Cali Farquharson on the Need for Change in Women's Soccer
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Welcome to Broken Potholes with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. In the studio with us, as always, the irrepressible Kylie Kipper. And we have a very special guest today, professional soccer player,

Kelly, am I getting this right? Fark? Farkasen. Farkasen. Okay. Kelly Farkasen. I am terrible with names, as we have learned throughout this show. It's a tough last name. So you have played for KIF Orebro? Orebro. Orebro? Okay. Again, my Spanish is equally awful as my name. I don't think it's Spanish. I think it's Swedish. Swedish. So you don't even know the continent. No. You can tell how much I know about this one.

But also played for the Washington Spirit. Yes. The second all-time leading goal scorer for the ASU women's soccer team, which is a pretty impressive accomplishment. ASU women's soccer. How long have they been playing soccer? Thank you. I'm not quite sure, but I know there was a program back in the 90s.

Oh, it was well before the 90s. I mean, I moved here in 1990. Oh, it's been decades and decades. I just want to know who didn't give her the assist so she can get number one. We'll talk about that later on the show.

So we are really glad to have you on today. I wanted to talk. There's been a lot of news people are probably not seeing because they're focused on all the top line political stuff that, you know, makes us hate each other. But they're probably not seeing some of the things that have been going on in women's soccer, which are, frankly, pretty disturbing when you look at it, especially cumulatively when you look at it.

It really tells the story of a sport, of an industry that is in crisis, and a lot of people don't understand it or recognize it. Correct. Including the people leading that sport. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Okay. We don't want to get her in too much trouble. Yeah. And so let's first start about how did you...

Tell us your journey from being amateur, comp, college, second all-time leading scorer to someone not giving you the assist to be number one, to being drafted professional. And what's it like being a professional soccer player in the United States? Right. Okay. Well, I first got started playing soccer when I was really young. My dad was in the military and we had lived in Italy. So, you know,

Italians in their soccer, Europeans in their soccer. And my older brothers were playing and I've always wanted to be like my older brothers. And I was like, oh, I want to play. So I got started, I think around six years old in Europe. And I ended up being pretty good at it. Um,

Played locally here in Arizona for Acido Soul and Serino. Serino is no longer a club in the area. And were those the top clubs in the area? Those were the top clubs, yes. And then I ended up getting recruited to play at Arizona State University. And I had a pretty successful career there. And then in 2016, I was drafted to play for the Washington Spirit. And I was there for four years. Learned a lot.

and then decided to go overseas and play in Europe where I played in Sweden for Kif Odebro. When I first...

When I first signed with them, I was like, or bro, or bro. No, that's not how you say it. And I'm like, okay, well, sorry. I didn't know any better. Club's going to have to excuse me. I'm going to get it wrong all day. Yeah, that's okay. And then this past year, I was back with the spirit, but unfortunately I suffered a season-ending injury, and that is why I'm currently in Arizona. So what's it like? First of all, tell us on draft night. Yeah.

What was it like being drafted? You were first round, so you say number 12, but you were first round, right? Well, they go in four rounds in a set of 10. So technically I'm second round. But Mackenzie was with me. Mackenzie Simrad was with me when I initially got drafted. And ASU, they had a viewing party there.

at the stadium in one of their rooms. But I didn't go because I was so nervous that I wasn't gonna get drafted.

So I was at home. I was watching at home with Mackenzie. And I started getting an influx of texts like, congrats, congrats. And my TV screen was lagging. I was like, oh, no. Like, what's happening? Cox Cable? Was that Cox Cable? Yes. OK. See, Chuck does this all the time to me on major sporting events. He'll call and be like, hey, did you just see that? That home run? I'm going, no.

Dang it. In seven seconds, I will. I know. You ruined it. So we were screaming, and it was honestly very surreal. It was...

So crazy because it's like, oh, now, you know, I'm a professional soccer player. But that really wasn't the case. Being drafted is more of a fancy invitation. So when I got called by the coach, he was like, just so you know, you're not on the team. You still need to earn your spot. And I was like, OK. But he also had like kind of our conversation was a little awkward.

Later on, looking back now, he didn't really know the player that I was because after the first couple weeks of preseason with the Spirit, he's like, you're actually pretty good. And I was like, did you not understand this? I mean, you're the 12th pick. He didn't figure this out? Did you not understand this when you drafted me? So it kind of fueled a little more of a fire to get onto that team. But yeah, so being drafted, again, it's just a fancy invitation. So when did you know? Once you got drafted...

How long in the process after being drafted do you feel like, okay, I'm going to be a professional soccer player now? When did they put a contract in front of you? So I think, I can't remember exactly when the draft was. January or December? I think it was January. It was five or six years ago. Sometime in a winter that doesn't exist here in Arizona. And then preseason started March 10th. So I had a whole month to prove myself at that point.

