Shyamalan Twist! NCAA athletes joining labor union?

[cf-62]

This doesn't make much economic sense to me as an argument against paying players, because if alumni go to and watch games at the same rate as before, the market-clearing wage for players will be $0--why would a school pay more if player quality doesn't impact interest?

Don't confuse "interest in going to the game / watching the team / rooting for your school" with a COACH'S desire / need to WIN GAMES!!!!!!!!!!

The facilities arms race, the cheating that does occur, etc. etc. etc. goes to feed the coaches. If I were a coach, I would be asking for amenities, the facilities upgrades, etc. Anything I can to legally make life better for my kids puts me at an advantage for recruiting. Which comes back full circle to a kid CHOOSING where they play.

Would you still advocate the pay scenario if there were NO FREE AGENTS, but a 64 team draft instead?

[throatybeard]

You would not be betting on the American public's appetite for violence. Big time college and pro football demands a massive training apparatus in primary education and even pop Warner leagues. The further down the chain you the less economic impact. Pop Warner and junior high school football are not profitable. The risks are no longer debatable but the costs are currently being calculated. A judge just said the half billion dollar NFL settlement is not enough. They will be establishing actuarial tables to determine the cost. These non profitable lower tier leagues need insurance no? It could snow ball in ways we cannot imagine now and I'm inclined to believe it will.

I'm not saying there aren't liability concerns. But this is a country where you can make a movie about killing hundreds of people, and it gets a PG-13 rating. But if one single boob makes an appearance, it has to have an R rating, because God forbid anyone under 17 see one single boob. When I was eleven years old, we were on a school trip, sitting in a hotel room, watching some Steven Seagal movie on free televsion. We counted how many people he killed in the movie. I think it was 35. I was eleven. No one seemed to have a problem with this.

Many Americans adore violence. MMA is huge now. The NHL still lets the players have fights during the game, for Pete's sake. We've even got sports that didn't used to be very violent and have gotten more so (basketball).

Don't the lower-tier levels already have insurance? Don't the parents have to sign waivers? (I'm asking--I don't know).

[JasonEvans]

There are 224 kids drafted into the NFL every April. That includes players from all NCAA divisions, but let's focus on D1 (124 current schools, going to 128). That's 10,880 scholarships.

If you evenly spread out over 5 years, that's 2,176 scholarships per year. So about 10% of the kids will get drafted, about 1% will make a roster. Of those 25 kids, maybe 5 will be stars, 1 or 2 superstars. And entering school, they KNOW this. Thus, the VAST VAST VAST majority of football players in DI are there to leverage football as a way to enter college (or get in a better college) to get a degree.

Whoa... hold on a sec. I just want to point out some real fallacies in your above numbers. You seem to be stating that only 1/10th of the kids who get drafted will make a NFL roster. That is just plain wrong. Heck, it is not even close to correct.

It is exceedingly rare for a kid drafted in the first 4 rounds to not make the team. Heck, almost all 1st - 3rd rounders are expected to start or be significant rotation players from day one (not QBs, who sometimes take longer and QB is the one non-rotational position on a team). For most teams, all their drafted players end up making the roster.

I looked at few NFL rosters and here is what I found in terms of rookies on the roster (includes injured reserve and practice squad as these are all guys making a pretty nice living from playing football).

Falcons - 19
Pats - 25
Seahawks - 17
Broncos - 10
Saints - 13
Panthers - 12
Jags - 17

That is a heck of a lot bigger number than 1% of all college football players. Granted, some of these guys are not immediately removed from college and may have been playing in the CFL or parking cars or whatever before they got their NFL break, but the vast majority of them are brand spanking new out of college and direct to earning an NFL paycheck. It is a muuuuch higher number than 1% of last year's Division 1 college football players who had exhausted their eligibility.

A little more research -- Alabama had 39 former players on NFL rosters in 2012. It had 35 in 2013. Ohio State also had 35 alums in the NFL in 2013. Now, I know that not all BCS level programs are the NFL-producing machines that Bama and tOSU are, but it is clear that the top level BCS conference schools are putting something like a quarter to a third of their senior class into the NFL each year. I bet that even lower-level BCS teams are putting about 5% of their seniors into the NFL each year.

