Galt's Gulch

Unionization of Northwestern athletics against NCAA

Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 10 months ago to News
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The National Labor Relations Board in Chicago said that Northwestern's football team can unionize. I detest unions, but I can't say I like the NCAA either. Are the student-athletes employees or not?

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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 11 years, 10 months ago
    Detest unions too. However, college athletics is a sham. At one time it was to round out academics with athleticism and sportsmanship. Now a majority of participants don't belong in college at all. Rather college athletics is a serious $-making business, like the NFL, and these are not students, but just working/training athletes. Therein lies the interest in unionizing.
    Notice it is football, not women's lacrosse that is unionizing.
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    • Posted by Boborobdos 11 years, 10 months ago
      If individuals can gain from being in the group, the union, others will follow.

      Too bad union bosses don't represent members any better than corporate looters represent stockholders.
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  • Posted by plusaf 11 years, 10 months ago
    Local discussions here in NC, where there are tons of rabid college sports teams' followers have included the point that the teams are money-makers for the colleges and their 'payment' is in athletic scholarships and similar kinds of financial remuneration and other perqs, so why not let them be 'real employees' and have unions or whatever?

    'Walks like a duck' logic to me... sounds sensible.

    As for injuries and all the rest, if they unionize, they could/should/would damned-well write 'employment contracts' that cover that stuff!

    I think it would bring more 'transparency' to the school/team 'relationship,' too.

    Should be fun to watch as it all develops...
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  • Posted by RevJay4 11 years, 10 months ago
    Add to this decision, that the IRS has decided that "volunteer" firemen are to be considered employees of their district, though they receive no pay for their services. How will the IRS treat the players if they are members of a union for "value received" in light of this decision.
    Seems to me, the players would be taxed on that basis of value received. That would dissuade some from becoming players, so it seems to me.
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    • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 10 months ago
      The ruling about the NCAA is one I can see as possible even though I don't like it all. The decision about volunteer firemen by the IRS requires a Galtish chuckle as yet another sign of the end.
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  • Posted by RonC 11 years, 10 months ago
    NCAA is a cartel designed to protect the overall viability of college sports. Once in a while someone has to take one for the team. A few years ago it was Pete Carroll. After that it was Jim Tressell. You can throw in Penn State and Papa Joe. This is the political theatre we see on the sports page and news. It is less than 1% of the total picture, but it captivates our attention while the cartel continues to make huge amounts of money and exploit the talents of young, poorly informed athletes. It is similar in design to the Federal Reserve. It is marketed to "protect the college sports". Protect it from what? All of that TV money? or protect colleges from actually having to pay for talent and adhere to a legitimate business model? Yo decide.
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  • Posted by jimslag 11 years, 10 months ago
    One of the things I read in a comment has to do with the University could demand compensation from the athletes. In my eyes they already do. Football and Basketball brings Millions of dollars to the universities with good programs. If you look at Texas or UCLA or Ohio State or Michigan or Kansas ( I tried for different areas and sports), they bring in hundreds of millions of dollars. The schools get paid for bowl participation in football and for being in the NCAA basketball tournaments. The boosters pay another couple of millions and corporations pay to put their names on stadiums and other things. I think the universities should pay the athletes for all the money they bring into the university. However unions are another thing. I don't think the athletes want to get into paying dues and union elections or political pandering with money from those dues. If they do get paid then there is no need for scholarships for athletes, so there is a trade off.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years, 10 months ago
    Is "employment" a requirement? I believe that there are independent journeymen trades (plumbers, carpenters, electricians, etc.) that are members of unions but not necessarily "employees. Also, what about actors in the screen actors guild? Yes, they all receive some remuneration for performing their skills, but some are not in a specific identified relationship with a specific employer.

    That said, is the relationship between a student athlete and a college/university of a similar sort as that of an employer/employee? The athlete brings a specific skill set which benefits the university. The university provides something of value in return - a college education. From that relationship, it would seem that this is one similar to an employer/employee relationship.

    So, it would seem that a specific employer/employee relationship is not required to be part of a union, yet, even so, this relationship seems to hold.

    I think that the real question here is to what type of issues would union representation apply? I don't think that it should be on wages - the athletes do not receive wages. Their value received is an education. Can they expect to bargain over that education, and if so, in what capacity? How about playing conditions? I think these are going to be the critical issues. If somehow this gets to a wage payment situation I think that it will be the death knell for college sports.
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    • Posted by $ Snezzy 11 years, 10 months ago
      The athletes are not given an education, but instead are promised a piece of paper that'll say they have graduated.

      I can make pieces of paper, too. I'll print out one for one of my horses (and a fine athlete he is), "Dr. of Applied Equine Studies." One for myself, too, "Master of Fertilizer Scooping."

      My horses are Union horses, and go on strike if asked to do more than about four horse work without a break.
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      • Posted by Boborobdos 11 years, 10 months ago
        From Sneezzy: "The athletes are not given an education, but instead are promised a piece of paper that'll say they have graduated. "

        And that diminishes the degrees for all those who actually studied and earned their grade point average.

        Athletes representing schools should be paid and they should out of that pay for their education.

