Condoleezza Rice Breaks Down “Robust” Israel Ceasefire Deal, Future of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy, joined The Guy Benson Show today to discuss a bevy of topics. The conversation started by discussing Hoover’s new Substack and reflect on the legacy of economist Thomas Sowell, emphasizing the enduring importance of freedom, limited government, and resistance to tyranny. Sec. Rice also spoke about the need to understand others’ beliefs before rushing to combat them, echoing themes from Justice Clarence Thomas’ recent speech that Rice and Benson attended on “victimhood culture” and the value of personal responsibility. Turning to current events, Rice weighed in on the Israel ceasefire deal, calling the hostage release and the Arab coalition’s cooperation “remarkable.” Rice and Benson also discussed how the Russia-Ukraine war has evolved, explaining why an end may finally be within sight and why convincing Putin the conflict must end is crucial. Rice also discussed China’s shifting posture in the context of the ongoing war and the growing realization that the U.S. under Trump is neither isolationist nor weak. Rice and Benson ended the conversation on a lighter note by discussing Rice’s thoughts on the “wild west” nature of NIL in college sports and her take on the Broncos’ massive 33-point fourth quarter last weekend. Listen to the full interview below!

Listen to the full interview from the middle hour of our show below:

Read the full transcript below:

GUY BENSON, HOST, “THE GUY BENSON SHOW”: Dr. Rice, it’s so good to see you again.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: It’s great to be here. And thank you for being at the Hoover Institution.

BENSON: Our pleasure.

Tell us a bit about this new Substack that’s an exciting new project here.

RICE: Well, I have to say that, for those of us who grew up in the era of Walter Cronkite and three and networks, this is the kind of new world, the way that media has exploded in so many different directions, the ability to democratize media so that you can get messages to people.

And we decided here at the Hoover Institution that we needed to regularly reaffirm the idea of freedom with essays by our fellows. I’m going to do on myself about some of the challenges facing democracy, but also the blessings of liberty.

And so this Substack gives us a chance to do that in a systematic way, in a constant way, and we hope it’ll have an effect on people’s thinking about how lucky we are going into 250 years as a country to live in the United States of America.

BENSON: On the blessings of liberty and on rigorous thought, it is so profound and very special to be here this week, particularly today, as the Hoover Institution is honoring the ongoing brilliance and legacy of Dr. Thomas Sowell.

And there was a wonderful conversation earlier that you and I both attended. We will talk about that in a moment. But just as you have gotten to know Dr. Sowell and you have familiarize yourself with his work for decades, and you think about the imprint he’s had not just on the conservative movement or on economics in this country, but more broadly even on culture — he’s been here at Hoover for, what, 45 years, which is extraordinary.

RICE: Yes. Right. Yes.

BENSON: If you will just reflect a bit on what he’s done.

RICE: Well, we have had an opportunity to have the benefit of being a colleague of Thomas Sowell for all of those years.

He’s really been an animating spirit here at the Hoover Institution as we tried to deliver on what our founder, Herbert Hoover, talked about, which is the blessings of individual liberty, of small government, of private enterprise. But he’s done it in the way that we really believe is our power alley, that is, to do it from rigorous analysis.

He’s one of the great economists ever in this country. But he’s chosen to use that great rigor and the belief in data to inform some of our most difficult political and social and cultural issues. And it’s his ability to do that in a way that really does stick with people, where they think, oh, my goodness, I never thought of it that way.

He doesn’t do it in an argumentative way. He doesn’t say, you — as Justice Thomas was saying, you have to think like me. He’s just saying, have you thought about? And I think he’s had just an incredible impact on really so many issues, but maybe particularly about how we think about the long legacy in the United States, as we try to get over the legacy of slavery, as we think about race, as his — one of his books is called “Race and Economics.”

I know that many people didn’t understand him when he started down this journey, but many, many more people understand him now. And I think of him really as just an inspiration in thinking about these big issues of culture, politics and society.