And that by far was one of the hardest preseasons I have ever had to endure. Just looking back, it was pretty brutal. There were only 20 contracted spots. The whole team had the 20. So we had to me and another rookie had to beat out.

certain players on the team to even earn a contract. We didn't necessarily get paid for them that month. We were put up with families. So you're not paid. So they put you up with some family you don't know. Correct. Do you get any money, any per diem, anything? I can't remember, but we may have had per diem for food.

You and I could afford a female soccer team, apparently. I guess so. Yeah. I mean, Kip has an extra room we can put people in. How many bunk beds can we cram in there, Kip? Okay. So anyway, so you're not paid. Maybe a per diem. We don't remember. You get some family. Yes. Were the families vetted, by the way? Were the families vetted? Sorry. Yeah.

What do you mean by that? I mean, did they do any background checks on this family, sending these young women to these houses? Yes. Okay. Yes. And fortunately, the family that I had was one of the best families, and we are so close. I consider them my second family to this day. So they were amazing throughout my whole professional career on this spirit. That's great. But yeah, so anyways, I get done with pre-season. They're like, we're going to give you a contract. And this is kind of when I found out, again, that...

Being a professional is very glorified. And I get my contract, and it says you're going to be making my contract with $9,000 for eight months in 2016, right? And I'm a professional athlete. Not only a professional athlete, you were the 12th best person, according to their drafting, that season in the United States to be drafted for a tryout to the pros. Yes.

Well, how much of your time? I mean, are they designed where you can have a full time job on the side? And this is like, well, there was this big campaign this year called No More Side Hustles. Hashtag No More Side Hustles, because a lot of the girls in the league have to have a little extra time.

job, a little extra side hustle just to help sustain a little more of a... Unless your parents are helping you out, you'd have to. That's the way it used to be for Major League Baseball until probably the 60s, 70s. Really, at least through the 50s. 50 years ago, right? You have to have the side hustle, which you probably did training for comp teams and so forth? Yes. I did private training. I coached. I think I'm the queen of side hustles at this point. I've

I mean, there's so many. I've driven different families' kids to and from practice. You know, there's so many different things that I've done just to kind of help bring a little extra cash flow. So you have this side hustle. Yes.

How many hours a week were you expected to be at practice? So for a typical work week, how many hours on this professional team did you actually practice your trade? And then how many hours did you do your side hustle? So depending on the schedule, we would either have one session or two sessions. And two sessions, the first session was a soccer session. The second one's a lift. And both equally required.

rounded out to about two hours. So four hours a day. About four hours a day. Yes. And then for my side hustle, I'd give about two lessons, maybe twice a week.

So we are talking basically half of minimum wage. Yeah. So what's funny is the second year when I played, they decided to raise the minimum because the minimum was actually $6,000. So I was making more than the minimum. But see, you don't get paid in the off season either. So once you are done with your season, you've got to find something else. But the second year, they decided to raise –

They decided to raise the minimum to $15,000. And I was like, yes, my paychecks doubled. Like, this is great. Like, I was like, oh, this is, you know, I can finally like live a little more. But yeah, I mean, now the minimum is $22,000.

So it's a little bit better than minimum wage, essentially. Right. Maybe two thirds of the players in the league are making 30 and below. So there's only about one third who's making. What are the top players making? I think league maximum is 56. Yeah.

Wow. OK. But national team players, players with endorsements and sponsors, international players, they can. There's other ways they're padding that. So basically, folks out there, there's what they would if you do when you calculate wages, there's 22 working days a month, which is about 176 hours.

They're making $12 an hour. Yeah. Yeah. Which, when that happened, would have been right about the minimum wage. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. So you have the side hustles. You're living with the family. Yes, I'm living with the family. What else is like this luxurious life as a professional women's soccer player that people should know about? Oh, my goodness. Well, also...

some of the conditions that we've had to endure like compared to the men like for example once a year the DC United team would come to the complex that the women the women's complex and they would have a game against one of like the local teams and

One of the players, when he arrived at the complex, tweeted, you know, I'm so appalled at these facilities. Like, we should be getting better amenities, things like that. And someone told him, you know, this is where the women practice and play and compete. So that's just...

A number of one of the numerous issues. But I got to tell you, before we go to break here real quick, we want to talk about this some more when we come back. But I think they should never, ever let any of these women near a major league baseball locker room in their facilities. I mean, you're talking five star hotels now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or even college football. Yeah. Broken potholes coming right back.

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Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I am your host, Chuck Warren, with my friend and colleague, Sam Stone. And today we have Kelly Fargason. She is a professional soccer player. Was with the Washington Spirit for five years. Also played overseas. Second leading scorer at ASU. We're trying to put an all-out bulletin. Who did not give her the assist so she could be number one? We will work on this over the coming months to find out who this person was. In our previous segment, we were talking about

Just the conditions of being a professional soccer player. And I think most people feel like this is a real luxurious lifestyle. You're making all this money. Where's your vacation home? And come to find out you're bunking with some family. You're making less than minimum wage. Your facilities are subpar. What's it going to take to improve that?