I am not sure where I am going with all this except to say that the notion that only a tiny percentage of college football players will end up earning a pro football paycheck is just not something that is supported by the facts.

-Jason "I don't like the idea of unionization, but I think strong reforms are needed and these players should be compensated for their efforts" Evans

[lotusland]

I'm not saying there aren't liability concerns. But this is a country where you can make a movie about killing hundreds of people, and it gets a PG-13 rating. But if one single boob makes an appearance, it has to have an R rating, because God forbid anyone under 17 see one single boob. When I was eleven years old, we were on a school trip, sitting in a hotel room, watching some Steven Seagal movie on free televsion. We counted how many people he killed in the movie. I think it was 35. I was eleven. No one seemed to have a problem with this.

Many Americans adore violence. MMA is huge now. The NHL still lets the players have fights during the game, for Pete's sake. We've even got sports that didn't used to be very violent and have gotten more so (basketball).

Don't the lower-tier levels already have insurance? Don't the parents have to sign waivers? (I'm asking--I don't know).

I don't know from experience as my kids don't play football but I'm sure that football leagues do have insurance. I imagine this is a very fluid situation at the moment. The known risks are greater now than in the past so I expect the cost and availability of insurance to change accordingly. That could dramatically affect the cost of participation by these lower income kids who would play. The MMA model won't work for football. MMA isn't a school sport anyway and it's only participants are adults and they don't represent anyone but themselves. You cannot field a professional football team with adults who have not been playing in school their whole lives. There is also the matter of public schools whose primary mission allegedly is to promote learning, simultaneously promoting a sport that is known to cause brain damage especially in adolescents. So maybe some parents will be willing to sign a waiver agreeing to allow their kids to risk permanent brain damage but do they, as parents, even have that right?

[cf-62]

Whoa... hold on a sec. I just want to point out some real fallacies in your above numbers. You seem to be stating that only 1/10th of the kids who get drafted will make a NFL roster. That is just plain wrong. Heck, it is not even close to correct.

It is exceedingly rare for a kid drafted in the first 4 rounds to not make the team. Heck, almost all 1st - 3rd rounders are expected to start or be significant rotation players from day one (not QBs, who sometimes take longer and QB is the one non-rotational position on a team). For most teams, all their drafted players end up making the roster.

I looked at few NFL rosters and here is what I found in terms of rookies on the roster (includes injured reserve and practice squad as these are all guys making a pretty nice living from playing football).

Falcons - 19
Pats - 25
Seahawks - 17
Broncos - 10
Saints - 13
Panthers - 12
Jags - 17

That is a heck of a lot bigger number than 1% of all college football players. Granted, some of these guys are not immediately removed from college and may have been playing in the CFL or parking cars or whatever before they got their NFL break, but the vast majority of them are brand spanking new out of college and direct to earning an NFL paycheck. It is a muuuuch higher number than 1% of last year's Division 1 college football players who had exhausted their eligibility.

A little more research -- Alabama had 39 former players on NFL rosters in 2012. It had 35 in 2013. Ohio State also had 35 alums in the NFL in 2013. Now, I know that not all BCS level programs are the NFL-producing machines that Bama and tOSU are, but it is clear that the top level BCS conference schools are putting something like a quarter to a third of their senior class into the NFL each year. I bet that even lower-level BCS teams are putting about 5% of their seniors into the NFL each year.

I am not sure where I am going with all this except to say that the notion that only a tiny percentage of college football players will end up earning a pro football paycheck is just not something that is supported by the facts.

-Jason "I don't like the idea of unionization, but I think strong reforms are needed and these players should be compensated for their efforts" Evans

Thanks J,
But if we're going to include practice squads (I can't argue with your logic. They are being paid to play football every day), then can you really include only D1 schools. Shouldn't all ~350 schools be included?

A quarter to a third of the senior class is 5 - 8 kids. We're really going to say the system is COMPLETELY FLAWED because of 20 - 30 kids at about a dozen schools? It's the same reason I don't get too wound up over the "early entry NBA draft rules." We're talking about 20 kids out of 4000. In this, we're still only talking about 10% of graduates any given year getting drafted. When you throw in the non D1 schools, that moves into the 2 3% range.

