ESPN: Effort to unionize college athletes hits stumbling block

[BleedGopher]

Per ESPN:

The legal efforts to unionize college athletes appear to be running out of steam this month as a new Republican-led administration gets set to take over the federal agency in charge of ruling on employment cases.

A players' advocacy group who filed charges against the NCAA, Pac-12 and USC that would have potentially opened the door for college players to form a union decided Friday to withdraw its complaint. Their case - which was first filed in February 2022 - was one of two battles against the NCAA taken up by the National Labor Relations Board in recent years. Earlier this week, an administrative law judge closed the other case, which was filed by men's basketball players at Dartmouth.

The National College Players Association, which filed its complaint on behalf of USC athletes, said the recent changes in state law and NCAA rules that are on track to allow schools to directly pay their players starting this summer caused them to reconsider their complaint.

"[T]he NCPA believes that it is best to provide adequate time for the college sports industry to transition into this new era before football and basketball players employee status is ruled upon," the organization's founder Ramogi Huma wrote in the motion to withdraw.

The NCAA and its four power conferences agreed to the terms of a legal settlement this summer that will allow schools to spend up to roughly $20.5 million on direct payments to their athletes starting next academic year. The deal is scheduled to be finalized in April.

College sports leaders, including NCAA President Charlie Baker, have remained steadfast in their belief that athletes should not be considered employees of their schools during a period when college sports have moved closer to a professionalized model.

Effort to unionize college athletes hits road block

The legal efforts to unionize college athletes appear to be running out of steam this month as a new Republican-led administration gets set to take over the federal agency in charge of ruling on employment cases.

www.espn.com

Go Gophers!!

 

[A_Slab_of_Bacon]

I can’t speak about this group, but I’ve seen a number of people who seem to want to be a part of the college football players union ….. and frankly, some of them seem like pretty suspect individuals.

 

[Sparlimb]

I can’t speak about this group, but I’ve seen a number of people who seem to want to be a part of the college football players union ….. and frankly, some of them seem like pretty suspect individuals.

How can we get in a gig like that?

 

[A_Slab_of_Bacon]

How can we get in a gig like that?

You guys do all the work and I’ll take a cut how about that?

 

[Some guy]

Going to be honest, for the top college football players unionization would probably HURT them
For the middle and bottom and the universities collective bargaining would allow for some rules and stability

 

[EG#9]

A collectively bargained revenue sharing/salary cap would be the best thing that could happen for all but 10 or so high major programs (tOSU, Oregon, Georgia, etc). That can't happen without a players union. I don't know how you unionize "college athletes" though. Seems like you have to unionize/bargain on a sport by sport basis. There are 3-4 sports maximum that actually make schools money and the rest of them the school is subsidizing. The kids on the golf and swimming teams are getting an amazing deal just getting their school paid for while the football players are not.

 

[fmlizard]

Going to be honest, for the top college football players unionization would probably HURT them
For the middle and bottom and the universities collective bargaining would allow for some rules and stability

This is generally true of left-leaning economics and politics as a whole. The floor is raised but the ceiling is lowered. People's opinions on that outcome vary.

Personally, I think it's better for the wealth to be spread more evenly, though far from equally. I think that parity and balance make the pie bigger by getting more schools and customers excited about college football. It's a big reason why the US pro sports systems have been so successful.

Loose enforcement of NIL has also made the upper-middle class of FBS players richer, since they can get paid from "collectives" that give out "NIL" money for simply being on the team. If NIL were strictly enforced, only a tiny group of stars who play QB, RB, or WR and have name recognition for ads would get any money.

 

[fmlizard]

A collectively bargained revenue sharing/salary cap would be the best thing that could happen for all but 10 or so high major programs (tOSU, Oregon, Georgia, etc). That can't happen without a players union. I don't know how you unionize "college athletes" though. Seems like you have to unionize/bargain on a sport by sport basis. There are 3-4 sports maximum that actually make schools money and the rest of them the school is subsidizing. The kids on the golf and swimming teams are getting an amazing deal just getting their school paid for while the football players are not.

The more structured this all gets the better things probably get for the Gophers.

It sounds like sacrilege but the best possible outcome for the Gophers might be a college football premiere league that is a fully affiliated minor league for the NFL. Gophers would probably be in the cool kids club as the Vikings affiliated school in a big TV market. 8th natty would be a matter of time.