I think just, again, bringing awareness to individuals like yourself and just to the regular public because, like you said, people have this glorified idea of what professional women's sports is, but using social media platforms and showing people, like, this isn't the case puts a little more pressure and demand on owners and on people

investors to really invest in women. Why do you think, so why do you, why do you think they don't invest more? I mean, it's like, I mean, they should view this like any investment. There's, there's some losses to begin with. We've all, Brad Sam and I have started companies. There's losses. You accept that. Um, but it just sounds like they're just unwilling to make the investment to broaden it because, um, the one thing I've noticed, um, having kids who've been very involved in sports growing up, um,

Comp soccer for women seems to be a bigger deal than for men. And why they don't think there's this huge market for this with all these young girls who want to be a college athlete at a minimum. Why they don't think that there's this glorious sponsorship opportunities. It sort of baffles me what the line of thinking is on this. Right, right. And you would think with our U.S. women's national team being so successful that we would have –

better, a better operated league that really values their players' well-being. And yes, it's just been frustrating. Well, we were talking earlier in the show, and then you and I talked about this. You know, one thing I get, one of my bugaboos is when I hear people talk about the NWNBA

And say, well, they should make X, Y, or Z more. Well, the NBA produces $7.1 billion a year. It's not comparable. Right. But that being said, there's two issues here on pay. There's the National Women's Soccer League, which is a league that's been around for 11 years, 10 or 11 years, a decade, right? Yes. And then there's the FIFA, the international tournaments, where since 2015, women have

basically within a million dollars to produce the same amount of revenue as men. And the one option you hear from people say, well, the men haven't been in the playoffs. Well, that's your problem. You're obviously not good enough. So these are two separate issues. And Sam, feel free to step in. Let's start first with the

NWSL, National Women's Soccer League, and then let's talk about FIFO because we think it sounds like to us that they're not doing their job for you guys. But the NWSL, what do the women want? They're asking for, they want equal pay. What do they want? Now, obviously, they probably don't produce near the revenue as the men's National Soccer League. So what's fair? Let me start. Is the NWSL profitable?

I believe so. Okay. Kylie, would you look that up real quick? Let's find that number while we're talking. I am curious about that because one of the things that we were talking about coming into this is that there are actually pretty good models for player-owner relations in sports. If you look at the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, where they have agreements off the top, we're going to share a certain amount of revenue. Right.

So the players get X percent, the owners get Y, and then they have a reason to work together to grow those revenues. In fact, that incentivizes both parties to work together. The WNBA is a little different because it's essentially a loss leader for the NBA, and it's still a good investment for the NBA.

Because it brings a lot of women and girls into the sport, invests them in the sport. So even though it's not making a lot of money, it makes them money for the league. Right. But the issue here for me in the NWSL as a person who has started many businesses is you have to sometimes invest money. Right. So you have this talented athlete who in 2016 is the 12th pick, which means –

To make this simple, she's the 12th best player in the nation according to the National Women's Soccer League in 2016, right? And with that, you want to put this great product on the field. But they're saying, we're going to pay you minimal and make you go do something else, which really does not allow me as an owner –

To put the best product on the field in a lot of ways, right? I mean, you know, we know as you employ people, when you employ people that are making so little and they have to do something else, you're never getting their full attention. No. Right, because your energy is also being spread thin in other areas.

Well, eating is a big deal. Yes. Eating, you know, utilities, cable, stuff like that. You still have to live. And so, I mean, all of those things take away. It's one of the reasons that professional athletes in the very successful sports are coddled to an extreme degree is not because it's not out of some sort of sense of.

on the part of the owners. It's because they want to take as much off their plate as possible to allow them to focus as much as possible on the field. I must say now, since 2016, there is a league rule where they have to house the players in apartments. So they took away the family option. Yes. And they have to feed them after practice. So you get one meal a day? Um...

I believe so. I mean, that's how they did it with the spirit, but it might differ. So the NCAA now with ASU, so for example, I donate to the ASU men's tennis program, and I provide meals for all the athletes twice a day. So basically, the amateurs at ASU men's tennis are getting more free meals a day than you are as a pro for the Washington spirit. How was the pay versus when you went to Sweden? Sweden was roughly...

The same. It was about 2015. I really need to go buy some female soccer legs. But Sweden was also worse, I would say. So I was I was more I was higher paid in that league versus some of the girls just. Oh, wow. Still. Yeah. And I think people to always think like, look, you should do it for the love of the game.

Right? You're a pro. What are you moaning about? You're getting paid to play a game. But the older you get, the more you realize you can't sustain that lifestyle. Like, I'm at a point where I'm like, okay, I'm about to be 28 and I've been playing for six or seven years and...

