. I didn’t have an organization like an ABIS that helped train me. I had to wait until I was 30-something to understand what all of that meant, and now they get this early. The success is seeing two generations after me live debt-free, be in a better financial space than their parents. Then, already working on the wealth that they want to leave behind or the legacy that they want to leave behind, and having that plan and having it written. They have a written out plan as to, “When I’m 50, I want to be able to have A, B, C, and this for my children.” That’s phenomenal for us.

Playing sports can be an opportunity for healthy development and financial success, but they can also end up actually limiting the options for young Black athletes. When Renae describes families putting all their economic hopes on one teenager’s athletic performance, she’s tapping into the real world impact of structural racism. Generations of exclusion from homeownership and wealth accumulation mean that athletic scholarships often represent the only viable path to higher education and economic stability. But change is happening thanks to organizations like ABIS. Financial literacy programs can help athletes build wealth beyond their playing careers. Academic support is ensuring they develop skills outside of sports. Advocates are creating spaces for conversations that might not happen otherwise.

If you’re an educator, coach, or a parent, consider how you can better support the young athletes in your community. If you want to learn more about ABIS and their programs, visit their website to see how you can get involved. I want to thank Renae Myles Payne for sharing her time and expertise with us. If you don’t already follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, head over and tap the follow button. Find past episodes and more at arrestedmobility.com. This podcast is a production of Equitable Cities with support from Puddle Creative.