That's a major shift in thinking (how can you draft kids to a college?) but the answer is you can do a lot with a union and a CBA and paying people like employees.

 

[Some guy]

The more structured this all gets the better things probably get for the Gophers.

It sounds like sacrilege but the best possible outcome for the Gophers might be a college football premiere league that is a fully affiliated minor league for the NFL. Gophers would probably be in the cool kids club as the Vikings affiliated school in a big TV market. 8th natty would be a matter of time.

That's a major shift in thinking (how can you draft kids to a college?) but the answer is you can do a lot with a union and a CBA and paying people like employees.

I would say there is zero chance universities subordinate themselves to nfl teams

A lot of why schools play sports is marketing: they aren’t going to do marketing for the nfl instead of themselves

 

[Drake University Gopher]

Gophers would probably be in the cool kids club as the Vikings affiliated school in a big TV market. 8th natty would be a matter of time.

The trophy can go right next to all of our Vikings Super bowl trophies!

 

[Pompous Elitist]

Going to be honest, for the top college football players unionization would probably HURT them
For the middle and bottom and the universities collective bargaining would allow for some rules and stability

Yep, tyranny of the majority. The NFLPA kneecapped draftee’s negotiating power.

 

[Pompous Elitist]

This is one of those issues people aren’t sure about until they check in with their political team. For reasons we can speculate about Cruz seems dead-set against any form of special status carve out for revenue players to form a bargaining unit, but supports granting NCAA antitrust exemption to enforce their myriad eligibility and compensation rules. Up is down, left is right. Midterms are two years away. Let’s see what happens.


The schools that comprise the NCAA have created a long list of rules that effectively limited athletes' market power, which made the association vulnerable to antitrust litigation. After the Alston ruling, federal judges have consistently shot down any NCAA rule that threatened to limit an athlete's potential earnings. Courts struck down transfer restrictions in West Virginia and Ohio. Tennessee and Virginia lost bids to prohibit athletes from negotiating endorsement deals before arriving on campus. Most recently, a court injunction blocked Tennessee's rules limiting the years that junior college athletes can play after transferring to an NCAA school.

Since 2021, university and conference leaders have asked Congress to restore the special status that the Alson ruling wiped away. For most of that time, federal lawmakers have been divided along party lines, with Republicans tending to side with the NCAA's antitrust-exemption efforts and Democrats defending athletes' right to bargain collectively. Despite more than a dozen hearings and even more proposed bills, the parties made no significant progress toward a solution.

Republicans favor restoring the NCAA's ability to make its own rules without the government getting in the way.

"No one in their right mind wants Congress deciding what constitutes pass interference," Cruz said. "We don't want politicians in the middle of deciding how sports will be governed."

Democrats have been more skeptical of writing the NCAA a blank check based solely on schools' promise that they would do more to serve athletes. Democrats' proposals included more detailed and player-friendly provisions such as a pathway to forming player unions and an athlete's "bill of rights," which demanded the NCAA do more to provide athletes with items such as medical care and educational benefits.

Blumenthal said he believes some of those provisions should still be included in future legislation. He also said he would like to see an oversight agency established in the new law to ensure the NCAA is doing enough to protect athletes physically and from exploitation.

As the threat of a big split in college sports looms, senators from both parties now agree that some imperfect action may be better than doing nothing at all. The House settlement, named after principal class-action plaintiff and former Arizona State swimmer Grant House, significantly increases the number of resources -- money and scholarship packages -- athletic departments will pass on to their students. Those changes have helped push politicians on both sides of the aisle to act.

"For too long the NCAA failed to address issues to protect athletes, but obviously there is new leadership there at the NCAA," Blumenthal said. "There is also a real need to make sure there is a level playing field among schools, or at least as fair as it can be."

On Jan. 3, Cruz took over as Commerce Committee chair, which gives him the authority to bring a bill on college sports to a vote. He said he still needs some bipartisan support to garner the 60 votes in the Senate (for now, the GOP majority is 51 seats) that his bill would need to avoid a filibuster.

No longer in the majority, Democrats like Blumenthal express a greater willingness to compromise than before.