At what point do I have to be like, okay, let's prepare a little bit more for my financial future? Adulting. You have to adulting. Yes. So what do the women that the NWS held think, what are they looking for? What's a minimum they're looking for? What are they asking for? Financially? Yeah. That's a good question. I don't know, but I...

Do they know? It has to be. I mean, that's a problem, right? Right. But it has to be more than what they're— I mean, do they know? I mean, what do you think it should be? I mean, let's talk to—I mean, you know the league's not making billions, but what should they be? What should it be? I feel like it should be at least 65 minimum.

Which seems base fair. I mean, you know, I think we've got just one minute before the break here, but and we're going to talk about this in some other things. But I did not know women's soccer players have a union for their contract with the national team organizations.

But you don't have one in the NWSL. Correct. There is no CBA for the league. I got to say that's crazy. Now, look, if you're talking government unions on this program, you're going to get your nose smacked because we're not fans. But I am a big fan and always have been of a private sector union. Well, this is like the Keystone Cops running this operation.

Yeah, this I mean, this is just this is just this is astounding to me as we're hearing about this. Folks, when we come back, talking some scandal, broken potholes, hashtag scandal, hashtag scandal. It's the new year and time for a new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start.

Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from GoDaddy.com today. Welcome back to Broken Potholes. Today in studio with us, Kelly Farquharson, professional soccer player. I even got it right. It's like a first.

Professional soccer player. We're talking about the NWSL, the league you play in. And the more we talk about this, the more I think this is a key. I mean, this is really is the Keystone Cops running this league for for you and for all of these folks. For folks who don't know, my my family at one point owned the Phoenix Firebirds, the Tucson Firebirds.

Sidewinders, AAA baseball teams here. So got some direct experience in how to market a sports event where you might not, it's not the best league in the world, but it's certainly right up there. It's great professional sports. How much do they do to make the environment at all these stadiums a family fun environment? I mean, we made half our money off of concessions and entertainment. Right, right.

I mean, it has, again, it has gotten better since the past. But I do know now the women, they have played half of their home games at the men's stadium. So they tried to, you know, move them into those equal facilities. And then they've really pushed to get people to buy tickets for Audi. Sorry, Audi is the stadium in D.C. But...

They use a lot of their social media and have the players post a lot to try to really market these games. I remember one game in 2019, they actually were able to sell out the whole stadium because it was the first time the women were playing in

The brand new men's stadium. Are there things in these stadiums for like the kids to go do a soccer shootout kind of thing or for the. I'm not familiar. They didn't have one in Utah. They didn't have one in Utah. And like I said, they had a very good program. Didn't they have a playground? But they shared that with the men. So it wasn't specifically for the women. Let's let's talk here for a minute. So the National Women's Soccer League is going through a bit of a scandal. There's four coaches, four coaches been fired.

One of those coaches was on the Washington team in which you played. Yes, yes. My understanding, there's been – it's a toxic work environment. And this guy was actually – he had had problems previously. In Portland, which is the flagship show, right? Right. So the Portland coach, he coached at North Carolina. Okay. And so my coach –

was on the spirit. But he also had prior allegations of verbal and emotional abuse before he was hired as well. And then for the Portland coach, they just had swept off

a lot of things under the rug and asked him to resign at the end of the year. But that didn't stop him from getting another coaching position in the league, which was the North Carolina Courage. But that's why the CBA is so important. It protects the players. At this point, you know, a lot of the players were afraid to come forward because if a player comes forward, you

they don't have any protection. And this was the first year there was an anti-harassment policy placed in the league too, to have a safe space to address issues that you might be experiencing. So I have never heard of a professional sports league that needs a union more than yours does. I mean, really, I'm,

What are some of the verbal abuse that you witnessed that the women were undertaken? I mean, and we know in sports, you have coaches yell, right? And you're all used to that. And so we're not, folks, I think it's important that we're not talking about a bunch of dainty flowers. These are women who have been coached. They've had people yell at them. They've had alpha parents probably. But what's the type of verbal abuse that you saw that just crosses the line? I think...

For me, what I've experienced is verbal abuse where you are talked down to negatively. His voice is louder than yours. You're unable to defend yourself because, you know, he overpowers your voice as well, threatens your job. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's... I probably won't give any examples. But there are times where, you know, you're the worst player out here, you know, with the other... And it's just constant. Is it constant? Is it repeated over and over? Yeah, it's just every mistake. So at this point, you get into this routine of, okay, if I make a mistake, be ready for the repercussions of getting destroyed. And they're threatening your job, too. Right, right. And...

I don't want to say this for everybody, but a lot of people that have been coached under the coach for the Washington Spirit are also not surprised that this has happened. But again, the issue is owners are hiring coaches who aren't qualified and who are their friends that have coached their daughters or they know of, right? So again, a lot of it, the struggle is

How does that create a safe environment for the players to go forward because they know so-and-so is friends with so-and-so, so they're not going to do anything. Chuck, we really need to consider getting involved in this because we could turn this into a profit-making thing. Absolutely. We're going to keep Callie on in studio with us. Our next guest, John Healy of the LA Times. We want to talk about some of the supply chain woes coming up. Broken Pottles coming right back.

