Northwestern loses at NLRB

[TorontoCFE]

Possible big impact if northwestern's football unionizes as they now can per the NLRB.

Scholarships taxable, plus title ix impact?

College sports might be way different

 

[sluggers]

If each athlete gets a cut of the gravy from his/her specific college sport, then women softball players will get...$.10 a year or so?

 

[3'sDad]

Slugger: If it's less than $1, the IRS may not make the players report that income...............

 

[mogsoftball]

I believe the ruling impacts private schools, public schools are exempt from the NLRB ruling. The ruling will be in appeal for years until it gets to the supreme court.

I could see schools such as Northwestern dropping from D1 sports if it becomes cost prohibitive, going to a formula more like the Ivy league schools.

 

[sluggers]

I'm sure Notre Dame, Miami, Duke, USC, SMU, BYU, Baylor, and TCU are planning to scrap their D1 programs.

 

[riseball]

Although the players have won the right to form a union, management still has the right to say no. Not exactly sure what will bring management to the table. One thing for sure, it will be interesting to watch this play out. Will certainly become a B School case study.

 

[InsidePitch]

If NW has to pay it's players it may mean there isn't enough to fund some of the sports that are a drain on the University. We could see more schools following the Temple model.

This is a conundrum for sure. On one had you have a number of schools making money hand over fist and some kids with no money to enjoy a pizza or a movie. There is the argument that a NW education valued at over 200k is payment enough.

I suspect there will be some kind of monthly allowance arrangement made but through how many sports will it go? I wonder if the non-rev sports will all go club if the well runs dry?

 

[JJsqueeze]

I think the impact of this is just more rules about how much time is put into the sport vs. school, who is supervising them (coach vs. Faculty), how soon before the season starts do they start workouts etc. The rules of the game will change but the game will stay the same. I support the ruling, not from the perspective of allowing them to unionize, but from the perspective of putting pressure on schools to reorder the student-athlete equation. If the whole argument that they are students first has any validity, then they need the opportunity to have the time to be students first and put as much work into their academics as they do their athletics. Probably 99.9% of them will earn their money from their education, not their athletics.

 

[Indiana]

^^^^ I agree.

There is a new documentary out called "schooled" - it goes into the history of the NCAA and touches upon the lawsuits that we are now seeing come to fruition.

A formula like the Ivy's would be interesting; however, it could lead to more chaos and booster-funded programs, which the NCAA was originally trying to curtail.

 

[Rocketech1]

There is the argument that a NW education valued at over 200k is payment enough.

Here is the problem with the argument that the education that the athlete gets is more than fair enough compensation for playing D1 football:

"Of the Bowl Championship teams, Stanford has the highest completion (of college) rate of 82 percent for black players, by a long shot. Coming in second is Alabama, with a 53 percent completion rate for black players, followed by Auburn at 51 percent. Baylor and Ohio State each graduate 50 percent of black players, followed by Michigan State at 49, Clemson and UCF at 47 percent, and Oklahoma at 42 percent. Florida State comes in last at 37 percent."

For the big D1 BCS programs that are making 100s of millions of dollars for the universities, television networks, etc.., the black athletes who are disproportionately a large % of the total D1 football players are only graduating less than 50% of the time over 6 years and are directed into non-demanding majors because they don't have the time to attend classes and study.

If they don't make it to the NFL, more than half these kids don't even have a degree to fall back on. You can see why some of these "Athlete-Students" just want a little piece of the pie.