College Athletes Can Unionize

The Game Room
141

This sounds to me like a rationalization.

More likely the school is spending the money because:

– Multiple trustees and top administrators are sports fans.

– Administrators fear the unknowable hit to alumni giving which would occur if sports stopped being given special treatment as compared to other extracurricular activities.

I don’t believe it, but let’s just say for sake of argument that football is every bit as valuable as any other field of study. Then when coaches come up with a new way to keep the sequence of plays from becoming predictable, they are obligated to publish it as promptly as possible, consistent with peer review. Knowledge kept secret from footballists at other universities – whose players have just as much right to make the NFL as yours – goes against the fundamental purpose of advancing knowledge.

Maybe you are thinking that the real purpose of a university should be to help a few students make a lot of money, with advancement of knowledge (or what happens to the average student) less important. If so, what about the theater department? Doesn’t Bruce Willis (failed to graduate from from Montclair State) have higher lifetime earnings than any football player who ever went on the NFL after failing to graduate? If all we care about is the ability to help a tiny group to make big bucks, the theater professor/chair/director should be making even more than the head coach!

So should theater students get to unionize? Well, if they are receiving a scholarship, which they will lose should they switch from theater to football, yes. However, because of the need to get workman’s compensation for injuries, obtaining normal labor protections for the football players would still be more important.

142

Schools have a big bargaining chip when it comes to negotiating with their player unions. They can always threaten to de-emphasize the sport and eliminate scholarships altogether. The fact that neither party wants this poison pill is what will help keep negotiations realistic; nobody wants to kill the golden goose.

The root problems are mostly about control. The schools have been controlling far too much of the scholarship athlete’s life while paying far too little for the privilege. All in the name of on field competitiveness. This is the part where they’re going to lose. Northwestern’s players will be bargaining for it but Kessler and others will be suing for it and the lawsuits will never stop coming until the schools give up a big chunk of their control over their athletes.

The schools are being really stupid here. They should be out front organizing things in a palatable way for all parties instead of letting the courts declare it the wild wild west. One of the controls they’ll be forced to surrender is the outside income of the players; they should be preparing for the new order of things instead of fighting this inevitability.

143

I was listening to “Wait! Wait! Don’t tell me!” on NPR this morning, and the host quipped that football is the perfect symbol for unionization: short bursts of activity, interspersed with long periods of big guys standing around doing nothing.

I’m a lefty who strongly supports the principle of unionization and is a union member, but i thought that was pretty funny.

144

For all this talk about schools losing money at sports, it should be borne in mind that these are in large degree paper losses. The university “charges” the athletic department full freight for its athletic scholarships.

But reality is, that if the athletic program shut down tomorrow, the university would not be able to replace its athletes with an equal number of students paying full freight, because there is a large amount of income-based and merit-based discounting. if you charge scholarships at their true marginal cost, athletic programs lose a lot less money, or in many cases turn around and make money.

145

I have read this thread and I have been amazed at some of the comments, and how out of touch some folks really are to the finances of today’s college athletics.

The idea of a full scholarship and free education for playing any sport sounds great on paper, and quite frankly it is for the vast majority of sports. However, this isn’t about the swim team or volleyball team. This is about men’s football and basketball. So let’s separate these two out for now as they are the true focus of this whole thing.

At one time, the idea that a kid could get a free education for playing football or basketball for a university seemed like a great trade. And it was. But the landscape has changed drastically, and money is driving this debate. We all know it.

The NCAA is going to lose this fight. And they are going to lose big. The best thing for them to do is to try to get out in front of this and figure out a compensation program that puts them in the driver’s seat. I think we can all agree that it would be better for the NCAA to come up with a number, instead of letting a judge, court, or the government setting the amount for them.

Right now, the NCAA is thinking like it is still the 1950’s. It’s not. And too bad for them, but the reality is that they are going to have to share the money generated by football and basketball programs to the kids who make the money. The players.

It is hardly fair for a coach to be able to pull in $3-5 MM, not to mention the side deals for shoes and athletic gear, while the players get only tuition, room and board. Although this is nice, (and it is worth more at some schools than at others), at the end of the day it is peanuts compared to what the NCAA and its member schools are pulling in at every turn. TV revenue is the biggest piece of the pie, but not the only. Ticket sales, merchandise sales, parking, food and beverage sales are also a part of it. Not to mention the increase of tuition for the non-athletes, who are paying more each year to go to a school that has a great football or basketball program. Name recognition often is equated with the quality of education at the school, and whether or not this is true in actuality, it doesn’t matter. Perception is what matters.

The other thing is this: At the Division I level (I know that’s not what it’s called now, but screw it, that’s what everyone knows it as), the football and basketball programs have turned into the minor league feeder system for the NFL and NBA. This is the reality of things.

