EDITORIAL: College sports are currently a runaway train that has partially derailed. It’s not all the way off the tracks yet, but it could get there. There are some methods to get the train back on the tracks, but none of them are foolproof, and none of them guarantees a smooth journey for the remainder of the ride. Some of the potential fixes have a shot at some course correction. And then there is the myth of collective bargaining as a solution. The voices supporting that, mostly on social media, are not providing more proof. But they are getting louder.
The Myth of Collective Bargaining Fixing College Sports
The Wrecking Crew
There is plenty of blame to go around for the current state of college sports. The NCAA used to be the sheriff with the badge in charge as the train went in and out of the town. But it turned out the sheriff had been acting without any real authority for about 80 years.
Mark Emmert headed that authority office for 13 years, and he may as well have taken the track spikes out of the ground for all the damage he did. The hubris with which he operated had people within his circle believing the NCAA would never lose the O’Bannon or Alston cases in federal court. Their lack of foresight and initiative in most of the reason we are where we are now.
The television networks dangled huge sums of money for school presidents, chancellors, and athletic directors to blow up their conferences and live with absurd realignment plans. And the greed of the school officials made them easy prey.
Boosters and the creation of Collectives belong in this conversation. Ed O’Bannon never spent all those years in federal court for the right to own one’s Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), just to have it turned into legalized money laundering through Collectives.
And while they are not responsible for the current state of college sports train travel or derailments, let’s not overlook the day-to-day role of the “agents” and “attorneys” who spend more time on X/Twitter than they do working on behalf of their actual clients. For them, their future looks more promising if we get a full-flammable derailment. Think of the train scene from The Fugitive. These folks await the calamity so as to be able to claim to have the full solution: collective bargaining. They tout it daily.
To be fair, let’s include some in the media who say collective bargaining is the only real solution, with no regard to the details of what it would take to get there.
The Comparative
There are far too many comparisons being loosely made to the “pro model” of sports. It feels fitting since college athletes are now getting handsomely, and with the money comes a different status or stature in athletics. But the numbers make the comparisons look absurd.
The Numbers
There are currently 1,696 active players in the NFL. The National Hockey League 726. The NBA has 450 active players. Major League Baseball has 720.
Division I college athletics has more than 250,000 “student” athletes. There are more than 500,000 when you factor in Division II and Division III. But for the sake of argument, we will just focus our attention on the DI athletes. The always contentious collective bargaining that exists with the labor unions of the four major sports leagues covers 1.4% of the number of athletes that would be needed to do this for college sports.
Approximately 3,000 college athletes currently claim some form of representation from labor organizations. Three thousand is never going to be enough critical mass to represent more than 250,000 as a voice in labor negotiations. When someone or some organization can get that number of represented athletes over 100,000, we can start to imagine labor negotiations.
The Logistics
The National Labor Relations Board always likes to be heard from in labor negotiations when it comes to pro sports. They are empowered by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. And when it comes to college sports, their voice ends before the train ever leaves the station. The NLRB has jurisdiction and authority over private entities only (thus, its place in the professional sports labor talks). But half of the colleges and universities in this country are public institutions. The NLRB has no place at the table.
And speaking of the table, who sits at it when this collective bargaining takes place? The athletes would have to organize into one voice or unionize. Think that is simple? It took the NFLPA three years to get from start to finish, and that was with only 12 teams in the league, not 350 universities.
The labor group needed a ruling from the US Supreme Court in the case of Radovich v. NFL to get there. The case was about abuse of antitrust exemptions, so it would not apply here since the NCAA currently has no such thing.
The Participants
And the labor unions in the pros have athletes who are all trying to maximize their years at the highest levels of their sports. College sports don’t have that. Theirs is a transitory existence. Basketball players who are trying to get to the next level after one year in college. Football players who sit themselves out at the end of a season so as to save themselves for the next level. Are these the voices to guide the future of college athletics?
But, let’s say miraculously 100,000 unionized by this December. Who sits on the other side of the table? The athletes, their Twitter-based attorneys, and local judges have ripped the few remaining teeth out of the NCAA’s mouth. The conferences can’t agree on how many teams belong in a college football playoff. In what world do we envision them agreeing on one voice, one commissioner at the top of them all, empowered to negotiate a five-year labor agreement with athletes, many of whom won’t still be in college when the contract ends?
Do you think for a moment that Greg Sankey is going to cede any power to get this done? Do you imagine the other Power Four commissioners giving Sankey the power to be the guy at the national negotiating table?
What we have is the theory of collective bargaining with no viable candidates actually to come up with and sign off on the agreement.
The Employee Model
This is inevitably part of the conversation when it comes to unionizing and/or collective bargaining. But who would the athletes be employees of?
You aren’t going to make them employees of the school. Seven states, including Texas and Georgia, ban collective bargaining for public employees. Can you imagine this national college sports revolution going on with athletes at the University of Texas and the University of Georgia being left out?
We are told by those who favor the employee model that the athletes would become employees of the conferences or another third party and essentially get leased back to the schools. Can you imagine Tony Petitti and staff taking over the employment status of tens of thousands of athletes while making sure to be in compliance with labor laws in the 15 states of its footprint? Again, the conference and half of the schools are not private entities, so state labor laws would still need to be considered. And in many cases, those state laws would take away some of the privileges currently afforded to college athletes. Why would they ever sign off on that?
Can it Happen? Should it Happen?
None of the alternatives for fixing the broken college sports locomotive is great. The SCORE Act from the House of Representatives was dead early on. The 58 House members of the Congressional Black Caucus killed the vote as a protest over political maps in the SEC-dominated states.
Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has a bill that only deals with three or four player eligibility elements and nothing else.
The Senate bill that passed the Commerce Committee with a 19-9 vote on Thursday still has an uphill climb. It needs 60 yes votes in the Senate (a body that includes four more members of the Congressional Black Caucus). If it gets that, it goes to the House. How ironic would it be that a bill that Sankey hates dies on the vine because of congressional members wanting boycotts of the states in the SEC?
And if you don’t think college sports needs fixing, the State of Florida is on the phone for you. The state has now passed legislation that allows public universities to redirect money generated from campus auxiliary services, such as student housing, dining plans, and bookstores, to fund direct payments to student-athletes because of the rising cost of college sports.
Few want the federal government involved in college sports. It is full of potential landmines. But what is the alternative? It isn’t collective bargaining. Sure, a CBA could be somewhere down the road in three or four years. Maybe longer. But the train needs to be put back on the tracks now. Today. There is valuable freight aboard that cannot wait for a logistically improbable theory that is far too easy to spout on truncated social media posts. College sports needs answers in the here and now, while it still exists. We can work on collective bargaining after that for the years it is going to take to come to fruition.
Main Image: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
