They’re battling in courtrooms, and could one day meet
over a bargaining table. About the only things the two sides in the
debate over big-time college athletics agree on is that things are
changing.
Schools bringing in hundreds of millions in bloated
television contracts. Coaches making the kind of salaries that late UCLA
legend John Wooden wouldn’t recognize. Athletes insisting on basic
rights, if not outright cash.
And now a union for football players at Northwestern that would previously have been unthinkable in
college sports.
A
ruling Wednesday that the Northwestern football team can bargain with
the school as employees represented by a union may not by itself change
the way amateur sports operate. But it figures to put more pressure on
the NCAA and the major conferences to give something back to the players
to justify the billions of dollars the players bring in — and never
see.
There’s huge money at stake — nearly $18 billion alone just
in television rights for the NCAA basketball tournament and bowl games.
Already fighting a flurry of antitrust lawsuits challenging its control
of college athletics, the NCAA can’t afford too many more defeats.
"This
is a colossal victory for student-athletes coming on the heels of their
recent victories," said Marc Edelman, an associate professor of law at
City University of New York who specializes in sports and antitrust law.
"It seems not only the tide of public sentiment but also the tide of
legal rulings has finally turned in the direction of college athletes
and against the NCAA."
For the NCAA, the timing of a National
Labor Relations Board opinion allowing a union at Northwestern couldn’t
have been worse. In the middle of a tournament that earns schools close
to $1 billion a year, it is being taken to task not only for not paying
players, but for not ensuring their health and future welfare.
Add
in embarrassing revelations like Florida coach Billy Donovan’s new $3.7
million-a-year contract and the $18,000 bonus that Ohio State athletic
director Gene Smith got for one of the school’s wrestlers winning an
NCAA title, and it gets harder for some to sympathize with the NCAA’s
contention that everything it does is for the benefit of athletes who
play for the glory of their schools.
"Fifty years ago the NCAA
invented the term student-athlete to try and make sure this day never
came," said former UCLA linebacker Ramogi Huma, the designated president
of Northwestern’s would-be football players’ union. "Northwestern
players who stood up for their rights took a giant step for justice.
It’s going to set a precedent for college players across the nation to
do the same."
Maybe. Maybe not. The players currently at
Northwestern may have graduated by the time the team gets a chance to
bargain — if it ever does. The university is appealing the ruling to the
full NLRB, and the idea that football players are university employees
is one that the NCAA will almost surely continue to fight.
"We
frequently hear from student-athletes, across all sports, that they
participate to enhance their overall college experience and for the love
of their sport, not to be paid," the NCAA said in a statement.
It
was that love of the sport that drew outgoing Wildcats quarterback Kain
Colter — as well as a scholarship that university officials value at
around a quarter million dollars. But Colter, backed by lawyers with the
United Steelworkers union, began the union push after growing
disenchanted with the time demands placed on him in football that forced
him to drop his plans to go to medical school.
Colter also
worried about the long-term health risks of football long after players
have left school. Players have said they want more research into
concussions and other traumatic injuries, and insurance and guarantees
that they will be covered for medical issues later in life. They also
want money for continuing education and for schools to offer four-year
scholarship deals instead of year-to-year pacts.
"If we are making
sacrifices like we are, we should have these basic protections taken
care of," Colter told ESPN. "With the sacrifices we make athletically,
medically and with our bodies, we need to be taken care of."
One
day that could mean money, over and above the $2,000 extra annual
stipend that NCAA President Mark Emmert proposed but failed to get
implemented over the objections of small-budget schools. There’s plenty
to go around, with a $10.6 billion contract for television rights to the
NCAA basketball tournament and a recent $7.2 billion deal for football
bowl games.
The NLRB ruling described how the life of a
Northwestern football player is far more regimented than that of a
typical student, down to requirements about what they can eat and
whether they can live off campus or purchase a car. At times, players
put 50 or 60 hours a week into football, the ruling said, qualifying
them to be treated as employees of the university and eligible for a
union.
By itself, the ruling could be little more than an irritant
to private universities and the NCAA. But combined with the antitrust
lawsuits — one filed just last week by a prominent attorney called the
organization an "unlawful cartel" — they present a clear challenge to
the unique way college sports operates.
The model of coaches and
administrators making millions while the athletes providing the labor
are paid in room and board and books is one that could be difficult to
defend in court even if those benefits are valued at $50,000 a year or
more.
One of those suits, filed by former UCLA basketball star Ed
O’Bannon, is scheduled for trial June 9 in California and is being
carefully watched by those on both sides of the issue. O’Bannon, who led
his team to the national championship in 1995, sued after seeing his
likeness in a video game licensed by the NCAA without his permission.
"It’s
never been about monetary gain," O’Bannon told The Associated Press
earlier this week. "It’s all about changing the rules and making sure
the players, both present and former, are represented as well."
The two sides are dug in. And the battle over the future of college sports is well underway.
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