Let’s start by dispelling this notion that college athletics once was this humble little enterprise that began to spin horribly out of control only with the rise of rogue Camaro dealers in the footprint of the Southwest Conference and school presidents who talked about academics one minute and 12-game schedules and 9 p.m. Thursday kickoffs the next.
Do you know why the NCAA got started? Cheating. In the Harvard-Yale regatta. In the 1850s.
It turns out the institutions of the highest learning, the members of the perceived academics-first, athletics-whenever Ivy League, cheated in rowing events. The Harvard-Yale regatta once was sponsored by the powerful Elkins Railroad Line, and Harvard sought an advantage by using a coxswain who wasn’t a student.
In “A Brief History of the NCAA’s Role in Regulating College Athletics,” it’s noted that Harvard president Charles Eliot bemoaned the commercialization of college athletics, saying, “lofty gate receipts from college athletics had turned amateur contests into major commercial spectacles.”
This was in the late 19th century. What would Eliot think of the SEC in 2014, where 11 of 14 football coaches are making over $3 million per season and the conference has TV deals with ESPN and CBS worth over $3 billion (and is starting its own TV network). Can we safely assume this qualifies as a “major commercial spectacle”?
The NCAA lost a whopper of a legal battle Wednesday. The NLRB’s Chicago district ruled that Northwestern football players can form a union. Legal translation: Northwestern is not a university but an employer; players are not student-athletes but employees and can unionize.
First thought: Northwestern finished 1-7 in the Big Ten last season. If the players wish to form a union, have at it. Until they learn how to tackle, nobody will confuse them with the Teamsters.
In the short term, the NLRB’s decision means nothing. It will be appealed at multiple levels, from the NLRB’s national office to the Double-A and Triple-A of the legal system, and ultimately to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
Realistically, there are myriad financial and logistical reasons why college athletes probably never will be recognized as true employees. That path likely would bring an end to college athletics altogether. I’ll get back to that shortly.
However, there will be ramifications from this decision. It will, in combination with other pending antitrust suits against the NCAA, ultimately lead to college athletes being compensated beyond their scholarships. As it should.
Paying athletes is long overdue. There was a time when I vehemently opposed college athletes being paid. But that was before college presidents approved 12-game schedules, weeknight kickoffs, morning kickoffs, kickoffs on any other day and at any time, as long as the checks cashed. Scholarships alone were fine before decisions were made with revenue, not athletes, in mind.
The NCAA being a not-for-profit enterprise was a cute idea. It just never has been real. It’s a multibillion-dollar enterprise that morphed from petty crimes to over-the-top corruption. The NCAA long denied profiting off an athlete’s likeness until somebody discovered that typing the name of a famous player into a search window on the NCAA’s website brought you to an online store for that player’s jersey.
The Ed O’Bannon class-action lawsuit is scheduled to begin in June. O’Bannon, a former UCLA basketball player, is suing the NCAA for unlawful use of his name, likeness and image. It’s notable that Electronic Arts, the video-game manufacturer, and Collegiate Licensing Company aren’t part of the suit because they’ve settled for $40 million.
I’m not a lawyer, but I believe that’s called bad foreshadowing.
Two weeks ago, in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, four college football players, including Clemson defensive back Martin Jenkins, from Roswell and Centennial High, filed a class-action suit against the NCAA and the five major conferences (SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12). The ultimate objective: players being paid.
It’s going to happen. College athletes should, at the very least, get compensated for all revenue from their likeness (jerseys, video games, etc.). They should get a cut of TV deals. There are issues that need to be resolved, like whether the compensation is equal among all sports and how a system can remain Title IX compliant. But these are workable issues that college presidents have refused to address.
The NCAA’s argument that the value of the scholarship should suffice as compensation blew up the moment its member institutions altered the landscape. Athletic departments seldom operate as part of universities any more. They operate as corporations.
When schools pay coaches seven-digit contracts and build Valhallas for athletic facilities, while at the same time laying off professors, it’s not about amateur athletics any more.
The union thing? Not happening. Actually, it’s not something the athletes should want to pursue.
If they’re recognized as employees and form a union, that will lead to collective bargaining. Would athletes from Alabama and Cal Poly Pomona go to the bargaining table with the same objectives?
Employees get paid. Employees also can get fired. On the spot.
Employees in professional athletics can be traded. Would the Northwestern quarterback understand if coach Pat Fitzgerald wanted to start the rebuilding process in December and traded him to a Sun Belt team … for a kicker?
Employees get taxed. Are you ready for that, Mr. Wildcat?
Unions mean insurance and pension plans and disability and workman’s compensation. Do you have any idea how much that would cost a university for every athlete? It would mean the end of college athletics.
Unions mean strikes. Imagine that threat during Georgia-Florida week.
In his book, “Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes,” Walter Byers wrote that the NCAA is “preoccupied with tightening a few loose bolts in a worn machine, firmly committed to the neo-plantation belief that the enormous proceeds from college games belong to the overseers (administrators) and supervisors (coaches).”
Byers used to be the NCAA’s executive director. He turned. The NCAA needs to do the same and take this loss as a hint.
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