Watch out college sports, labor unions are heading your way.
This week we witnessed the Dartmouth men’s basketball team vote to form the first labor union in college sports, and while Dartmouth officials have already pushed back vehemently on the idea, this move has definitely opened Pandora’s Box for the future of amateur sports. Where the Dartmouth union efforts end up remains to be seen, but we can be confident that regardless of the decision we will soon see many more college teams and athletic programs follow a similar path. Dartmouth student athletes have presented a very formidable argument detailing how they are more in line as employees at Dartmouth than they are students, and because of this unique relationship they should have traditional employee perks afforded to them. Now that Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) is a thing, are college athletic unions next?
If it walks like a duck…
Are college student athletes legitimate college employees? Or are they still “amateur” student athletes who enjoy receiving varying amounts of scholarship money in exchange for playing on a university team? While the NCAA and member schools will argue that student athletes are already “paid” by means of athletic scholarship money, when you drill just a little deeper on this issue you soon see where student athletes are coming from with their efforts to unionize. Student athletes, especially in football and basketball, are revenue-producers for universities nationwide. Additionally, student athletes are held to different unique standards with respect to how they earn money (though that is changing), their minimum grade point average to stay eligible and compete, and a host of social expectations relating to their personal conduct. Throw in additional concerns including travel (sometimes across the country), scholarships that really do not amount to much (i.e. books), and the constant pressure to select a “dummy major” to stay eligible, and you quickly begin to see the nuance relating to college amateur athletics, and why Dartmouth is pushing for unionization. The reality is that today’s college student athletes live a very unique life, and far more resemble professional athletes (and employees of their respective universities) than they do their college, non-sport peers.
The guess here is that the efforts being made at Dartmouth will be replicated by other schools soon, but we should ask ourselves did it really need to get to this point? For years student athletes have raised concerns over the issues prompting them to unionize, and to date the only response has been either being totally ignored, or being told they should appreciate what they have already by means of academic scholarship money. Student athletes have retorted by identifying their incredibly rigorous training schedules (that only get more exhausting every year), the pressures they experience to stay eligible (and thereby make money for the university), and a host of additional concerns where they feel taken advantage of by their respective universities. While they absorb these demands, they have watched college coaches make tens of millions of dollars, state-of-the-art stadiums and training centers built, and stadiums full of fans wearing their jerseys (yet they still do not profit from these sales). Even if you do not agree that unionization is the answer, you can at least see how we got to this point
Final thoughts
As we keep an eye out to what happens at Dartmouth, we should prepare to see many more of these cases in the very near future. To date, Dartmouth has threatened to simply cut the basketball program in response to unionization, and while that could happen with Dartmouth men’s basketball, it’s laughable to think that other, high-powered D1 universities will cut their football or basketball programs with such lucrative revenues. While it took a long time to see substantial change to college sports, we are currently in the throes of some monumental shifts with respect to contemporary philosophy and more equal income distribution.
drstankovich.com
