College athletes on their way to a union.
 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Wow RT <a href="https://twitter.com/CEmmaScout">@CEmmaScout</a>: <a href="https://twitter.com/CAPAssociation">@CAPAssociation</a> wins its case at the NLRB. College athletes on their way to a union.</p>&mdash; Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapSheet/statuses/448894832455737344">March 26, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Slippery slope.

logical fallacy

So aren't college athletics already your basic labor conglomerate? The revenue sports, football mostly, basketball depending on school, basically fund the other sports that few people follow or pay to watch. Do these people realize they are about to further destroy college sports outside of football/basketball? Maybe baseball sticks around?

How will this work with Title IX?

Please don't tell me a player can sue a college for expelling them from school for unionizing.

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who knows? If they unionize as employees of the school, it becomes unclear how they would be students or how title 9 would apply at that point.

More proof that all it takes is a few dumbasses to ruin something good for everyone. Notice too that it's always the teams / players that really don't matter that do the complaining... I mean, Northwestern? Really?!?

They're discussing this on Fox right now.

This could get crazy.

You can be both a student and an employee, lots of students work part-time at a school.

Well, they are probably correct. If we want college athletes to toil away as low-paid serfs, then we have several federal labor laws we need to change.

Part of me hopes the entire thing dies.

I hope the students/players trying to unionize end up with nothing. I hope it cost them any career they might have had.

Good for them.

I would imagine at some point though, that would cause Title IX to die.

Kids being pimped for billions...good for them.

Not really. I'm guessing Title IX will limit how much the football players can get, by forcing them to share the wealth. Labor laws do not necessarily conflict with title IX, we'll probably just reach a situation where the football and basketball players are told that they can't carve their sports out, that they also have to let all the other athletes into their union.

It would still be a win for them, even if you have to pay all the women and olympic athletes an equal share, its still a lot more than what they get now.

I don't believe colleges are required by law to provide equal access to part-time employment. If what you're saying is true, it's potentially going to impact all work study programs, not just athletics.

Welp. Finally might kill the NCAA as we know it in favor of a professional college league. Maybe someone has experience running a professional football league and will step in to help.

So would there be a scenario when a D-I FBS school axes all men's sports but football and basketball just to keep the ability to offer 85 scholarships?

In case anyone is wondering, this still has a long way to go. Northwestern will appeal to the national NLRB. They will probably lose there, then they'll sue the NLRB, and slowly appeal that all the way up to the SCOTUS.

4-5 years later if they lose everywhere, then things will get interesting.

Title IX doesn't care if you call it wages, meal money, a stipend, or a scholarship. They can't pay football players more than everyone else, and labor laws will be fine with that.

If college players are employees who can unionize, what would likely happen is the school will say "look folks, we can only afford to pay you all $X. Any higher than that, and we'll just cancel sports and you can all strike. Also, Title IX requires that you get the same, so your pay is X divided by the number of athletes."

nope. They would have to offer 85 women's scholarships as well. Whether or not a student is an employee is not relevant to title ix, they only care about athletic opportunity, and that everyone gets the same compensation, however you define compensation.

Let me restate what I asked earlier: if an athlete unionizes, can he seek legal retribution once said institution decides to expel him?

Yes.

"If anyone tries to start a union, we'll fire your ass" is something that employers thought of a long, long time ago. There are very stiff penalties for that.

What could possibly go wrong?

This IS valid, but the one thing that always seems to get overlooked is that the kid is getting a free "education" from the school he/she is at. No, they won't be set up for life, but it is something to not sneeze at.

good. Now whatever happens they can at least say they were a represented stakeholder.

Membership in the NCAA is voluntary. A school could break away if they wanted. Addicted to money that NCAA and associated contracts bring.

Right, they are serfs. Serfs had no chance for improvement. College athletes are much more equivalent to apprentices, and are learning valuable life lessons, plus get personalized training in their sport. Go price out the cost of a full time personal trainer and get back to us. Add in room/board/tuition/books, and a future that has considerably more earning potential simply from getting a degree.

They get a free education worth 100k+ it's their own fault if they don't take advantage of it. They get to party,bang hot college chick and be treated like campus heroes while getting to play a game.

They also get a free internship/audition for the career lotto where they can make more money in 1 year than most people do in a lifetime.

serfs my ass

Let's just stop pretending college ball is amateur sport.

So receiving a scholarship => classifies you as an employee?

The value of that education is less than the fair market value of their labor.

If it isn't, the school can easily say "we're not paying" and cancel sports.

Do you REALLY think they are going to do that? A few might, but not many.

