I just saw an article on ESPN about the NLRB beginning the process of identifying athletes at Southern Cal and the PAC 12 as "employees". Once this happens, the athletes will be able to unionize. With unions in place, college athletics will have completed the transformation to official minor league status. So sad .....................
College Athlete Unions
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And since they’re part of a union, also can’t be fired for performance.
Lol. What college is going to want to bargain with 18 year olds who are supposed to be getting an education there?
Just shut it down.
Pipe dream: If all Universities just stopped playing football, what would the High School “Student-Athletes” do?
Pipe dream: If all Universities just stopped playing football, what would the High School “Student-Athletes” do?
People that probably never played a sport are trying to ruin sports
This “me” society is ruining so many things. Entitled, lazy, selfish, woke group of people.
NFL players are part of a union and they get cut all the time.
This is a silly narrative, but I think the athletes wanting to unionize have played sports.
to me, it looks like @nmerritt11 is referring to the pro union NLRB and the pro union democrats legislature as wanting to organize, based on the article. It doesn't indicate the athletes wanting to unionize. the top level athletes would be foolish to want to organize imo.
there has never been any issue other than companies making money off of athletes like EA sports, apparel companies, etc. Then they dissolved that, eliminated the EA college games, and eliminated companies with rights to produce apparel from using players for profit.
Then it created a black market for companies in China to profit off of it. Then came the "NIL" idea which was completely botched. And now they are trying to take sports that are supposed to be tied to academics and trying to change them from Student Athletes and make them employees and now talking about unionizing.
This is a complete and utter mess. The players are not the ones pushing for a union. It is politicians and lawyers who can financially benefit from it
The game we have all came to love over the years is changing and in no way for the good of the game or the student athlete
What is next? High School sports? High School transfer portal and NIL? As long as this "woke" society keeps allowing stupid **** like this to happen they will go after more.
Again, if they want to be employees, eliminate the scholarship, free room and board and all the other perks and make them pay their bills. They want to be treated like grown adult employees, then make them employees.
Form a minor league, don't require classes, fill it with high school kids that just want the pay for play model and then have a true student athlete league that eliminates all the bull ****
Unionizing college sports is awful...hell unions are awful period
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Yes. Depends on the contract negotiated. Somehow I don’t see college administrators being as hard *** as NFL owners.
If they become employees, then women athletes will complain. Football players will end up making less than they are now, because womens field hockey will have to be paid as much as the starting QB
It just amazes me the NFL players aren’t bitching that amateurs are getting paid more than the league minimum and practice squad guys
This whole thing has catastrophe written all over it
Once they are employees, can’t discriminate against people with a handicap.
You thought Some of our WRs caught like someone with no hands. Wait until we have to actually pay someone with no hands to play WR.
You thought Some of our WRs caught like someone with no hands. Wait until we have to actually pay someone with no hands to play WR.
This is the only reasonable path forward at this point. I anticipate 16-20 ish teams will break off from the NCAA and essentially form this. Teams like Clemson will revert back to the old SoCon days and Saturdays in Death Valley will look more like ones at Furman.
1 or 2 things will happen...it will strengthen college sports because high school kids that bolt to the minor leagues, don't make it to the NFL, and are left poor with no degree and coaches, mentors, handlers, etc will recognize it is not the smartest path or it will water down both
All I know is they have absolutely let money control this new model and it is slowly destroying it.
I mean when a kid can get free education, not have to pay any bills, get paid more than an NFL player that has earned his way to the league then the model is screwed.
I am just waiting for the professors to realize how much more the athletes they are teaching are making 10X more than them and boycott. It is not IF, it is when there is a trickle down. It is going to happen
I agree. I was being optimistic. Ha Ha. The only real way to preserve college football is for the NFL to partner with the USFL/XFL and subsidize those leagues. They can draft kids right out of high school and place them on the minor league roster. Then any kids that still want an education can go the traditional model. This will never happen though.
Trying to portray this as between people who've never played sports (including the usual scapegoats, like politicians) and the rest of us normals who've played sports is a cheap way of dismissing the other side, in addition to obviously just being inaccurate. Plenty of athletes (although probably not most of them) see this stuff as helping them to enrich and empower themselves. I agree with the rest, but let's not be dishonest about what's going on here to try make our argument sound better.
They’ll certainly take direction from a coach. Saban already “cuts” down his roster by telling them to transfer out. This would just formalize it and instead they’d get cut. I mean, I think you could argue that negotiating a contract with these players would at least make the roster management more tenable. Instead it’s unrestricted free agency for every player, every year. I’m not saying it’s the best thing for the sport, but it might be better than the garbage we have now.