Sports Business Podcast with Prof. C - Fordham Gabelli School of Business
Jul 20, 2026 · 1 hr 12 min · 10 segments
Former professional runner and medical student Mary Cain joins Prof. C to discuss her memoir, This Is Not About Running, an unflinching account of her experiences as one of America's most promising…
Mary CainGuest
Mark ConradHost
Do you think more has to be done and really what should be done to reform the sport of track and field?
I mean, at an absolute bare minimum, my assistant coach, who was like a part of this, who I write about in my memoir, who did all sorts of like really egregious actions, is still coaching a professional program of athletes of like all sorts of different brands.
And honestly, the fact that like my memoir has been out for the last two months and like there's not a peep from the professional running community broadly.
Like most folks who read this book and interact with it and have been kind of like touched by it and therefore reached out are not actually involved with the professional running.
There may be folks who like did collegiate races or, you know, love running or just parents who are, you know, interested in the story.
amongst people who are currently competitive and still running or folks who I competed with back in the day, I think there's like maybe under 10 people who've actually reached out to me in some form of support, which I think kind of speaks pretty loudly to the fact that like, there's a discomfort to all problems of the past, then I would see no reasons why people wouldn't feel really like comfortable and safe being able to support a book that's really like, hey, I don't think we should abuse kids as it's like overarching message.
But instead, people, I think, feel scared to like in some ways support another woman who experienced something really horrible because it aligns them at least the way the professional running world seems to be responding to me as like anti, you know, Nike, which is such a fascinating thing.
I will kind of maybe like go on this tangent because at least when I was waiting for them to respond, I thought it would be more of a like, wow, this is really horrible.
But if they did that, right, I'd be like, okay, yeah, maybe not every single person in the C-suite was like aware that this happened.
I think this is more me putting my foot down and saying like, let's as a broader sports culture, like reshape ourselves.
And so I think there is a lot that needs to be changed, but I think to start, there needs to be an acknowledgement that there still are problems and not this kind of like rebranding of like, just because we put women in ads, it doesn't mean we like respect women or treat them well or protect them in any sort of way.
I think there's ways where like governing bodies like USATF probably need to be enacting like more stringent requirements or education for people to like actually work with athletes or be a professional coach or potentially even like create a system in which athletes don't necessarily have a union, but like have another organization that they can go to that is like mutually separate from their kind of like day to day sponsor.
Because I think, legally speaking, a lot of professional runners should and are employees, even though they have independent contractor relationships.
But a lot of state laws, and it's a lot of the states that professional runners actually live in, would still legally be able to argue that they're employees based on essentially the power and control and the amount of money in which the athletes are making.
Do you think more has to be done and really what should be done to reform the sport of track and field?
I mean, at an absolute bare minimum, my assistant coach, who was like a part of this, who I write about in my memoir, who did all sorts of like really egregious actions, is still coaching a professional program of athletes of like all sorts of different brands.
And honestly, the fact that like my memoir has been out for the last two months and like there's not a peep from the professional running community broadly.
Like most folks who read this book and interact with it and have been kind of like touched by it and therefore reached out are not actually involved with the professional running.
There may be folks who like did collegiate races or, you know, love running or just parents who are, you know, interested in the story.
amongst people who are currently competitive and still running or folks who I competed with back in the day, I think there's like maybe under 10 people who've actually reached out to me in some form of support, which I think kind of speaks pretty loudly to the fact that like, there's a discomfort to all problems of the past, then I would see no reasons why people wouldn't feel really like comfortable and safe being able to support a book that's really like, hey, I don't think we should abuse kids as it's like overarching message.
But instead, people, I think, feel scared to like in some ways support another woman who experienced something really horrible because it aligns them at least the way the professional running world seems to be responding to me as like anti, you know, Nike, which is such a fascinating thing.
I will kind of maybe like go on this tangent because at least when I was waiting for them to respond, I thought it would be more of a like, wow, this is really horrible.
But if they did that, right, I'd be like, okay, yeah, maybe not every single person in the C-suite was like aware that this happened.
I think this is more me putting my foot down and saying like, let's as a broader sports culture, like reshape ourselves.
And so I think there is a lot that needs to be changed, but I think to start, there needs to be an acknowledgement that there still are problems and not this kind of like rebranding of like, just because we put women in ads, it doesn't mean we like respect women or treat them well or protect them in any sort of way.
I think there's ways where like governing bodies like USATF probably need to be enacting like more stringent requirements or education for people to like actually work with athletes or be a professional coach or potentially even like create a system in which athletes don't necessarily have a union, but like have another organization that they can go to that is like mutually separate from their kind of like day to day sponsor.
Because I think, legally speaking, a lot of professional runners should and are employees, even though they have independent contractor relationships.
But a lot of state laws, and it's a lot of the states that professional runners actually live in, would still legally be able to argue that they're employees based on essentially the power and control and the amount of money in which the athletes are making.
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