BENSON: Sometimes, these days, you will hear consultants and people in media saying, if you can’t get it on TikTok in seven seconds in front of a young person, they won’t pay attention and it’s gone.

Dr. Sowell is not one for seven-second sound bites. Long-form interviews, lots of serious thinking, and yet those interviews or those speeches and those writings seem to have an enduring power, despite what a lot of the conventional wisdom is now about how people ingest information or don’t.

I wonder what you think about that.

RICE: Well, I think we may underestimate the ability particularly of young people to want to get in depth, if you will give them depth.

But you have to give them a reason. And Tom Sowell has been very, very gifted at giving them a reason to go deeper into issues, into — as he would say, into the kind of common wisdom, where he will challenge the common wisdom, and you will hear a young person say, well, I didn’t think about it that way.

And he’s a marvelous teacher. More than — and more than anything, he’s a great professor. And what does a great professor do? A great professor makes you think about what you think, so that you can internalize it. And somehow he manages to bridge that with multiple generations.

We heard from Justice Thomas that, as a young man, he was inspired to be different, to think differently by Thomas Sowell. I know that I was inspired. And then I run into students here at Stanford and other places who say Thomas Sowell.

And so somehow he’s done it generation after generation. I don’t care what the differences can be in how we get our information through generations, how attentive we are. Are we just people who can only stay on a smartphone for a few minutes? He’s managed to bridge all of that and to have adherents.

We’re going to get — later on today, we’re going to — we’re going to report the outcomes of an essay contest by young people and what he has meant to them. So it’s really quite remarkable what he’s been able to achieve.

BENSON: You told an anecdote in introducing this morning’s panel featuring Justice Clarence Thomas about a football recruit, a high school teenager who is considering Stanford to come play his college football here. Tell us about that.

RICE: Right.

I — well, it may be known that I sometimes recruit for Stanford football.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: And this young man walked up to me and — 18 years old. And he said: “You’re from the Hoover Institution, right?”

And I said: “Well, yes, I am.”

He said: “Do you know Thomas Sowell?”

And I thought, how great. This 18-year-old football player who’s being recruited, and Thomas Sowell has made an impact on his life, so it’s the first thing he brings up with me. By the way, he didn’t say I know who you are, which was great. He said, do you know Thomas Sowell?

(LAUGHTER)

BENSON: Who’s 95 years old.

RICE: Who’s 95 years old.

BENSON: And still going.

RICE: Yes.

BENSON: Justice Thomas in conversation with Peter Robinson, it was about an hour. And I was spellbound. It was so fascinating.

One thing that stood out to me, it goes back to a question we have already somewhat touched on. Justice Thomas talked about being a young lawyer. He was basically sent to Jefferson City, Missouri, where it was not his dream job, but he was there. And he didn’t have a lot going on.

But he said, it gave me an opportunity to show up, do my work, but spend a lot of time thinking and just sitting in thought and developing thought and reading. And there was this interesting story about how he went from receiving a Thomas Sowell book and throwing it in the garbage he was so offended by it reflexively as a pretty radical leftist at the time to five years later seeking out an autograph from Thomas Sowell on another book of his.

And he talked about how a lot of that journey was attributable to his own ability to quietly think and test some of his ideas. How important do you think it is right now for Americans to maybe rethink thinking?

Because I feel like we are losing the art, the discipline of thinking.

RICE: I can’t agree with you more. We’re losing the discipline because we don’t take time to think.

We want the instant answer. And, sometimes, the instant answer may be OK on the surface, but if you get beneath it, it’s not actually the right answer. And what I heard from Justice Thomas was, he had the chance not just to think, but to reflect.

And one of the things that he probably had the chance to reflect on was his own upbringing. You could listen to his stories about his grandfather, a man who had really no formal education, but believed that you could make it. It wasn’t going to be easy. It had to be — I’m quite sure it was also a chance to reflect

And we have very few opportunities these days for reflection. I tell my students…

BENSON: By choice, by the way.