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Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, with my host and friend, Sam Stone. Today we have with us on this segment, John Healy. He's a reporter for the LA Times, and he wrote a fascinating article this past week, which Sam and I have read a couple times, and it's, When Will Supply Chains Be Back to Normal? And How Did Things Get So Bad? And we're going to ask him those two questions. And John, let's just start off right away. How did things get so bad with our supply chain?

It's a really complicated answer to that question. I'll try and keep it as simple as I can. There's two elements to it. One is demand, a huge increase in demand for goods, mainly from the United States. And at the

At the same time, you had labor issues. Part of that is a reflection of the disruption caused by the pandemic. Part of it is also, even before the pandemic, we had a historically tight labor market. So folks who had been doing jobs like warehouse work and trucking work that may have been on the lower end of the wage scale, they had more options, there was more churn, so you had a labor shortage. But

a time when you had an incredible amount of need for logistics capacity, for the capacity to move goods. Additionally, there have been a lot of other factors sort of piling up around the pandemic, everything from the ship that got stuck in the Panama Canal,

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The power situation in China started actually back in May when they did

did these restrictions in Guangdong, which is where Shenzhen is, which is where a lot of things like iPhones are made. It's one of their manufacturing hubs, although they have all along the eastern part of China, they have all these big manufacturing centers. And one of the reasons that happened was it

You have this economy that is centrally planned, and so you have a bigger demand for energy, which is largely supplied by coal plants. So the price of coal goes up, but the rates that the plants could charge was capped by the government. So the plants themselves were looking at, well, if we produce more energy, we're going to lose more money. So they had an inability to adapt to the need for power. Plus, they also have

some horrible emissions problems there, and they've been trying to work on that too. John, when does this end? I mean, when do we stop having cargo ships piled up at ports waiting out at sea? When do the warehouses and the unions able to find people? One thing that has surprised me about this is that

that these ports are not running 24-7, which really surprised me. When are we going to see these adjustments to end this supply chain problem, which is probably just not a U.S. event, though we buy more than most, but all around the world? What do you see happening?

I think there's a lot of big forces that ultimately lead us back to equilibrium, but it doesn't happen anytime soon. Some of the projections I've seen are this is going to last for another year or more. I don't know how pessimistic to be about it, but I would say that one thing that has to happen is that the increased costs of shipping and other factors here

These have to roll into the pricing system so that people feel it and demand goes down. So folk talk about the inflationary forces at work. There are a bunch of them. This is one of them. And once that starts to really hit people, then that will dampen some of the demand. So that's going to help. Another part of it is,

There is some degree of increasing automation. There's one terminal in Los Angeles at the Port of LA that uses self-driving truck-like things to move and remotely operated cranes. So they don't need a lot of labor there. But you don't shift to that overnight. You may not even shift to that in a matter of weeks.

The reason you can't flip a switch and get 24-7 operations at these ports is that you can't pull somebody off the street and say, we're going to put you in charge of these tens of thousands of pounds of incredibly valuable stuff that you're going to have to delicately remove from a ship.

down to this tiny little chassis that's going to take it somewhere. So, yeah, that's just, it's just going to take time. Yeah, you know, it's interesting you bring that up. I was reading an article last week, I think I sent it to you, Sam, about the New York Times where there's just a major driver shortage in England. I mean, they can't get people to drive, you know,

you know, the trucks. And I imagine that's the same thing here. Arizona, where it has a couple major trucking companies, and they're just having a heck of a time getting people not only hired, but who can pass the driving test. I know I couldn't. I would run over a million things in mailboxes. So actually, Chuck, if I can jump in there, because I have a friend who owns a trucking company here, and he was hiring before all this started, he was hiring most of his people were Indian Americans coming here on green cards.

That was actually the biggest because they had a pretty big pool there. They could come here, make more money doing it. And India's COVID closures has really hampered his business because he can't bring more. He was working to bring those folks in. He can't do that now. We're with John Healy, Los Angeles Times, talking about our supply chain issues right now. Sean, if you're king for the day and you've studied this issue,

What are the five or six things you would do to get our supply chains back in gear and working properly? I'd start with having a ton more transparency so that everybody in the system, and folk wouldn't like to do this, but I'd make everybody in the logistics arena share all their data. Here's where the containers are. Here's where the orders are coming from. Here's what we have on these ships and where it's going.

so that you could have some great sort of data crunching approaches to figuring out how to make this work better. When you have a lot of these ships loaded with things that are bound by contract, you can't simply say, hey, you know, we got more openings in Oakland today or we have more openings up in Washington State today than we do in Los Angeles this year.