OTHER INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS -- athletic directors, sports attorneys and businessmen who operate the booster collectives that help fund their schools' athlete payrolls -- say the House settlement and the proposed help from Congress won't give the NCAA the tools it needs to slow down the race for more revenue.

Many believe a collective bargaining agreement with some form of a player association will be required to effectively impose a salary cap. Professional sports leagues are able to implement salary caps without violating antitrust laws because they negotiate the terms of the arrangement with a players' union.

To legally form a union, players need to be deemed employees of their teams or leagues. The NCAA is adamantly opposed to college athletes becoming employees, and Cruz agrees, saying that employee status "would do enormous damage to the collegiate experience to college sports." A central part of the bill he plans to introduce would declare that athletes are not employees, he added.

 

[Some guy]

Yep, tyranny of the majority. The NFLPA kneecapped draftee’s negotiating power.

Unionization makes sense in some instances
But why would any top college player join a union in this case?
And due to Supreme Court rulings they can’t be forced into a collective bargaining unit they don’t want to be a part of. So unionization wouldn’t really solve issues from the schools end

 

[Pompous Elitist]

Unionization makes sense in some instances
But why would any top college player join a union in this case?
And due to Supreme Court rulings they can’t be forced into a collective bargaining unit they don’t want to be a part of. So unionization wouldn’t really solve issues from the schools end

The unions can make their own rules, for the most part, to avoid egregiously stupid policies. The question is who influenced/compromised leadership is. Not too different that politics writ large.

 

[Some guy]

The unions can make their own rules, for the most part, to avoid egregiously stupid policies. The question is who influenced/compromised leadership is. Not too different that politics writ large.

True. But why would Carson beck join a union who could put a limit on his compensation


Operating within an already existing unit is very different than starting a new one


If the nfl was non unionized right now and was trying to form a union..retty good chance the top players in the nfl wouldn’t opt in. Particularly top QBs
But since it already exists it is a different story

 

[Pompous Elitist]

True. But why would Carson beck join a union who could put a limit on his compensation


Operating within an already existing unit is very different than starting a new one


If the nfl was non unionized right now and was trying to form a union..retty good chance the top players in the nfl wouldn’t opt in. Particularly top QBs
But since it already exists it is a different story

My understanding is:

Teams can only offer rookie wage scale to draftees, thus being out of the union would be fruitless.

Players have to make up union dues and fees even if they opt out, or be suspended without pay.

A few players have opted out to do their own licensing deals. Not sure of the details of the NFLPA deals but these numbers are probably small potatoes otherwise more players would opt out.

So, the owners and union have orchestrated a pretty nice racket. Life ain’t fair.

 

[Some guy]

My understanding is:

Teams can only offer rookie wage scale to draftees, thus being out of the union would be fruitless.

Players have to make up union dues and fees even if they opt out, or be suspended without pay.

A few players have opted out to do their own licensing deals. Not sure of the details of the NFLPA deals but these numbers are probably small potatoes otherwise more players would opt out.

So, the owners and union have orchestrated a pretty nice racket. Life ain’t fair.

Yes. But that same model doesn’t play as well as a comparison for the ncaa because the union isn’t pre-existing is what I’m saying

 

[Pompous Elitist]

Yes. But that same model doesn’t play as well as a comparison for the ncaa because the union isn’t pre-existing is what I’m saying

IIRC the union formation was at least partially a ploy to help the league/owners avoid antitrust scrutiny. It probably benefits owners at least as much if not moreso than players. The individual players have enormous negotiating power. In the real world, maybe not as much.

 

[GopherGrit]

Somehow, some way, they've gotta get a salary cap for major college football.

That is what makes the NFL the best league in the world: a fair playing field for every team.


If they have to make a new law to allow collective bargaining without being employees of the university ... great, do it! What's wrong with that?

 

[Some guy]

Somehow, some way, they've gotta get a salary cap for major college football.

That is what makes the NFL the best league in the world: a fair playing field for every team.


If they have to make a new law to allow collective bargaining without being employees of the university ... great, do it! What's wrong with that?

A salary cap wouldn’t fix the issue of NIL money legally not being able to be capped


The only way to get what you want is congressional action. Good luck

 

[GopherGrit]

A salary cap wouldn’t fix the issue of NIL money legally not being able to be capped


The only way to get what you want is congressional action. Good luck

I think it would take a new law, either way.

New laws are possible.