RICE: By choice. By choice.

BENSON: Because we distract ourselves.

RICE: We distract ourselves.

And, unfortunately, I worry a little bit about this next generation, the generation that I teach, that it really is about instant answers. Look, I myself use chatbots. The other day, I was trying to remember something about the Crimean War. And so I just put it in my chat box — or my chatbot.

I say to my students, though, that’s not really learning. What you’re doing is, you’re getting an answer, but will you be able to use the processing that you — by which you got that answer to take on the next question.

BENSON: Internalizing.

RICE: And internalizing.

BENSON: Yes.

RICE: So, somehow, we have all got a slow down a little bit and give ourselves a chance to think and to have a chance to reflect with one another.

We also don’t spend enough time just talking to each other, talking in community about the things that we that we face, challenging each other if we have differing views, that I’m going to listen to you first. Before I start transmitting, I’m going to listen to you and see if I can understand where you’re coming from.

So our whole society could use a little bit of a pause.

BENSON: Justice Thomas was talking about his grandparents. And he got a little choked up. And he needed a moment just to gather himself. It was very moving.

And he was talking about the station in life that he was born into and then just doing the work, not complaining about it, recognizing what reality is, and then rising above it. And he talked a bit about loneliness as being someone right of center and black of a certain generation in particular and getting a lot of criticism on that.

And he said one or two things. And I just instinctively looked over at you. And often you were nodding. And, clearly, there was some resonance with what he was saying in your own life experience. I remember I believe it was the 2012 Republican Convention you gave a speech, and you talked about this rise of a little girl from the segregated South to secretary of state.

And there was just this enormous reception for that in the hall, just a huge round of applause. And that came to mind as I was listening to that. He talked about loneliness sometimes, feeling alone, getting sort of browbeaten by people saying, you shouldn’t believe these things, you shouldn’t think for yourself.

And then later he also said, but it’s not as lonely as you might think. And you nodded, I noticed, at both of those thoughts. And I wonder if you would expand on that a little bit

RICE: Sure.

I was talking to Justice Thomas afterwards. And I — actually, our experiences are in some ways similar and quite different. I’m third-generation college-educated. My aunt was a Ph.D. in Victorian literature. I told Justice Thomas, my family visited colleges like other people visit national parks.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: We once went 100 miles out of the way to see Ohio State just because we needed to see Ohio State. And yet that same story of self-reliance, of ancestors who just wouldn’t let the segregated South get them down or their children down is one that resonates.

And I think it resonates not just because it’s — it’s not just a black story. It’s an American story. We forget that if you — that each and every person has a personal story, but we have this collective story of striving. We have this collective story of overcoming difficulties.

We have this collective story of recognizing our flaws as a country, but that kind of constant challenge of overcoming them. And so I think, every time, we tell a story like Justice Thomas’ story, it resonates — or my story — it resonates not just with black people. It resonates with Americans, as we have all got an ancestry that made us American by taking on those challenges.

The reason that I nodded when he said it’s not as lonely as you might think is, I sit on a college campus that might be thought of as rather liberal here in the midst of California. But I meet so many kids who really do resonate with the self-help story, who really do resonate with the idea that, yes, America has its flaws, but we’re trying to overcome them.

We’re not somehow doomed forever to just be a state that was born out of slaveholding and so forth. And so I think, particularly with this generation, they’re looking for different answers. They understand that the orthodoxy isn’t all that there is. And I see it in my students. And I’m just happy that they’re exploring.

And I’m happy that we now have the room for them to explore what might have been considered unorthodox or maybe even offensive views, because only if you’re willing to tolerate or even to engage people who say things that maybe you don’t agree with, that’s the only way you grow.