Let's send things there. That becomes sort of a glue that gums up the process. But if you could have a little bit more of a sort of real-time window into where everything is and where it's going, I think that would be really helpful. Then the second thing I'd do is I'd say, okay, so we've got this emergency here, and we really need more people who are capable of driving trucks to step up and take these jobs.

Maybe that's the sort of thing where you consider that there might be something the feds could do to throw some more money at these companies in the short term. John, you actually... This is about hero pay. This might be an opportunity for some hero pay. Yeah, you actually bring up a point that I've been talking about since the start of this pandemic, which is with everything from doctors to nurses to truck drivers to port workers, these critical things that we are short on

It doesn't it doesn't make any sense at all to me that the government isn't making the education, the training for those things free for all these folks stepping in and covering those costs. Just wipe out all the medical debt for all the doctors. Do what you can to make these professions really attractive right now.

That's a really interesting point because one of the things you hear people complain about is when they get into some of these fields that they're coming in with a lot of debt or they're facing very big costs to get involved. And that's why you end up having higher prices or higher fees or whatever. If you want to attack that problem, then you get at the cost of actually getting involved. But I would point out one other thing which is really interesting to me. The

turnover in trucking is enormous at some of these companies. So it's not like there's a shortage of drivers. It's that the drivers come and they leave right away. And one of the reasons that they do is because there's way more opportunities out there because of the gig companies and the other

folks like Amazon who are just snapping up drivers. So you go from having kind of an unpleasant job maybe at the port where you're going back and forth over these short hauls and you don't really like it to maybe something that's more pleasant and maybe higher paid working for an Amazon or doing good work or something that's more flexible.

Awesome. What else would you do? Those are two fantastic points you've listed for us. What else would you do that would help solve this problem for not only currently, but for the future? Well, demand is such a big piece of this, and you're not going to tell people, stop buying so much stuff that you don't need because you're afraid you're not going to be able to get it in the future.

That's very un-American to do that. We wouldn't do that. Yeah, and you're certainly not going to say to an economy that's based on consumption, you know, it'd be better for all of us if we just bought less, because it won't be better for all of us.

Right, that's trying to fuel to the fire. Right, John, we can start a campaign. Let's really focus what Christmas is about and see how that goes over with people. I don't think that's going to happen. My family has got to be the most disappointing family in the world at Christmas because we made a deal about a decade ago where you have to make, we all do a secret Santa type thing, and you have to make your gift. This is why you're so angry all the time with such gifts like that. Yeah, I would probably explain part of it.

John, do you look at you cover these issues? The one thing I have felt since COVID is, is that this was really a spring training event of a crisis for America. And I think we failed it fairly miserably. Agreed. What are the things that you feel businesses and things like the supply chain should have really learned from COVID and that they're just not still getting?

Excellent question. COVID was a very sharp blow to the chin. And the assumption was, like a boxer that gets knocked down, well, you just get back on your feet and you keep fighting. Right.

And so that's what a lot of companies did. They bounced back as quickly as they could. They made some assumptions about how soon demand would come back that were actually not very good assumptions. Demand came back faster. They were caught a little unaware that inventories were low, and they rushed to try and fill them. And that's one of the reasons that we have the problem that we have now with so much demand and not enough way to fill it.

But if I'm somebody who is trying to run a business, I'm not planning to run 365 days of the year as if there's always going to be a disaster at my door.

Maybe that is an appropriate strategy. I didn't go to business school, so I can't say that's something they teach MBAs. But it just strikes me as COVID was such an exceptional event that trying to learn too much from it

It might be sort of like saying, let's plan for peak demand because we went to the World Series this year for our Dodgers T-shirts, and you're not going to go to the World Series every year. Totally agree with that. One of the other things that I think should have been learned from this

is that we need to really make sure that critical production still occurs here in the United States, that when a supply chain breakdown does not put lives at risk, it's really important we start looking at how we re-incentivize manufacturing in this country.

So how do you go about doing that? That is the really interesting question, because President Trump thought that one of the ways to do that was to use tariffs to make imported goods, imported steel, excuse me, aluminum, more expensive, as well as a number of other things. And if you look at the, what

what has happened since then, texting out a period of it achieved what he was trying to achieve with them in terms of a renaissance of U.S. manufacturing of those materials. So I don't know how you get to the place

where you have in a globalized economy, where you have reliable domestic production. I do see a way to get to the place where you have reliable production within the community of trading partners. But just confining it to the United States, how do you do that? It's probably – we have about 40 seconds left here of you, John. It's probably creating sort of like enterprise zones where you have –

What you view as essential items for a country that are produced there at no tax rates and encourage businesses say we have to have 50 percent of this produced in the United States. Something like that's the only way I think that works. I don't know if tariffs work, but saying each region has zones where manufacturers can do this pharmaceuticals, things of that nature. So.

John, where can people find you online? Are you a Twitter guy? How do they follow you and your work? My completely uninteresting Twitter feed is at J-C-A-H-E-A-L-E-Y. So they can follow me there. Or just read the LA Times, which would actually keep me working. And so we encourage that. We will keep following it. And good luck on your Dodgers. Have a great weekend, my friend.

