Pay Attention

The National Labor Relations Board ruled recently in favor of a group of athletes from Northwestern University, granting them the right to form a union and, thus, demand better working conditions (read: get paid).
The Northwestern decision will certainly cascade across the country, spilling to private school campuses at first and ultimately across publicly-funded universities thereafter. The ruling opens up a whole new realm of excitement in this continuing debate. It will be fun, for instance, to see traditionally non-union folks quickly switching to pro-union views when their non-union school of choice begins getting pummeled by their pro-union rivals. It happens. Getting beaten down by rivals is the whole reason Duke University ended segregation on its campus--years after Martin Luther King was assassinated, just FYI.
But being pro or anti union isn't the real issue in this case. The real issue is whether or not college athletes are employees or students. The schools, of course, argue the players are students. They are, after all, called student-athletes, not athlete-workers.
Proponents of the schools' point of view will further point out the athletes are getting paid via room and board, tuition and a first-rate education. There is ample evidence, however, many of the athletes in college are not only not getting an education but are not in any way remotely fit to be considered college students academically. So the student argument is, at the very least, flawed.
Certainly the athletes aren't employees insomuch as the sweet lady at the counter at the Registrar's. The athletes do undoubtedly help generate revenue and esteem for the college. Kids at North Carolina, for instance, are certainly there in part because of UNC's basketball program and a possible off-chance sighting of Michael Jordan.
Florida State, for instance, has produced in the past 10 years, more football national championships than Harvard University. It has also produced more Rhodes Scholars than Harvard in that span. Which one is the reason random people across the country buy Seminoles T-shirts and hats?
A large school, a BCS school if you will, can generate $200 million in tuition each year. Any collection of 80-90 students might generate $600,000 of that. The 85 scholarship football players at Texas, LSU, Alabama and similar schools can generate between $60-80 million on their own. Yet NCAA rules are constructed in a way that people must treat the athletes and day-to-day students 100% the same. But they aren't the same. The athletes, in fact, are disadvantaged in many ways. I can buy a group of college kids a pizza or offer them a ride across campus to their next class. I can't do that with scholarship athletes. College kids can earn their own pizza or car to drive themselves across campus by working on or off campus jobs. Scholarship athletes can't. ESPN analyst Greg Anthony owned a business while a student at UNLV. The NCAA found out and gave him a choice: abandon the business or abandon his scholarship.
And then there's the argument about money corrupting college sports. First, that ship has sailed. Second, most people are arguing in favor of a stipend, not payroll. It's not unreasonable to suggest these athletes earn enough to say, buy a pizza or have some gas to put in their car, buy a plane ticket home for the holidays or similar things of that nature.
As for the corruption, there is currently no counter-balance for it, which is why it exists. I'm reminded of a scene from the old TV show Three's Company where a character, posing as a police detective, tries to assert his morality in the face of a mobster, telling the kingpin, "the law is the law..." The mobster produces a wad of cash, replying, "how does a hundred bucks sound?" The morality stance shrivels as the character snatches the cash, responding, "a lot better than what I just said." And that's what you have with cases like Reggie Bush and the so-called Cash and Carry scandal while he was at USC. On the one hand, the money for things he wants and needs. On the other, a glowing angel, urging him to do right. That's a no contest for the average 19-year old. As a result of the scandal, Bush was stripped of his Heisman, USC forfeited its National Championship (but not the money it earned as a result), future USC teams paid a price in the loss of scholarships and head coach Pete Carroll was roundly punished with a job in the NFL and a Super Bowl ring...wait...
And there's a bigger question to ask: Why are the schools resistant? ESPN routinely pays major conferences billions of dollars for TV rights to their games. Where is that money? You don't know and the schools and conferences aren't going to tell you. The highest paid public employees in states like Alabama, Kentucky or Florida are almost always college football or basketball coaches--and it's not even a closed contest, frankly. People don't know that Cal has the top school in the country for civil engineering but probably know it's where Jason Kidd or Aaron Rodgers went. South Carolina is the top college in the nation for International Business. More people know that it's where Jadeveon Clowney played. The Big House is on the campus at Michigan, which is also the nation's top school for business management. It is athletics, not academics, that is putting these schools on the map and putting students it their classrooms.
So think then, about how preposterous an idea it is for college athletes to want to unionize. They generate vast amounts of revenue, nobody is monitoring their academic aptitude to any great degree, they assume the majority of the risk and take the brunt of the discipline in the face of scandal, they create the public face of the University and provide a major reason attracting other students to the campus and people still begrudge them for trying to do something to improve their existence? If fighting to improve this situation isn't the point of having a union, I'm not really sure what unions are for. And as for the other element of unions, seems to me the athletes have more than paid their dues.