I tell my students all the time, you actually don’t have a constitutional right not to be offended. If you are, discuss it with that person. And let’s all begin to accept that we might not have all of the answers. And I think that’s what I’m seeing on college campuses. And it’s why I certainly don’t feel alone and, fortunately, I think increasingly a lot of my students don’t feel alone.

BENSON: Justice Thomas, in channeling Dr. Sowell, seemed to have this, in my view, very healthy contempt for the fetishizing of victimhood.

And there’s this balancing act, because you do want to acknowledge the flaws and the sins of the past and the present without dwelling so much on them or making it like this special perch to be a victim, because that then incentivizes bad things as well.

And I wonder how you feel about that, especially hearing from Justice Thomas earlier.

RICE: Well, I’m in completely — complete agreement about victimhood.

And it comes actually from my parents. So, when I was in segregated Birmingham, and I remember my parents and their friends in their little segregated community, I have to say, a community where I think everybody taught school. So education was really the kind of Holy Grail. It was faith, family and education.

But they used to say there are no victims. The day that you consider yourself a victim, you have given control of your life to somebody else. Now, were they saying that there weren’t difficult circumstances? Were they not saying that — were they saying that there weren’t people who would try to put you down?

Were they ignoring the fact that we lived in Birmingham with Eugene “Bull” Connor, the police commissioner who would send dogs after after demonstrators in Kelly Ingram Park? Were they denying the fact that I lost four little classmates in the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church?

No, they were not ignoring any of that. Were they ignoring that it was harder in 1952 for them to vote? No. But they were saying, always focus on what you can do. Yes, you have a responsibility to try to make the entire society better, to try to make the entire political system better. But you also have a responsibility not to let it hold you down.

And the minute you think you’re a victim, you have handed your life to somebody else. And that, I think, is a message that we need to hear very much today.

BENSON: Turning to current events and drawing on your experience as national security adviser, secretary of state as well, I want to talk about the Middle East and Gaza and this cease-fire which seems to be cracking in some ways.

Thank God the hostages are out. That was, I think, goal number one achieved by President Trump and others as well. As you think about what the president and his team risked to get this done, what they have accomplished, and then what’s still up in the air and unclear, how do you sort through what we’re seeing thus far?

RICE: Well, what they accomplished is really quite remarkable, in getting the hostages out.

And I want to make the point that it was not just getting the hostages out and working with the Israelis, but they really put together a very good coalition of Arab states as well, and not just Qatar. Egypt was at the table. Even Turkey was at the table, the Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE that have a lot at stake in the normalization of a Middle East in which they can modernize.

This was really something that I hope will have a lasting impact, because, with that coalition of states concerned about and determined to push forward, maybe we can finally get something done in the Middle East to follow on to the Abraham Accords, which is, of course, the big prize.

There are going to be some spoilers, and I think you’re seeing those spoilers right now. And Hamas, the ones who negotiated this, probably can’t even completely control the militias that are out there in Gaza. Remember, there are some fighters there who have nothing else to do but fight.

Once they have been disarmed, they’re going to be held to account for the fact that Hamas has been the problem in Gaza. I know that, under the Israeli military actions, there were a lot of humanitarian issues, and I am one who wanted very much to be able to take care of the humanitarian problems in Gaza.

But it’s Hamas who holds the Palestinians hostage in Gaza. And you’re seeing it today as they’re going into the streets, they’re doing public executions, they’re executing anybody who was — quote, unquote — “a collaborator.” And they know when they stop fighting that the Palestinian people are going to turn on them.

So there are going to be spoilers, but hopefully this is robust enough with the support of all of the Arab states to keep it in place. And I’m sure that the administration, I hope the administration is cautioning the Israelis not to overreact to some of the provocations that Hamas will carry out.

BENSON: Because they’re having breaches, right? They’re — already.

RICE: They are. They are.

BENSON: But that’s to be expected.

RICE: It’s to be expected.

BENSON: That being said, a key component of this deal was disarming Hamas. And they might have said — some of their negotiators in Qatar or wherever might have said, OK, yes.