And now let's throw in TITLE IX. If the Federal Courts ruled that Football scholarships must be matched by expenditures in female sports, why does everyone think that those courts will now go "ooooooh, you want to PAY them to play." Okay, since it's FOOTBALL, we won't make you follow the same interpretation of Federal law that we used in determining scholarship numbers?

Here's a Hint. They won't. Whatever is paid out to football players will have to be matched in amplitude, if not kind, to women's programs.

And it will impact women's ability / opportunity to even PLAY a sport. Today, because of scholarship matching, women's sports operate on bare bones teams. If they have to pay them even more, you can bet that they'll figure out something else since it's likely that every female varsity athlete will pickup a paycheck.

[vick]

Thanks J,
But if we're going to include practice squads (I can't argue with your logic. They are being paid to play football every day), then can you really include only D1 schools. Shouldn't all ~350 schools be included?

A quarter to a third of the senior class is 5 - 8 kids. We're really going to say the system is COMPLETELY FLAWED because of 20 - 30 kids at about a dozen schools? It's the same reason I don't get too wound up over the "early entry NBA draft rules." We're talking about 20 kids out of 4000. In this, we're still only talking about 10% of graduates any given year getting drafted. When you throw in the non D1 schools, that moves into the 2 3% range.

And now let's throw in TITLE IX. If the Federal Courts ruled that Football scholarships must be matched by expenditures in female sports, why does everyone think that those courts will now go "ooooooh, you want to PAY them to play." Okay, since it's FOOTBALL, we won't make you follow the same interpretation of Federal law that we used in determining scholarship numbers?

Here's a Hint. They won't. Whatever is paid out to football players will have to be matched in amplitude, if not kind, to women's programs.

And it will impact women's ability / opportunity to even PLAY a sport. Today, because of scholarship matching, women's sports operate on bare bones teams. If they have to pay them even more, you can bet that they'll figure out something else since it's likely that every female varsity athlete will pickup a paycheck.

I'm not sure Title IX says this, to be honest. Overall spending is not equal between men's and women's sports now. The law requires that spending on financial aid be "substantially proportionate" between men's and women's sports, not spending in general. It's certainly not obvious to me that player stipends will be looked at like financial aid rather than, say, weight rooms and coaches' budgets (and I think pretty clearly it should not be, but that's just my opinion), which have been allowed to be unequal.

[A-Tex Devil]

But what you've written here is the crux of the - er - misunderstanding by "SPORTS" writers and the reality of college athletics. Assuming Title IX aside -- which is the GIANT elephant in the room of any decision to pay ANYBODY -- is the idea of non-student athletes representing the schools. There are two specific talking points that seem to be coming out of this.

1) The players make the school millions of dollars
2) UNC proves that they aren't student athletes already

1) The PROGRAM makes the schools the money, and a BIG PART of that money is the donations from alumni. There are lots of reasons to give money, but the biggest is because of the connection we feel with our soon-to-be-fellow-alumni, and how much we marvel at their ability to cut it at our school while also committing themselves to success on the football field.

Now, Duke has funded their other sports with football for decades with none of the top 300 players in the country committing to them. So the answer to your question - do alumni care if their football team doesn't have 10 - 50 potential NFL players on the team? That is a RESOUNDING NO. They will continue to go to games, and continue to watch the games. I will make the trip to South Bend even if Notre Dame is awful (and if we are awful) because the pageantry of a Notre Dame football game is the same, whether it's Joe Montana at QB or some guy we'll never hear of again.

My comment about UNC being prescient up thread was tongue in cheek, and frankly, the UNC scandal is almost irrelevant to the heart of this discussion. The "charade" I believe needs to be addressed, and Title IX certainly perpetuates things and I agree it's a stumbling block, is that football should be treated like all other sports. The economics of it don't make sense anymore.