Seems to me that this path could lead initially to a tiered semi-professional football system that to maximize profit will separate from the NCAA and from the colleges as the players and league chase top dollar. From there some would thrive, some would survive and some won't last long at all.
Colleges do have the benefit of existing infrastructure and branding at the cost of sharing the potential wealth available to players.
Semi-Pro leagues would have the benefit of maximizing the football player's return on his value. In my experience, this is generally the direction people go.
Ultimately if this happened then players, instead of being Student-Athletes receiving an education and playing for a storied program, would be professional football players legally unaffiliated with the university. Why would they stay and concede top $ to other sports?

I don't think that's true at every school. Not every school is making millions on their football or basketball program.

The NLRB is a pro-union entity that won't rule against the workers and has only gotten more progressive since the Black King was elected.

This is nonsense-what until they are locked out and try to strike! LOL

I think the schools will ultimately still have way more leverage.

Nope. Most scholarships are just free money

Having a set hours per week to work for the university, a work place to report to on time, a boss who you have to obey, and the fact that keeping your scholarship often depends on your performance, does make you an employee.

And at those schools, the wage is going to be less. The best employers who pay the most also can be picky and hire only the best employees in the real world.

Right ...but your Union status and your admission status are exclusive to each other at this time.

Also...I think that'll they'll have to be students to play there...and then why would you give them a scholarship? They'll just end-up paying that money back to the University. And Athletes can cost way more to house than a normal student.

By the way, we can easily pass a law carving out a "college athlete exception", declaring that student athletes are not employees and the schools are under no obligation to pay them.

That is something the congress CAN do, and I'm not necessarily opposed to that, I'm not sure how I feel about passing that kind of law.

But this silly fiction we currently live in where we all pretend that college athletes are not employees and that their scholarship is enough is crap. If we want college athletes to not be paid, then we need to explicitly make that clear in our laws.

Not a good idea IMO.

I know people want to point to kids not getting paid for playing for a school that is cashing huge checks for their performances...but that's bullshit.

Players are paid in scholarships and lots of other ways not shown in their bank accounts.

This is gonna be a game changer.

If your eligibility to work requires that you be a student in good standing in the school, thats fine. The union will probably require that student-athletes be expelled (and therefore fired) only for cause and have some kind of appeal process for that. Students at most schools can appeal expulsions now anyway.

yeah...and as ollie said...it's a way down th road and then it gets interesting after all the procedures have run their course.

Another thing that sticks out too...is oh....you have an income now....we're gonna need you to pay income tax.

I don't think the idea that a scholarship is enough is crap. Seems to me there's stories every day about kids being saddled with 20 years of crippling student loan debt.
If athletes can get money, good for them. But the idea that they're receiving a pittance is laughable.

yep.

Same as students who work part time for a school in the library or cafeteria, they also file taxes.

At the very least, I'm getting sick of people who bitch about pros getting paid too much as a reason why college athletics are a better product.

The NCAA has demonstrated that it can be every bit as corrupt and greedy as the NFL, NBA, or MLB. Time and time again.

Let's at least remove the veil and show people that the two products MIGHT have been different in the 1970s or 1980s, but not anymore.

"So does this include the gymnastics and karate teams?"

If they represent the university as an official team and not just a student-run club, then yes.

The universities won't be paying for the ultimate frisbee teams.

Man I loved ultimate friz...

@GottliebShow: There are exactly zero College football players who spend 60 hours a week on football, unless you count video games

If I had to guess, presuming they lose in court, I'd say its at least 50/50 that congress might step in and reverse this.

I find your last paragraph extremely debatable. They are not only getting a free education worth thousands and thousands of dollars to schools that the majority of them wouldn't get into if they didn't play sports but they're also getting a lifetime of that benefit. Forty years of higher wages due to a degree from a top notch university for playing sports is a huge deal.

I also don't see why the NCAA can't institute wage controls to ensure fair competition in recruiting.

If a player is deciding between staying close to home at the University of North Dakota but also has an offer from the University of Alabama, the money shouldn't be the deciding factor. The NCAA can take measures to regulate that.

I agree. And that scholarship should now be considered income and thereofre be taxed. How does Obamacare work in this situation:D

Bad precedent imo. It flips College Football on its end on how to build a team, allows a further ability to pay off and corrupt to sway unions and players towards a contract negotiation, etc. I don't see the benefit of allowing 18 year old kids (Yes, they're kids) the power to mass strike leading to a drop in quality of sport, scabs replacing the players, just overall ugly precedent in so many ways bringing out bad decisions all for the sake of money. It always corrupts absolutely.

Probably true but I shudder at the thought of more nc2a regulation...