But when it comes down to it, it feels a little naive to assume that they will disarm on their own. They will be forced to or they won’t be. And I just wonder how that actually works in practice.

RICE: I don’t think anybody can physically disarm Hamas. I think that’s a little bit of a — a little bit naive.

But what you might be able to do is, if you can keep the cease-fire in place, if you can begin to deliver for the Palestinian people, if you can begin to put together a Palestinian Authority that actually has some legs — the current Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas, he’s not a bad man, but they have lost their credibility.

So they’re talking about a more technocratic Palestine. It’s a little bit of displacement, all right? So you have to displace Hamas. And when you displace Hamas, perhaps then maybe some of their fighters will decide they — that they would rather be a part of the future.

But this is going to be very hard because there are always going to be some spoilers who are not going to give up their arms. This is not — I think what people have in mind is, if you remember, in Ireland, Northern Ireland, you had Sinn Fein, which was the political arm, and the IRA, which was the military arm. And Sinn Fein was strong enough to ultimately disarm the IRA.

Right now, I don’t think there’s anybody strong enough to disarm Hamas. But I will say this. Somebody ought to be saying to the Iranians, don’t even think about paying them. Don’t even think about rearming them. Leave them on their own, and perhaps you will eventually get to the disarmament of Hamas.

BENSON: On Ukraine, you have a lot of knowledge when it comes to Russia. You studied Putin for a very long time.

You and I had a conversation about this a year ago, roughly. And here we are, the war is still going. There are some differences. It seems as though President Trump has become much more impatient with Putin in a number of ways. He’s ratcheting up pressure successfully in some areas, still holding out in others, the Tomahawk missiles, et cetera.

Are things materially different, would you say, now than they were a year ago? How so? And is there hope for a resolution that’s acceptable?

RICE: Well, what’s materially different is, I think that Russia is weaker. It’s really remarkable.

You have had — the Russians have spent a $1.5 trillion. They have had a million casualties; 300,000 people have died. They have lost about 30 percent of their oil and gas capacity, particularly the refining capacity. So they’re now having to ration within Moscow — within Russia, ration oil and gas, and refined product, and there are long lines for gas.

They have lost 25 to 30 percent of their strategic bombing force because of when the Ukrainians took it out, out there in Siberia. And yet they keep going. So why? I think the Ukrainians know that this war needs to end, and maybe appreciate even President Trump’s efforts to try to do that.

I think most Russians know that this war needs to end, because the numbers that I have just said, when you do that and you have gone from 7 percent of Ukrainian territory to 23 percent of Ukrainian territory in three years, this is not a war that should continue.

Unfortunately, the one person who is not convinced is Vladimir Putin, and he’s the only vote that matters at this point. And so I think the administration is trying to figure a way…

BENSON: Does he feel pressure internally,like, if he gives an inch, then some people might try to overthrow him or…

RICE: I actually think he just doesn’t believe — it’s kind of cognitive dissonance. He cannot believe he can’t crush this little bug of a country Ukraine that he doesn’t even think is a real country.

I mean, how could the great Russian empire not be able to do this? And so there’s something going on with him personally. He’s personally attached to it. And I think what the administration is trying to figure out is how do you change his calculus. Do you do it with more pressure? Do you do it by giving Tomahawks, so they can reach deeper into Russia?

Do you do it through deeper sanctions? Do you do it — I would suggest that one thing you might do is, that $300 billion in Russian frozen assets, go ahead and take it. But getting Putin to accept that this war needs to end is the hardest part of this job. And I think it’s why you see the administration searching.

I mean, the president has tried a little bit of flattery and having Alaska and everything. And there’s too much judgment right now on the outside: Oh, well, they’re going toward Putin, or they don’t understand.

Let’s just let this play out for a little bit, because I think they’re trying to figure out this piece to the puzzle. How do you convince Putin that this war needs to end?