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Welcome back to Broken Potholes. If you're listening to this, you're listening on one of our podcasts. And thank you so much for tuning in. This podcast-only segment brought to you by DotVote. Got to get yourself a DotVote domain. You do. Look, you got to help us out. You got to keep us on the air. Got to keep Kip employed. So keep buying DotVote.

But we wanted to come back with Callie Farquharson, talk a little bit more about your experience, because I think this is really interesting. There's lots of political talk out there. There's lots of sports talk, but it focuses on what happens on the field. And, you know, when things go wrong, you get a little bit of off field thrown in there. I don't think most people understand what it takes to get to that point. Right. Right. Which is a pretty massive commitment. Yeah.

Definitely. I mean, it requires a lot of sacrifice, a lot of discipline and a lot of accountability. You really have to me and a couple of my teammates were talking about this the other day, like our lives are so oriented, oriented, oriented on the next practice. Like, OK, we need to after we're done practicing, you have to eat correctly. You have to eat properly.

Right after you need your protein shake, you shouldn't be on your feet for two hours post-practice. So you relax. Okay, I can't do that because I'm probably going to be on my feet too much. Okay, I need to eat at 6 o'clock. I need to be in bed by 9.30. So you have to just be very, again, disciplined. And that's years. Because you want to perform. Yeah, you want to perform on time.

to your best on a daily basis. And yeah, it takes a lot of accountability as well. Um, making sure you are doing the right things and making sure you're doing the extra work as well. Um, such as stretching or I don't know, um,

Again, eating the right foods. Pro team practices are really focused. I mean, they obviously focus a lot on your fitness, but a lot of that they expect you to do outside of team time. Yes. So that is more of the professional world. They expect you to be fit coming into season. And they also help you get fit in the pro world. But in college, it's very different. In college, they really...

push you in the spring season and it's mandatory sessions or mandatory practices every day. And when I mean practice, it's just fitness. So in college, getting into college, a lot of high schoolers, again. So let me stop you there. I want to ask you guys. So I, so Callie is a professional athlete. She is starting a training company, callie.soccer. You can find it soon.

Question for you is, I have a daughter who has some proclivity to being a good soccer player. She's in eighth grade or ninth. Okay. She wants to play college, whether Division I, II, or III, or whatever. If I was paying you...

to advise me how to go about this and give her that opportunity to play college soccer, which I think most young women who are in eighth or ninth grade still playing soccer would love to do, right? Though you have made this totally unglamorous today, so I'm not sure after this they want to hear it. Well, hopefully by the time

Yes, but my question for you is what would you talk walk them through? What should they be doing? What should they be doing? They should be again doing the extras. Not only do you have to practice, but you barely touch the ball during a regular practice. You need to go out on your own whether it's two to three times a week and you need to train and I think the main difference is coaches love seeing players compete.

So as long as they are tenacious, and again, for me, I focus a lot on the technical skill and then in the first phase, and then the second phase, I want them to just compete, whether that's going against me or really trying to push them a little bit further than their comfort zone, right? Work harder than everybody else kind of thing. But again, you have to go into it saying, okay,

you can be the hardest worker, but that doesn't necessarily mean or guarantee you a professional soccer or collegiate soccer. You know, I think one of the things that's really important is you're starting this business for parents who are looking to get their kids in there. And we saw this years ago in baseball, right? You can't hire just high school. You need people with professional experience because they're the ones that know what it takes to compete at that level and

Where your high school coach may not have had any real competitive experience, certainly not at any kind of professional. Would you recommend – let's say someone's got a young daughter who's got talent. Would you tell them focus purely on soccer like –

It's okay for you also to go play basketball. I mean, this is a real issue I'm seeing more now, which I think is burning out kids, and I'm disappointed in it. Would you tell them that? You're saying, no, once you get there and you get to ninth grade, you're in. You're in or out. I wouldn't say you're in or out. I would say, you know, focus. I mean, because I also played another sport in high school, and I still was able to. What did you play?

I did, well, track. Does that even count? Folks, she's using air quotes. We'll have that on the YouTube video. Does that even count? Well, sure, you're running. Of course it counts. But that's aligned with it, right? Right. So Mackenzie Samrad, who has joined us and was a teammate with Callie and is probably the one that did not give her assists so she could be the number one scorer at ASU because she's only number two.

Mac would have liked to play basketball, but I've seen you play basketball, so you did the right thing on this ride. Wow. I mean, you can do other things, but it can't be for a long period of time, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, no, no. So if I'm coming to you as a dad and I'm saying, okay, here's my little daughter, Bobette, and she wants to do this.

How many hours? I mean, should she practice? Should she take days off? What should she do? I mean, so how many hours? Okay, so on top of like a normal practice schedule, you should at least be going out two to three extra times a week.

