The Chicago district of the National Labor Relations Board ruled yesterday that Northwestern football players qualify as employees of the university and can unionize.
This has the potential of being a HUGE game-changer in collegiate athletics.
If the student-athletes are able to withstand future legal challenges from universities and the NCAA itself, then those athletes will be able to command the following: suitable working conditions, appropriate times for practices, and most of all MONEY. The working conditions could be anything from clean training facilities (see the mess at Grambling State University), to tricked out locker rooms. Look at the common denominator in the recruiting arms race in collegiate athletics: flashy, tricked out facilities. Check out Oregon’s and Florida State’s facilities (newly built or planned) to get an idea. Simply put, if a school’s facilities are not up to snuff, it’s getting left in the dust on the recruiting trail.
Remember those instances at Michigan and Ohio State when they got popped for too many practices a few years back? Could you imagine unionized student-athletes bitching about having to practice too much, and not allowing for a life outside of athletics? Seems far-fetched I know, but you never know.
And of course there is the issue of student-athletes getting paid. I have been on record of being staunchly against those young people getting paid. Student-athletes have the type of perks that average college students would give an arm and a leg for – free room and board, access to the best training facilities, better medical care, better dining hall facilities (and food), better living quarters, and – most importantly – access to the best coeds. As a guy who had part-time jobs in college in order to pay for books and dates, I think that student-athletes get what the need – if not more – from the universities they attend. Otherwise an inner-city kid, for example, would not be able to attend an institution such as Stanford, Duke, and Michigan.
As for the universities, I think this is potentially bad for colleges everyone.
Most colleges barely break even with their athletics budgets as it is. If colleges start paying football and basketball players, what about the baseball, lacrosse and volleyball players? What about women’s sports? You think the Title IX would be licking their chops over this? Those colleges that barely break even would pull a Maryland and go broke.
This would also create a bigger gap between the “power conferences” (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC) and the “lesser ones”. You think St. Bonaventure and the like could compete with the likes of Duke, Louisville, Ohio State, Syracuse and Florida for basketball recruits? Good luck with that one.
All of that said, I think the NCAA needs to blow itself up and start the hell over. It has some of the silliest rules I have ever seen – remember when some kids got popped for eating too much pasta at a graduation banquet? Deadspin has a list of some of those stupid-ass violations. Here is a snippet:
FOOTBALL
Feb. 1, 2012
Violation: Assistant coach Bruce Kittle sent congratulatory text to a student-athlete who had signed with OU.
Feb. 1, 2012
Violation: Assistant coach Cale Gundy sent two congratulatory text messages to a student-athlete who had signed with OU.
May 14, 2012
Violation: Assistant coach Jackie Shipp sent a text message to a recruit who was a junior at the time.
Sept. 12, 2012
Violation: Assistant coach Bruce Kittle sent contact information for one recruit to another recruit, who was a junior at the time, when he meant to send it to assistant coach Josh Heupel. Resolution: For the four violations above, the football staff was precluded from having any written or telephone contact with recruits for two weeks and Kittle, Gundy and Shipp were provided detailed rules education. Contact for the three assistants involved was self-imposed. The NCAA expanded the noncontact period to the whole staff.
Nice job NCAA.
At any rate, couple student-athletes being able to unionize with the on-going Ed O’Bannon lawsuit, the NCAA is entering precarious times. What happens to the NCAA the rest of the way will be “must-see TV”…
Categories: college basketball, college football, college sports
Leave a Reply