Obviously, the status quo is probably what most people would prefer. I know I probably do. It's best for everyone except perhaps the football players, who still are hardly getting a raw deal. But with the O'Bannon case, Division 4, this NW thing, and all of the other recent rumblings, change is on the horizon. My gun to the head guess is the solution will be Division 4 for football, with some type of limited pay that will drive the Hana Highway through labor law and Title IX to get there.

As to your bolded statement -- without getting into the weeds, it assumes an awful lot, considering most of the football money comes from a collective contract, which may not be as lucrative if the talent level drops significantly. Again -- in my view, it's an unanswerable question.

[greybeard]

I am happily for several years now and forever no longer a labor lawyer, have lost a taste for it:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes, everybody knows

Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows


That said, the tide seems to point pretty much in favor of big-time college athletes in major sports to win the right to organize. The NLRB has long held that medical intern and residents qualify as employees and seems poised to hold similarly in the case of graduate students. Several state courts have already done so with regard to graduate students at state universities and colleges, and the right to be represented has been won where, before it always had been before the NLRA was enacted to insure employee rights, yeah right, that would be, in the streets. A case has been Teed Up before the NLRB to address the issue whether football players at a major football school are employees. http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/...in-labor-union. Like I said, I am out, but it seems to me that there is at least as strong a case for revenue sport athletes to be found to be employees.

The argument that student athletes can not be found to be employees because they are under no compulsion to work at football to earn seems to me to fall of its own weight, but what do I know. It is always the case that individuals have the right to chose, that employment in the state of nature, is an "at will arrangement," and why this circumstance should be different escapes me, but I have given no thought to the matter from a legal perspective, and doubt I will. That argument will unquestionably be decided by the NLRB in the pending graduate student case; it has been rejected in several state court decisions involving state employment questions over which the NLRB has no jurisdiction.I should add that even cases that espouse broad policy are subject to factual distinction and that the role of giving due deference to extant precedent is often given no respect. So the policy/legal landscape can change, and, in the modern era, change quite quickly.

In the end, support by statutory construction or no, the ability of college athletes to organize and get a little something for themselves, or a bigger something, will depend entirely by the play of economic weaponry. One thing to keep in mind is, while Big Time football programs are incredibly powerful, they also compete for the best-of-the-best, and to be the best, in zero sum games. On the other hand, athletic teams will have to be organized on a program by program basis, and, if pursued through a government supervised election, the mandate for collective bargaining can routinely be tied up for years. Also, in the end, economic pressure by players is, to my mind, gossamer--boys do oh so love their games.

Antitrust lawsuits in the beginning and now seem player compensation's only hope. How viable that is? If the players are found to be employees, under my understanding of the law, zero from that point on. Which would beg the question, why is anybody fighting about this to begin with.

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

[greybeard]

Surprising to see this in a magazine like Forbes, but there it is and here it is:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedel...to-unionize/2/

[throatybeard]

I'm not saying there aren't liability concerns. But this is a country where you can make a movie about killing hundreds of people, and it gets a PG-13 rating. But if one single boob makes an appearance, it has to have an R rating, because God forbid anyone under 17 see one single boob. When I was eleven years old, we were on a school trip, sitting in a hotel room, watching some Steven Seagal movie on free televsion. We counted how many people he killed in the movie. I think it was 35. I was eleven. No one seemed to have a problem with this.

Many Americans adore violence. MMA is huge now. The NHL still lets the players have fights during the game, for Pete's sake. We've even got sports that didn't used to be very violent and have gotten more so (basketball).

Don't the lower-tier levels already have insurance? Don't the parents have to sign waivers? (I'm asking--I don't know).

This isn't news, but on the other hand, it sort of isn't not news:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/stu...orce-to,35132/

[blUDAYvil]

Great article summing up Bilas' thoughts on paying NCAA athletes

http://www.syracuse.com/orangebasket...fessional.html

[-jk]

I love Bilas, but he has to recognize that unlimited endorsements are the wet dreams of Phil Knight and T Boone Pickens.

-jk

[fisheyes]

There was an interesting discussion about paying NCAA athletes on Meet the Press this morning. On the panel was the NCAA president Mark Emmert, Secty of Education and Harvard basketball player Arne Duncan, and Reggie.