Maybe it doesn't have to necessarily be an hour of extra work. It just needs to be extremely focused in one area. So you could go 30 minutes, do solely, you know, some foot skills. But it's about doing them correctly and executing them correctly. It's not about just going through the movement. It's about trying to make it efficient. And a lot of the players or a lot of the players I've played with, that is one thing in the pros that I've

It's just completely different than college. Everyone there has this crazy switch where they can just focus and they're locked in practically the whole session. And, you know, like Rose Lavelle or Andy Sullivan, Tori Huster, some of my teammates that have played in the national team have been in and out. They just have this uncanny ability to be focused.

So zoned in on what they're doing and I've asked Andy Sullivan who has been in and out of the national team to like Andy How often did you practice right? So Sonny said she was always there 45 minutes before practice just doing technical skill at every practice and So, I mean there's so many different this is something you hear about a little bit sort of I think it's most apparent in the NBA and

where veterans often are really upset or really push the rookies to learn to focus that way and learn to practice that way. And if they can't, those guys don't make it. They don't stick around in professional leagues. And I'd assume it's the same in women's soccer. Yeah. I mean, consistency is key, and that comes with focus. You have to be able to be consistent, which I—

going back now because in our contracts we can get cut at any moment there's no guarantee right so this league is a joke any day so that is another stressor it's like okay if i don't perform is this my day that i'm gonna well we started with a league that doesn't have any sort of contract guarantee for a top 15 draft pick that's absurd and

They can cut their players at any time, no penalty. That's absurd. Right. And they can own your rights. So if they pick up your rights, a team like the Spirit or Kansas City could have my rights, which means I'm not able to go to any other team. To negotiate with the others. Yeah. But they aren't even paying me at this point, but they can still have my rights. Wow. Wow.

So going through the process, high school, comp, college, on top of your head, how many women did you play with that just had these amazing skills but they were just too lazy and not disciplined to get there? At least in like high school? Say comp. You're in a premier comp league. How many of those? Not very many of them are that lazy. Once you get to that level though probably. Yeah.

Like a top club team, you're usually pretty aggressive. Yeah. Everyone's there to compete. And if you're not there to compete, you don't. I mean, those things are really scholarship factories, right? I mean, that's kind of the idea behind them. So parents who are making that commitment with their kids, we saw this with a company I was involved in called Sports Tech. They're pushing those kids hard. Yeah. Now, I have one question, though, about soccer. Why don't they let you call timeouts in each half?

I think this would make the game more interesting. I don't know. You've got to go back. Let me just call up the people who invented soccer. Don't you think it's – I mean there's sometimes like you need a timeout. No, I actually do. I do. And, you know, one of the things as we keep talking about this, women's soccer and one of the things that baffles me about its failure to grow is that visually it's a far more entertaining game than men's soccer.

Because it is far more strategic, the tactics, the passing. It's far more precise. The men's soccer often devolves a little bit like men's tennis into one or two people making power plays and everyone else just playing defense the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all I can say is I have worked day in, day out with girls that just –

have an extreme work ethic who are talented who are skilled who are smart and intelligent um who could probably not play soccer and go find you know six-figure jobs and um right um so at the end of the day I I just really believe people should invest in women's sports and um

just advocate for women and that is essentially watching women. Well, you know, I would agree 100%. I've known a lot of professional athletes and the drive and commitment that it takes to do that, if you apply that to any part of your professional life, you're going to be successful no matter really what your base skill level is, right? Yeah. I mean, Chuck, we've seen that over and over. Well, I prefer women's tennis than I do men's tennis any day of the week. Oh, by far. By far. I mean, and the Americans do a 10 times better job promoting women's tennis players than

The men's players are sort of ridiculous. Well, I think to go back on what you were saying too about the difference between women and men's soccer is a lot of the soccer in America is based off athleticism as well. And in Europe, they focus a lot of the...

in the men's side is they focus a lot on the technical aspect of things. So not only are these men athletic, but they're also really technical. Whereas in the States, they don't devote as much time to the technical ability of the men's players. See that in basketball these days, too. We're Americans. We know one way, power. Yeah. Right? I mean, it's very much us, right? I'm just going to run you over. Just get out of the way. Let's get over this real quick. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's also why when you had the kid that shows up from South America on your U.S. soccer, you know, U.S. high school soccer team, and he couldn't get anywhere near a team, he or she couldn't get anywhere near making a team in their home country, whether Europe, Latin America. Right. And here they're instantly the best player on that team. Right.

Well, Callie, thanks for joining us today. And we didn't mention Ted Lasso once, so this is like a real pro show here today. Who knew we could do that? Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's a pleasure. You'll be able to find Callie at callie.soccer soon. Look her up. If you have a young daughter or granddaughter who wants to be a professional soccer player or college athlete, look up Callie at callie.soccer. Thanks for joining us. And folks, have a great weekend. Absolutely. Broken Puddle, back next week. Let's go.

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