If you think of it on these terms, paying players starts to make sense. Think about it. A kid who is a 5-star baseball prospect gets drafted right out of high school and enters a team’s farm system. He isn’t going to college, he isn’t taking classes. His job is to play baseball. His dream is to play in the major leagues some day. For most of these kids, the dream bubble bursts, and they go into the world to figure out what to do with their lives. Some of these kids go back to school, to earn a degree. They become a student.

Why should we look at college football and basketball differently? They are 1 to 4 year minor leagues for kids who have the talent to play at the next level. They aren’t there to go to school. Many kids are there to play football and basketball and that’s it. This is their own minor league. If they don’t make it (and the vast majority don’t), guess what? They are just like that baseball player who suddenly realizes the MLB dream is over.

So, what is going to happen? I don’t know. But the landscape is going to change radically.

First, not all kids on athletic scholarships will get paid. And they shouldn’t. A team that does not bring revenue into the school is not going to get a piece of the cash pie for salaries that football and basketball players do. A kid on the swim team or gymnastics team or wrestling team is not going to see any extra cash. they are not part of a revenue generating sport, so they get no money. They DO get a scholarship, and they have a chance to earn a degree at a school in exchange for their sweat and hard work. They should take advantage of what they’ve been given. If they don’t, it’s on them.

However, each student/athlete who plays for a school SHOULD receive health insurance, and be covered for their entire stay at that school. If they suffer a catastrophic injury, they should be cared for for as long as it takes, including beyond their 4 year scholarship commitment. Schools should also not be permitted to pull a scholarship from a kid who gets hurt. If a kid is injured while playing or practicing the sport that he’s getting the free ride for, he should not have to worry about losing his scholarship and the ability to finish school. That happens now and it is not right.

I am talking about ALL sports here, not just men’s basketball and football. and this protection will be required if the players are deemed employees of the university.

A lot will change for the players, too. That free ride? It will be taxable income. Everything the kids get now for free will be added up, and they will receive a tax bill at some point, whether it be each year or deferred is something that the bean counters can work on. I personally have no problem deferring the taxes due on an athletic scholarship until say 6 months after a kid graduates, just like a student loan payment.

I also think that it is time the NFL and NBA to get involved in paying the schools for providing them the minor league system that has not cost them a dime up until now. MLB and the NHL both have minor league systems that are paid for by the parent club, and manage kids who are 18 and up until they either flame out or make the majors. Why shouldn’t the NFL and NBA pay something to the NCAA member schools who provide the exact same service?

It will happen. Not right away, but as part of this change, the NCAA will be seeking to supplement the lost income to its student athletes, and this is one place they haven’t tried tapping as of yet.

This will open up cans all over the place, many which haven’t even been thought about yet.

But in my opinion, a kid with the ability to play at a D-I school should have some options. For instance, instead of a scholarship where the kid is supposed to act like a student, why not let the kid just play football or basketball and stop the embarrassing notion of student/athletes? Just this month, on HBO’s Real Sports, they did a story about UNC, and some of the football players there. A few of them couldn’t read. One player had Dr. Seuss books under his bed, so he could practice reading “A Cat In The Hat” and other classics. The schools all have a “General Studies” major, or “African-American studies” or some other bogus major that provides these kids with the diploma, but doesn’t require them to attend classes or even read. it’s pathetic. If a kid wants to play a sport, and doesn’t want to take advantage of the educational opportunity put in front of him, I say let him. At least the lies will stop, and when 95% of these kids don’t even sniff the next level of their sport, they will have to figure out where to go in life.

How is that any different than a kid chasing his baseball or hockey dream? It isn’t. And until the NFL and NBA are forced to create a minor league system, they will have to figure out a way to use the current one. The current system is the colleges, and the money these kids generate is real. Let them have a piece of what would not even exist without them.

Another point. The NCAA is a corrupt, greedy institution that is beyond its expiration date. How can they permit Texas A&M, for example, to sell and profit from Johnny Manziel jerseys, but not allow the kid to make money by signing autographs? It’s absurd. If Johnny Football was signing those autographs for sale, and instead the NCAA got all the money, you can bet the NCAA would buy that kid as many Sharpies as he could empty. But since the NCAA doesn’t get the cash, the answer is no.

I haven’t thought everything through, as I’m sure my post shows. However, it is time to recognize the kids as employees who generate millions and millions of dollars to their schools, and they should be compensated for it.

146

Again, I agree that they deserve health insurance and for the scholarship to cover 4 years. However, these kids want to be treated like every other student, I say: pay tuition like everyone else! Don’t like it, well it’s your bed, lie in it!

147

No, they don’t want to be treated like every other student. They want to be treated as what they are, which are professional athletes.