There seems to be some movement on the issue of paying players a stipend for certain things like meals on off days for away games, travel for family emergencies, and travel expenses for family members to see games, etc. It appears that the NCAA will take another vote on this issue soon. The president of the NCAA seemed to imply that the issue would be resolved before the start of the next academic year.

Personally, I do not favor unionization of the athletes or paying them a salary for playing, but I do favor paying for reasonable expenses and allowing them to participate in the financial gains of their own marketing.

I couldn't find a video link, but here is the write up in Politico...

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politi...73.html?hp=l12

[toughbuff1]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/us/nor...ion/index.html

[Tripping William]

A colleague sent me the link with the words "game changer." National Labor Relations Board says Northwestern football players can unionize:

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireSto...gency-23070004

[Duvall]

That five-year commitment by Krzyzewski could get awkward when he realizes that three of those years will be spent at a Division III school.

[Atlanta Duke]

Link to the decision below - the NLRB apparently did not buy into the student-athlete argument

Obviously, the players are also required to spend time studying and completing their homework as they have to spend time practicing their football skills even without the direct orders of their coaches. But it cannot be said that they are “primarily students” who “spend only a limited number of hours performing their athletic duties.”...

The fact that the players undoubtedly learn great life lessons from participating on the football team and take with them important values such as character, dedication, perseverance, and team work, is insufficient to show that their relationship with the Employer is primarily an academic one. Indeed, as already discussed above, this relationship is an economic one that involves the transfer of great sums of money to the players in the form of scholarships.

http://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/ne...rsity-athletes

[TampaDuke]

Just a few notes about today's decision:

The "NLRB" did not find that the players were employees, only one of the NLRB's regional directors did. The next step is to the National Labor Relations Board itself. As a labor attorney, I didn't think the RD's decision was that surprising. There is a reason that the union filed this petition at this time and in this location. That said, given the political leanings of the current Board, my guess is that it will affirm the RD's decision.

Assuming the NLRB affirms the decision, there are still many steps left for the players to successfully unionize and force the university to bargain, with each of the next few steps are likely to be more daunting. This is particularly true with respect to appeals to the federal appellate courts, which have not been very supportive of recent NLRB decisions attempting to break new legal ground.

Although it's a necessary first step for the athletes to become unionized, coverage of today's decision, in my opinion, is overblown. At a minimum, it will be 5 or 6 years before the employees would be able to actually require collective bargaining, assuming the matter is contested at each stage.

[-jk]

Just a few notes about today's decision:

The "NLRB" did not find that the players were employees, only one of the NLRB's regional directors did. The next step is to the National Labor Relations Board itself. As a labor attorney, I didn't think the RD's decision was that surprising. There is a reason that the union filed this petition at this time and in this location. That said, given the political leanings of the current Board, my guess is that it will affirm the RD's decision.

Assuming the NLRB affirms the decision, there are still many steps left for the players to successfully unionize and force the university to bargain, with each of the next few steps are likely to be more daunting. This is particularly true with respect to appeals to the federal appellate courts, which have not been very supportive of recent NLRB decisions attempting to break new legal ground.

Although it's a necessary first step for the athletes to become unionized, coverage of today's decision, in my opinion, is overblown. At a minimum, it will be 5 or 6 years before the employees would be able to actually require collective bargaining, assuming the matter is contested at each stage.

For those more knowledgeable than I: If NU's football players are, after appeal, still found to be employees, will they owe income tax on the value of their scholarships?

Maybe even back taxes starting from about this lawsuit?

The Ivy model - purely need-based - might come into play. And schools would scramble to set up massive need-based scholarship resources.

This is getting fun!

-jk

[A-Tex Devil]

For those more knowledgeable than I: If NU's football players are, after appeal, still found to be employees, will they owe income tax on the value of their scholarships?

Maybe even back taxes starting from about this lawsuit?

The Ivy model - purely need-based - might come into play. And schools would scramble to set up massive need-based scholarship resources.

This is getting fun!

-jk

Not only that, but would the universities be on the hook for massive amounts of unpaid payroll taxes? Or more realistically, if this isn't overturned, will federal and state governments start looking to the universities to get W-4s on these players. This is crazy.