        That degree should be related to the sport they were apprenticing in (for the NFL or AFL). Sports science, health, management, or some such.
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      • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 10 months ago
        At my university, the athletes are actually consistently quite a bit better in the classroom than the average student. Most of them get 3.4-3.6 GPA's that would be 3.7's if they didn't have to stretch themselves quite so thinly.
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        • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years, 10 months ago
          Have any Rhodes scholars in the athletics ranks? My alma mater has had a couple. And it wasn't any Ivy League namby pamby school either.

          Not me, of course!
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          • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 10 months ago
            No Rhodes scholars, but a lot of very talented student-athletes, mostly on soccer (excuse me, football), American football, lacrosse, swim, and golf teams. This is a big reason for our increased enrollment and visibility. Excellent trade, I think.

            As an example, one of our girls' volleyball team members got a 3.5 as an undergrad. She and her now husband both did outstanding master's theses with me that helped set a foundation for the nanotech minor program I will have a webinar for on Thursday, 4/3 at 11 Eastern. They are both about to defend their Ph.D.'s at Columbia.

            To register for the webinar, go to
            https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/registe...
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            • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years, 10 months ago
              Probably be way over my head, but I just might listen in - who knows, even I might learn something.
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              • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 10 months ago
                Dear Robbie,
                It might be over your head, but I doubt it. Some of it probably will be, but most of it won't. I have learned one thing from Rush Limbaugh. The key to being an effective speaker is making the complex understandable. I am not the world's best researcher. In fact, I am not even close, but I can take a complicated subject and get people to understand it.
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    • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 10 months ago
      From what I have seen personally, the biggest concern is with regard to injuries.
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      • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years, 10 months ago
        Probably, but not from an injury per se perspective, but from an inability to derive future compensation due to injury. That is a valid concern, but it is also for other trades. It might be more reasonable to demand disability insurance.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 11 years, 10 months ago
    Ayn Rand said that labor unions might be the best hope for an institution that can bring laissez-faire capitalism. Much anti-union sentiment among conservatives is only traditionalism, not truly a capitalist theorem rooted in market reality. Remember that in _Atlas Shrugged_ Rearden Steel had a workers' union. Hank and the union steward were on the same side against the looters.

    This is a quantum leap forward. The primitive collectivist explanation has been that only Federal Reserve Notes are "money" so college athletes are "unpaid." Of course, they receive scholarships, special classes, and employment and career path counseling, mentoring, stewardship, and agency. Have you ever seen a professional sports "draft" pick who did not go to a college or university? If you watch professional American football or basketball, the announcers very often mention the school of the player on camera during the scrum or chequer or whatever they call it. In short, college sports is just a minor league for the NFL, NBA, and other professional careers. Face reality. A is A.
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    • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years, 10 months ago
      Actually, yes, occaissionally there is a draft pick that comes directly from HS or from outside the college ranks (depends on sport - some have rules against it). Granted, it is rare, but it does occur. Generally, those athletes, if they have played in any professional capacity, are considered free agents, not "draftable" athletes.
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  • Posted by Ben_C 11 years, 10 months ago
    No, they are not employees in the classic sense. They do receive "goods' for their services (scholarships, food, etc) and the possibility for a zillion dollar contract in the NFL. However, they are "temporary" not "permanet" employees. An arguement can be made that universities could demand compensation for providing the necessary job training for their next level of employment - perhpas a percentage of their contract. The NLRB is pretty much left wing antibusiness so their decision doesn't suprise me.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 11 years, 10 months ago
    I think that the ultimate end of this is to divorce athletics from education - and though I am a huge NCAAF fan, I think that it's an unfortunate but inevitable end only hastened by this ruling.

    The other thing that will be interesting, however, is the repercussions to Title IX (that mandate that said schools had to spend money on women's sports too. The side-effect of this ruling is going to be that if the sports are now going to be treated as for-profit ventures, many schools are going to use that as an out to stop offering the programs that Title IX forced them to adopt in the first place.

    Gotta love those unintended consequences.
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  • Posted by Notperfect 11 years, 10 months ago
    Is this their agenda? Recruitment like Common Core. I have always followed the NCAA in their football seasons guess what? Another fan bites the dust.
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    • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 10 months ago
      This issue is a tough call for me. The NCAA are like overlords, but I don't like unions either. So far, here at a small private university like FIT, all involved seem satisfied with the scholarship for enhanced reputation trade. I just hope it stays that way. Many faculty here thought that having a football team would be a bad idea. I wasn't sure. However, winning our first game in our first attempt really was a great catalyst for some increased endowment income. Endowment income is the one thing that is most holding us back from competing against schools like MIT and Harvard at the graduate level. We already compete at that level with regard to undergrads, but the equipment infrastructure makes a huge difference at the grad level. We have enough equipment that individual faculty can compete, but not whole programs yet.
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  • Posted by Kath 11 years, 10 months ago
    They are not employees. This decision is a bad one. But then, it's difficult for me to look past my dislike of free rides to a college degree for playing sports. How about having a vocational school for 'college' athletes, instead? This is not about education at all, and the rest of the students have to pay for it. The sports bring in money but they also spend a lot. This is more about unions wanting members than about caring about students.
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    • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years, 10 months ago
      At my university, we look at the scholarship that the athlete gets as an equal trade for the additional publicity (and booster fundraising that engenders).
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