I don’t know what you do for a living, but your employer is not allowed to get together with every other employer in your industry, and decide as a cartel what to pay you. They don’t get to say, “Don’t like it, well it’s your bed, lie in it!” It’s ILLEGAL. It should also be illegal in revenue-generating college sports.

148

I think it’s really about football alone. It makes so much more money than any other sport that there is simply no comparison. And at this point the balance of money and power and compensation is so far out of wack that it can’t last anymore. Teenage players (most of whom will never have a shot at going pro and making money at their sport) are getting tuition and an education of limited value while schools, athletic directors, and coaches can make millions and millions. And schools and coaches are free to pursue their own interest and cash in while the students get no money from the use of their likenesses and their “benefits” are policed in picayune and crazy ways. I have some concerns about what it’s going to look like if NCAA athletes are simply paid (I think it’d be great for the big programs and a big problem for everyone else), but they deserve more power and more of a share of the reward their sports bring in.

That’s not even close to true, and this error is why people think it’s OK not to pay these students - because they think they’re about to go to the NBA or the NFL and cash in. There are about 120 Division I (FBS) schools in football and about 350 in basketball. Do the math and you’ll see that only a tiny minority of players - most of them concentrated among a few major conferences - will go pro.

149

You aren’t disagreeing with him.

The NFL is using college football as its minor league. The fact that only a tiny minority of players will go pro is of no concern to the NFL, nor does it hinder its effectiveness (for the NFL) as a feeder system.

The NBA has explicit rules exploiting the college system for free promotion and development. They literally have colluded and will not allow a team to hire a young player who has not completed his freshman year of college, even if that team would like to hire him.

The NFL and NBA should be paying college athletes. College athletes should be getting a cut of profits they generate, and be allowed to earn money in other ways. Students should not be paying them out of their tuition and fees.

150

And most of them recognize that, and, HORROR, actually go to real classes, and graduate!

Here’s my solution: D-1 football split off, build their own stadiums, do what they will with their athletes, and leave the rest of us alone.

151

You say they deserve it, but you want to deny them they only realistic mechanism for them to get it.

Every non-athlete student does not pay tuition.

It’s common for a non-athlete with good grades and impressive extra-curricular success to be offered an undergraduate free ride at their insurance school. With PhD students, it is the norm. Only the athletes (and some graduate students required to teach*) are put in a situation where they lose their free education unless they do a job tied to it. And only the athletes are required to do a dangerous job in order to keep their free ride.

  • And a minority of them. Often it is the stipend that is tied to the TA work, not the tuition waiver.
152

Yeah, the people you’re talking about get that ride because they contribute to the mission of a university!

And the mechanism to get it is to add to what a scholarship covers!

153

No. It’s football and men’s basketball. Men’s basketball is a 30+ game season, tv revenue for pre-season, non-conference, conference, and March madness are all huge money makers. You can’t toss it aside and say “it’s just football” unless you have numbers to back it up.

As far as what it is going to look like, I don’t think anyone knows yet. Will a big school be able to pay more than a small school? I don’t see how that would work. Each division 1 team would have to have the same player pay scale, or you’d have an arms race where rich schools would pay for the best players money could buy. That cannot work the way the system is set up now. But if each school had to pay each player X dollars, then it wouldn’t matter if the kid went to Stanford or San Diego State.

Sorry, Marley, it IS true. You are wrong. There is no error in my thinking. Just because 99% of players in college never make the pros doesn’t mean that the colleges are not the feeder system for the NFL. Where else, exactly, does the NFL draft kids from, anyway? All of the minor league football teams in the country?
Same with the NBA. When the draft comes every year, either a kid comes froma college, or maybe an overseas team or league. Either way, the NBA has no minor league they pump money into.

How many kids do you think make it from draft pick to starter on a major league baseball team? The percentages are less than 5%. And THAT kid doesn’t have a college education to fall back on if he goes to the pros out of high school. But every year, the major league baseball draft goes until teams are done picking, which means that each year, they can take as many kids as they want. Look it up. Why? Because they need to replentish their farm teams with bodies from kids that don’t make it. I have a good friend feom high school drafted by a major league team. He was the single best player I ever saw in high school and he went in the 14th round. He was in the minors for 5 years, got to Double AA, and blew out his arm. His career was over at 23. No college scholarship to fall back on. So, he had to pay for college on his own, like the rest of us non-premium athetic people. He could have gone to college, but his dream was to play baseball, not play baseball and study something.

Look at your own favorite baseball team and check to see how many actually came up through that team’s farm team. Go back and add up the draft pics in MLB each uear, and how many people are actually in the big leagues, and see how many kids actually break in each year. It is an incredibly small number. The players in the pros are the elite of elite athletes. And once they are there and they establish themselves, they can stay for years.

The NFL and NBA use the colleges for their minor leagues. The process weeds kids out.
The only difference is the NBA can snag people from overseas as well as colleges.