A scholarship that...at least at Virginia Tech ...weight room, books, classes, room, food(as in a dining hall only for athletes attached to their dorm), and a monthly stipend.

If the scholarship is considered compensation, it is already lop-sided.
Education at the University of Michigan has got to be a lot higher than Idaho State

I think the only way this works out positively is if scholarships for Div 1 football is lowered to 50 or 60.. spreads the athletes to other schools when a lot of them might be content with being depth at Alabama or Oregon.

But my guess is schools would opt to kill every men's sport but football and probably take a handful of scholarships from basketball just to fulfill Title IX and have 85 guys on football scholies.

I think maybe some of the actual benefits will be that kids might have a grievance process if their scholarship is ripped for some reason. Or maybe if they think they're being disciplined unfairly.
Pay aside I would like it if the kids had more say NCAA-wide regardling eligibility, suspensions, transfers, etc.

The NCAA could, but they won't, because then the power conferences would leave the NCAA and form their own club.

The value of the education is less than the fair market value of their labor? :rolleyes:

How much does someone earn over their entire lifetime if they get a college degree and find a job working in their chosen field?

I hope this goes through and these athletes are now treated like employees. Do away with their scholarships and pay them a salary. They will be required to pay for all of their expenses. All of the perks they recieve now will no longer be provided for free.

Doing bad in a class and need help--Hire your own tutor.
Enjoy paying taxes on the salary you are paid.
Tuition and books are now your responsibility.
Room and board is now your responsibility.
Food is now your responsibility.
If I'm the school, I also put in place a stict attendance policy. If you feel like you don't need to show up for class, guess what as your employer I can fire you for poor job performance.
Get a DUI--**** you you're fired.

When the athletes for a power school provide over a hundred million dollars of value to that school, you can't just automatically point to the scholarship and declare it to be enough, that is not fair. Most of the time, the athlete can probably take out loans anyway, so we're just talking about the present value of those loans, not the value of the education.

This needs to happen. **** the NCAA

If they want to go to school, they can, they just have to take out loans like the rest of us.

You can't throw the value of the education on the scale, thats available to them whether they are an athlete or not. The only thing you have on the athlete's side of the scale is the cost of the loans. On a typical power school's side of the scale you have a huge amount of money, and you are calling it even.

You can't just dismiss the free education aspect of all of this. If used properly, that is something that will earn you money every year for the rest of your life.

as soon as that happens then you can forget about NCAA tourney as shit


once the governing body goes then the big schools won't give a shit about the small ones. The smalls schools might as well get rid of their athletic dept. all together.

Do we really need another professional football league?

That or the NAIA is about to be tripled in size.

Game changer no doubt. The successful programs will be the ones with the deepest pockets. Imagine if Peyton Manning decided not to go to the NFL cuz Tennessee offered him more to stay. Wonder if there will be a cap or ceiling as to what they can be paid? The bidding wars for high school athletes could be ridiculous, with the top players doing the LeBron on ESPN. This is gonna be crazy.

I can, because the school is not providing an education to someone who is unable to get an education. They are providing money, in the form of a scholarship. If you want to go to school, you can go to school, you may have to fill out a FAFSA and work part-time.

Even in those situations where someone gets into Stanford who otherwise would not have been admitted, they still would have bneen able to go to a State U, and we're now talking about the marginal difference between those two type of schools, for a few athletes.

So do they get workers comp if they sprain their ankle?

It would be interesting to see where top recruits go. Would universities in right to work states be at a disadvantage?

or pass a law.

If we can't, then the people through their representatives will have signed off on another pro league.

The NCAA is an outdated and bloated beauracracy

If they end up getting paid it won't be that much. Overall the students need the schools more than the schools need the kids, in my opinion.
If schools started cancelling scholarships a lot of these kids would be saying no thanks pretty quick.
But from what I've read the students that started this have been saying it's not about money. They want representation regarding practice time, travel, etc.
And I can understand that.

Meh. More than half of America voted in people who decided that Americans have no right to not purchase a product if they so desired.

Yeah, their demands right now are pretty modest. I think most of us are looking way down the road when the students look around and go "hey this $7,000 stipend and free medical is nice, but I think we're worth more".

Unions and management always reach an equilibrium where the company is not willing to pay more, and once schools start competing against each other I think the leverage will come down.

Players will sue for money made on their likeness and jerseys for the popular sports outside of the standard equal pay athletes get. Womens sports do not generate money simple as that. This will be a cluster**** beyond all cluster****s. Shit will take decades.

I can see why he says IX will have to change or go away. Each college is basically a different company. Each sport should be a different department/branch. Different pay scales as long as their is a minimum. Of course I think they should do away with athletic scholarships then also.

The landscape will be changing..