Posted on 07/24/2014 7:36:04 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
The efforts of Northwestern University’s scholarship football players to unionize could have profound implications for the future of college education. northwestern university football
According to the Associated Press, Northwestern University just filed a 60-page brief with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, D.C. This comes after a regional director of the NLRB ruled this past spring that “football players who receive full scholarships to the Big Ten school qualify as employees under federal law and therefore can unionize.”
If the decision of the regional director is upheld, the framework between the players and the university would be redefined from one of a student-athlete orientation to an employer-employee configuration. This would fundamentally alter the operation of student athletics in an unprecedented fashion.
To treat college athletes as employees who have chosen to attend that university specifically to pursue an athletic, vocational mission would inflict great damage to the “student-athlete” paradigm that has guided administration within the realm of university athletics. Indeed, in Northwestern’s brief that was filed for the regional hearing, the University makes it clear that its current philosophy with respect to the “football program is [that it’s] an avocation, not a vocation.” The brief details how intercollegiate athletics is simply just one of 480 co-curricular activities that are offered to Northwestern students for “purposes of providing the broadest educational experience available.”
Some may regard the distribution of scholarship grants to constitute compensation, comparable to what a normal employee would collect while rendering a service. The University has staunchly rejected this argument as “athletic scholarship funds do not bear the hallmarks of compensation, as the funds are not subject to taxes or withholdings.” The brief continues: “In fact, if the benefits of the athletic scholarships were treated as wages or compensation for services rendered, Northwestern student-athletes would not be able to participate in NCAA football.”
What is at the essence of this dispute is Northwestern’s belief that the NLRB regional director “overlooked or ignored key evidence that Northwestern presented showing that its student-athletes are primarily students, not employees.”
At first glance, it would seem that Northwestern should prevail. Even though there are far-reaching financial motivations that shape intercollegiate athletics, the University by all accounts appears sincere in its claim that all kids who are admitted to Northwestern, do so with an academic objective that supersedes any other predisposition.
Bring it on. These universities deserve to have unionized players.
Of course that will make all of the union players professional athletes and according to the NCAA rules they would be ineligible for participation in NCAA sports.
If they get what they want, many universities and colleges would likely close down sports scholarships. Only the very large could afford it.
That would mean all benefits received would be taxable.
College football is inevitably going to ditch the NCAA and become their own enterprise.....There probably is going to a “Premier League” of college football consisting solely of the biggest programs that will negotiate a super-mega television contract.
You make a good point. These college athletes are amateurs. If these changes make them professionals, then by definition, they can’t play anymore.
In that case, bye bye college sports. College sports as we know them won’t exist anymore.
There have been some interesting panel discussions on these topics recently on ESPN OTL and College Football Live
Yep. Tell the athletes they will have to pay taxes and payroll taxes back, in cash on a quarterly basis. No team will ever vote to unionize. That’s a significant sum for most of these schools when you add up tuition, room and board and other expenses.
Doing away with the illusion that this is an amateur sport is long overdue.
Major schools will alter the scholarships to be “taxes paid”.
Agents are licking their chops at all of the new potential business.
“Major schools will alter the scholarships to be “taxes paid”.”
It’s hard to say how this will end up as the case will eventually be ruled on by the Supremes. One of the things that, in my opinion separates college ball from the pros is its amateurism and association with a school, region, state, etc. if this ruling passes all the various hurdles and becomes law I’m guessing that college football will become a non-scholarship game. And, minor league ball much like ib baseball will come on the scene. Had to say if these minor league programs will be affiliated with colleges or pro teams. My guess would be pro teams. But, regardless of how this plays out, college football as we know it, it’s days are numbered.
Football will die without the regular guy.
Just what the progressives want - the end of our national game.
He seems to be laboring under the illusion that student-athletes are students first. Hasn’t been that way since the 80s, maybe even the 70s. That’s part of the reason for this movement. Everybody involved knows these kids are football players first who take just enough easy classes to maintain their eligibility. The universities only want them there to play football, only have them there to play football, and really don’t care what else they do so long as it doesn’t interfere with them playing football. So since they clearly have a job might as well pay them.
Either the NCAA is going to change their rules or the colleges will leave the NCAA. The later is the most likely, all the big power schools are tired of the NCAA and their raft of impossible to follow rules that get enforced 5 years later. There’s a reason the super conferences are forming, to put enough colleges together under few enough umbrellas to form their own organizing body.
Well, strike Northwestern from any viewing this fall.
Anyone else?
Good one.
Didn’t these NLRB decisions come down under false leadership?
Meaning a Judge called them out a month ago. So negating this lawlessness.
There are five events that would occur, if the union concept went through.
1. Every cent of “distribution” to any college player, would be taxed by the IRS and state income tax folks. If you kept the distribution low...like $8k a year...this might not matter, but then the free scholarship itself would have to be taxed as well. So figure a big name college with $20k a year in tuition costs, housing (another $10k), and this $8k of fun money....would lead a single guy to be heavily taxed.
2. The minute that you said that a NCAA football player was worth $8k a year, a NCAA basketball player was worth $9.5k a year and so on....there would be argument about ‘fairness’. Then the gender thing would step in....how could you only give $3k a year to some female volleyball player?
3. Walk in on year one of a scholarship and show some bizarre attitude? Fired. Go look for another college to offer you some cash deal and they will ask how you got fired. That’s the end of your whole career opportunity.
4. At best, there’s only thirty-odd colleges in existence in America that could pay any reasonable amount of money for football players. The next forty colleges? Figure half the amount of money as the big-thirty.
5. What exactly prevents this from going to the next step....paying a 17-year old kid from a high school football team? Or a 16-year old basketball all-star kid? You’d suddenly have a couple of pay-as-you-go high-schools in every state....with kids just transferring in...playing a year or two...to get their diploma and move onto the next league (college pay).
Once these punks figure out the negatives to this....I think this whole idea will go down the tubes in a year or two. The idea of suddenly showing up at some big-name college...getting an IRS note that I might owe $5,000 on federal taxes, and $1,500 on state income taxes....would start to make me real negative about this whole thing.
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