BENSON: How do you think Chairman Xi and the Chinese Communist Party are watching not just the events in Ukraine over years, also the events in the Middle East? They’re sitting back. They take a long view of things. They want to supplant us, there’s no question about that, as world superpower.

If you had to guess, how are they processing what’s happened over these last few years?

RICE: Well, they have been bitterly disappointed, I would guess, that it turns out that Donald Trump is not an isolationist. It turns out that he’s very — got a very activist foreign policy.

So the first thing you have to think if you’re the Chinese is, oh, well, maybe those ideas that America was withdrawing because of its weakness — its weakness, that’s not going to materialize. By the way, I think the one that probably helped most with that was the bombing of the Iranian nuclear sites, because that’s a tremendous show of American military prowess. There’s not a country in the world in history that could have pulled that off.

And so I think it’s probably caused them to pause a little bit. Now, they also are playing their cards very, very aggressively on the trade matters, reminding us that, to our own fault, we have become too dependent on the Chinese for rare earth minerals, for the magnets, that we can’t do anything without them.

And so they’re playing, they believe, a strong hand there, but the United States has cards to play too. So I would think that Xi Jinping has been, if — he’s certainly not been deterred from trying to push us out of the Indo-Pacific. He’s certainly not been deterred by trying to supplant us as the major global power.

But he’s probably at least been brought up a little bit short as he’s watching some of the displays of American power.

BENSON: Secretary Bessent the other day was asked about China, and he was talking about the decoupling idea. And he said something, I’m paraphrasing, along the lines of, it’s not so much decoupling, as it is de-risking.

RICE: Yes.

BENSON: What does that mean?

RICE: Well, let me just — I think — let me start by, Secretary Bessent’s doing an amazing job, amazing job. We’re decoupling in technology. Nobody quite wants to say it. This de-risking language actually was there in the Biden administration too.

And I think it’s just a way of expressing that we can’t completely pull these two economies apart. They’re the two largest economies in the world. For more than 20 years, they have been integrating pretty fundamentally in supply chains, in manufacturing.

But, in technology we have been decoupling because people are not investing in the way that they were in Chinese technology from the United States, because nobody wants to be accused of or caught investing in a Chinese A.I. company, for instance, that turns out to be at the lead edge for the PLA and for the People’s Liberation Army.

So we are decoupling. And the Chinese are developing their own indigenous capabilities very strongly. But I assume that what he really means is, you’re not going to separate these economies totally. And so we have got to find some common ground.

We have to find some landing equilibrium where the economies can work together, even at the very high end, if at the very high end of technology, we do pull apart, and giving the United States time to change the nature of some of these supply chains that we have. It’s going to take us a while before we’re really not dependent on the Chinese on rare earth minerals.

It takes a long time to get the refining capacity. So maybe it’s a little bit of, let’s not talk about pulling these apart until we have a plan B.

BENSON: Finally, as has become something of a delightful tradition in these interviews — you’re always very generous with your time and thank you — let’s close with some sports talk.

You mentioned that you do some recruiting with Stanford football. I’m very into college football as well, a Northwestern guy, big wins for both of our teams last weekend. Excited all about that.

I do wonder — and you have talked — we have talked about this before a little bit, but the Wild West mentality right now of the portal, NIL, the money sloshing all over the place. I know Congress got involved there and then there was this lawsuit and that might bring a little bit more structure to it.

But it feels like we went from one polar extreme with this weak NCAA, but all these rules and some people breaking them, to this brave new world where it’s just like all bets are off. And it feels like we’re losing the essence of college sports to some extent.

Do you think there will be a pendulum swing back to a different equilibrium? What does that look like?

RICE: Well, the NCAA was late to the game and, as a result, we got a bunch of court cases that then set up this Wild West.

Let me start by saying, I believe NIL is fine. Kids ought to be able to benefit from their name, image and likeness. But the problem is when it gets attached to the transfer portal and it just becomes, I’m going to pay you to come play for me. And we…

BENSON: It’s mercenary.

