Ramogi Huma, president of the National College Players Association, filed a petition in Chicago on behalf of football players at Northwestern University, submitting the form at the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board.
Backed by the United Steelworkers union, Huma also filed union cards signed by an undisclosed number of Northwestern players with the NLRB — the federal statutory body that recognizes groups that seek collective bargaining rights.
Unionization is the classic response to hiring cartels, of which there is no better example than the one the NCAA runs for the benefit of their coaches and boosters. This might get interesting.
Absolutely love this. Bring it!! Oregon athletes step up.
Awesome.
Yes please let them unionize. Then they can pay taxes on all of that free education they get. They want to be employees….fine. Now pay taxes on the scholarships, room, board, food and stipends they receive. Then when Title IX gets involved and you have to treat everyone the same the ladies on the women’s golf team who get scholarships, room, board, etc. will also have to pay taxes on what they get. We can all be one big happy family.
I am sick to death of hearing how college athletes are exploited. They get free school, tutoring, etc. and most of those kids in mens’ athletics wouldn’t come close to meeting admissions standards at the schools they attend, let alone get it for free.
The bottom line is that if the NCAA and the schools profit from a kid’s name or likeness they should place that profit in a trust to be given to that student when they leave school.
Forming a union may have opened up a bigger Pandora’s box than these kids realize.
Unions rarely inspire the best and always protect the worst.
It can be easily argued that a Pandora’s box or two needs to be opened where the NCAA and big money intersect. If this filing does nothing else, it will at the very least provided an opportunity to begin some new discussions about the NCAA and the plight and rights of “student athletes.”
I am sick, but not to death, of people who are so easily swayed by the “they get free school, etc.” argument and fail to see the dysfunctional, unsustainable entertainment monopoly that has grown in college sports.
I don’t fail to see the dysfunctional system that exists in sports, but I also know that big time college football provides opportunities for many other college athletes that would not exist without it. Even many mens’ basketball programs rely on football to stay afloat. A better solution overall might be to have a “minor league” system like baseball, although the U of O has their fun with subsidizing their baseball program.
Gets injured, can’t compete, loses scholarship and other support, drops out — a commitment to education should not let this be the case. I hope they are successful in unionizing but if not, that their efforts at least draw scrutiny to the vicissitudes of college athletics.
Another thought. If the NCAA is really so serious about “student athletes” and the academic experience, why not take all of those profits from TV contracts and pour them into the academic experience for all students. Imagine if the billions in TV revenue, etc. were put back into the institutions serving those student athletes. The NCAA could go along way to restoring credibility if it did something like that.
Why not, indeed? Golly, if only someone nearby was raising the clarion call that, just perhaps, the revenues from athletics should not only pay for its own overhead but also enrich the academic mission and effort to the benefit of the entire institution…rather than taking a subsidy from the academic side. Golly…
It won’t work, but at least it’s getting the issue out in front of people and discussed – and at a good time, too.
For those who missed in because they don’t follow news of the sporting sort, here’s some exposure to another audience: Morning Edition (NPR)
What if we treated college sports like the lottery? Any money from TV all goes to fund federal financial aid for everybody. Loving sports isn’t too different from gambling. At least the revenue from state lottery funds is used a voluntary tax revenue. We should do the same with sports revenue.
Do our local athletes have a place to turn for information on how they can organize if they want to? This seems like something the IAC should be on top of. Are they?
I think everyone will play the waiting game with Northwestern and see what happens there. I am sure the National Labor Relations Board is going insane right now trying to figure out what to do with this. I would play wait and see, much like we do with SCOTUS.
Get a job already….seriously. This may bring to light that GTFs as well as other students are not employees and that they do receive considerable compensation in the form of tuition and stipend (my Federal grant is being sucked dry by UO and this will only get worse with each contract negotiation) and that they should “get over it”. I agree that the NCAA is a monopoly and should be reigned in but this could be a disaster for the wrong people.
Huh? What exactly are you complaining about, Anon1? How do we leap from football players to GTFs?
I hope you will “get over it”…
I agree that GTFs should not be considered employees but reality is that they are “cheap labor” at UO, and their future prospects aren’t as positive anymore, which would compensate for their low current income.
Truth is that GTFs teach classes of 200+ students and compete with graduate students from other universities who received “full rides” or bear lower teaching loads.
The GTFF should bargain for graduate student scholarships as a priority of the next capital campaign. But if UO wants to treat them as labor and not future academics, then make them pay for it.
I suppose you would prefer GTFs be considered serfs? Or indentured servants?
The thirteenth amendment for thee, apparently.
Max, I think you get the point: The students should be students, they should have been admitted to the school first, they are supposed to be at the school for education, THEN on the side as an extra curricular activity the play sports. Title IX ensures that men and women have equal facilities and access to these after school clubs.
As has been pretty well supported, the after school club (College Athletics) never brings more money into the school than it produces. We can look at recent national news (diligently linked by UOM) to support this: from draining the private endowment (Foundation) of funds for academics, turning the president, provost, and an entire wing of high paid admin of a college into an employes of the Foundation since the Presidents and now Boards “Job One” is to get money for the foundation (and the foundation states all fundraising is done by the college), subsidizing parking lots, roads, facilities, dorms, landscaping, handshake contracts, bowl junkets, and tutoring which has turned out to be not much more than cheating in recent news… heck, the rest of the students have to pay a about $2Million a year just to get access to the after school club event, that is supposed to be a school event in a school building.
Walking around campus I am sure I hear a wooshing sound from all those dollars flowing into all those edifices of glass and steel. Even the new Board who we all hope makes a course change back to Academics (AAU?), is sequestered in these steel cell with the same jailors of the last 20 years the only ones giving them information, charts and such to right our course, but of course their “Job One” is to pump money into the foundation, and the foundation and the athletic cartel created the board our new captain.
And all of this, rolls down on the backs of a few men and women who get paid to play–because they lose their academic scholarship at the UO if they do not.
mostly unrelated but NACUBO endowment report is out. The top public is the UT System. They play football there right?
http://www.nacubo.org/Research/NACUBO-Commonfund_Study_of_Endowments/Public_NCSE_Tables.html