Don"t tell me the D leauge is a feeder system. It’s as useful as Arena football. The exception makes it through, but most people come straight from college.

So, substitute Alabama football for the Yankees minor league system. Each one gets players prepared for the pros. How is the college system different than the farm system? Oh yeah. In baseball and hockey, the teams pay for the player development. In the NFL and NBA, the colleges do. Other than that, a feeder system is a feeder system.

I guess the other difference is that Alabama doesn’t care what team takes their kids. But they love it when kids are in the NFL. That helps recruiting.

154

The NFL has the same rules except it’s three years instead of one.

No, the schools should. The NFL and NBA don’t make money from these athletes.

They have their own stadiums. What are you talking about?

They don’t really contribute to the mission, however you might define that. They help the school raise money.

There’s money in basketball, sure, but football does make far more money. Look at what happened to the Big East. The NCAA brought in about $900 million from basketball last year. The 10 biggest football schools made almost as much.

Then we’re just having a disagreement about wording. The leagues use the NCAA that way; the schools don’t exist for that purpose. So these issues are not just significant to future professional athletes.

The NBA is trying to make the D-League into a true minor league. They’ll probably get there in time.

155

If players want to be pro athletes, they should be forbidden from using campus stadiums.

156

Oh, of course they spend every dime. You don’t spend it, you lose it. But, if Barack can make ends meet on $400,000 plus, what, $150,000 in expenses, why does the head coach at a state university like East Carolina (is East Carolina even a state?) need to make twice that? The answer, my friend, is they have to do something with it, or they’ll lose it. If by paying Ruffin McNeill better than a cool million a year, the AD doesn’t have to worry about dealing with management issues, it is worth it. Particularly if they have the money coming in on their TV contracts to cover it. And, if Ruffin is getting better than one mil, you bet ol’ Nick Saban isn’t going to be satisfied with a measly 4 times that.

But, if the NCAA would force these guys to get reasonable salaries, it would force the money to go to lower overall educational costs. Then if ESPN wanted to pay the SEC $4 billion for broadcasting rights, that money would be used to better education, not build castles for the elite. If a major university’s head coach only made $400,000 a year, that would not kill college football; I think it would make it much more competitive.

The only other option is to let the guys who earn the money keep it. That would kill college football, since it no longer would be college football, it would be NFL farm teams, as has been discussed.

157

Well, not exactly, although yes, football is bringing in more money. The article about NCAA basketball speaks to them making $912.8 MM, And project it to make over $1 Billion next year. The football article states the top ten schools made $759.4 MM. That’s over a $150 MM difference.

I’m not arguing that you are wrong about football being the bigger money maker. It is. But a billion dollars is not chump change and it certainly won’t be ignored. A billion dollars goes a long way.

I agree that the schools don’t exist for that purpose. But they are being used that way.

And because money has gone through the roof, it has changed the equation. You just can’t ignore the billions of dollars coming into the NCAA schools each year and saying that things should remain the same. If that’s the case, roll bqck coaching salaries to pre-1970 levels. Or at the very least, don’t permit a head coach to make more than the highest paid professor at the University. Or maybe a dean. But a college coach at a big school almost always makes seven figures, often multiple millions. That’s not fair. Without the great players, the coach is worth much less.

And remember, the thing that draws that 5-star recruit to Alabama or Oklahoma over Stanford or Vanderbilt (or even Harvard) is their football program, not the academics. I’d wager not two in ten kids picks the school he’s going to play football or basketball for on the reputation of the academics at the university, but on the reputation of the football or basketball coach and the program, and how his chances of going pro will increase if he is a success at that program.

158

About the D-league,

The NBA isn’t looking to make that a minor league. I know that’s something they say to make it sound appealing, but the real reason the D-league exists is to give a few players that are thought to have NBA talent a place to go that keeps them under a teams control, instead of losing them overseas. Every once in a while, a player makes the jump from D-league to the NBA, but I can’t honestly think of one D-league player to come to the NBA in the last 5 years. I’m sure someone did it, but considering the league has only two rounds of drafting, they don’t have much room on their teams for projects.

The D-league is a minor league as much as the WNBA is a professional league. Which is to say, not exactly.

159

Those two goals aren’t mutually exclusive, but yes, they do want to make it a full minor league.

160

What bigotry? I simply don’t find it a convincing argument that some schools won’t be able to afford good players over others. I dunno where you got the bigotry from.

As to your second issue, the status quo does not put all of the athletes best interests in mind. The football and basketball players obviously have millions of dollars stolen from them. If your argument is that those millions goes to pay the badminton team or the chemistry department, then I find that unconvincing. There should be a way to minimize the harm done to the men’s football/basketball sports and spread out the damage from those sports to a more even spread.