RICE: It’s mercenary. John Calipari said the other day, the great basketball coach, that he didn’t want to be a transactional coach. He wanted to actually try to develop young people. And one season goes by and some kid comes and says, so what are you going to pay me to stay?

We need to somehow change that piece of it. And you know — Guy, you know that I’m a limited owner in the Denver Broncos. In the NFL, we have something called contracts. We have free agency at times. We have restricted free agents. But you can’t just walk up and say, oh, I think I’d rather play for the Cincinnati Bengals.

These days, we are encouraging the worst behavior in young people, 19-, 20-year-olds, to not have any dedication, any commitment to their teammates, to the program.

BENSON: What a terrible lesson.

RICE: It’s a terrible lesson.

I was on a panel after Tom Brady — and he said something very interesting. He said he was seventh on the depth chart at Michigan when he started. What do you think Tom Brady would have done under these circumstances? Maybe he would have transferred three times, given his talent.

So it’s all the wrong lessons. We can have a reasonable NIL. We can have reasonable opportunities to transfer maybe once as an undergraduate. And then, once you’re a graduate student, you’re free to do what you would do.

I can’t help but think that some of this may collapse of its own weight, that trying to judge an 18-year-old, an 18-year-old quarterback on whether or not he’s going to be a star, and therefore paying him millions of dollars and finding out, well, actually he’s not that good, I think some of this may collapse of its own weight.

BENSON: The coaches seem to hate it.

RICE: The coaches hate it. I — ultimately, I hope that the…

BENSON: The donors.

RICE: The donors — you will get donor fatigue if you keep seeing a lot of schools amass a lot of money and not do very well, which is happening with a number of them.

And, most importantly, we have to try to get back to the idea that there is something called a student athlete, because most of these kids will not end up in the NFL or in the NBA. They’re going to have to have a plan B, and a plan B ought to be your college degree. And if you go to three different schools in three years, you’re not going to have a college degree.

So, yes, I hope at least that some of it will collapse of its own weight. But we could also use national legislation, which would at least put some guardrails around this.

BENSON: So Congress.

RICE: Congress needs to do this.

I will make one final point. Whatever happens with football and basketball, we are also destroying Olympic sports and women’s sports, because they are not — quote — “revenue-generating” in the same way. And if you go back to the Paris Olympics and you asked most of those athletes, a lot of them went to American universities to apply their sport, even if they weren’t American.

And so we have to — we have had a good thing. I don’t mind making some adjustments so that kids can benefit more. But this has now become a Wild West. It’s going to kill off something that’s very special, the chance to be a student and an athlete.

BENSON: You mentioned the Denver Broncos. I’m aggrieved to bring this up because I’m a Giants fan and the guy running the board back in New York is a big Giants fan. He might shut your microphone off, actually.

(LAUGHTER)

BENSON: But we must congratulate you on an absolutely head-spinning, stunning victory yesterday.

I have never seen anything like that. I saw the score at the beginning of the fourth quarter. I was in an Uber heading to Stanford. Then I checked the final score and I said, what on earth just happened?

You’re smiling. Congratulations.

RICE: I’m smiling. My heartbeat hasn’t slowed down any from yesterday.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: It was quite something, 33 points in the fourth quarter.

But I will say this. Look, I’m obviously happy for the Broncos. We have got a lot of work to do. I heard Sean say — Sean Payton say, we have got a lot of work to do.

We don’t want to keep getting toward the edge this way. But, to you Giants fans, those young men are great to watch. I think Jaxson Dart and Skattebo are going to really serve you well for a long time. Sometimes, it just takes a little bit of time, but I am…

BENSON: And some pain.

RICE: And some pain. But I am really happy we pulled it out.

(LAUGHTER)

BENSON: On that note, Dr. Rice, what a pleasure. Thank you so much.

RICE: Great to be with you.

BENSON: It’s “The Guy Benson Show.”