Why college athlete unions will never happen, but the NCAA will never be the same

It was a groundbreaking announcement that sent shockwaves throughout the world of college sports. On Wednesday, the regional director of the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago, Peter Sung Ohr, ruled that Northwestern University football players are university employees and are entitled to an election to possibly form a union.

The backlash was immediate and equally passionate on both sides of the debate – are these players indeed student-athletes, as contended by the NCAA, or are they truly employees?

There’s an argument to be made either way, and it may never actually swing one way or the other when all the smoke clears, but there is no denying that this ruling has provided a launching pad for other groups of athletes from other schools to attempt similar actions.

That said, things aren’t going to take a giant leap into the destruction of college athletics anytime soon, so you can probably hold off on hara-kiri for the time being.

This is going to be a process, and a long drawn-out one at that. The appeals process alone will more than likely head all the way up to the supreme court, and will take years to play out.

So just sit back, and let it breathe.

In the end, I doubt very seriously that Northwestern’s football players will vote to unionize (more on that later), but the ripple effects that this decision and the subsequent legal proceedings will have on the NCAA may finally bring about some long-needed changes.

I’ve written before how the NCAA gives the perception of a rogue organization, who seemingly makes up rules as they go along and doles out punishments with all the fairness of the Spanish Inquisition. Now their ill-begotten wares will be spotlighted for not only the public, but also for the hierarchy of the American legal system.

The dirty laundry of NCAA president Mark Emmert and his band of merry cohorts on display for all the world? Oh, that’s pay-per-view material right there.

As for the formation of unions by players – bad idea. Not only for the fundamentally poor reasoning behind it and the potential deconstruction of collegiate sports, but for reasons that many of these young people simply do not understand (or haven’t had explained to them yet).

Do football and other revenue-generating sports provide millions of dollars for the universities? Absolutely.

Do these players deserve at least a share of that money? Maybe.

Does this mean that athletes are actually employees who should be paid for their time and work? Absolutely not.

College athletes are student-athletes first and foremost, regardless of any perception otherwise. Coming from someone who attended college on a full scholarship, I can tell you that the value of tuition, room, board, food and other necessities that are provided through the scholarships and grants these students receive is quite more than the public is led to believe.

Now this isn’t to say that certain coaches don’t take advantage of the situation, and have stretched these young athletes more than should have been allowed (with all of it going on under the “watchful” eye of the NCAA), but those are changes that can and will be brought about using methods other than sitting at the collective bargaining table.

That also doesn’t mean that the players aren’t being unfairly treated, both fiscally and in terms of their required time devoted to the sport.

But if players vote to form a union, and enter into collective bargaining with a university, whether they think so or not, the advantage suddenly shifts even more towards the schools and coaches than they would ever believe. Unionization is fine when you talk about truckers, or factory workers, where there is a basically level playing field from one organization to the next.

Sports? Well, that’s a different story.

For instance, what happens to a professional athlete who is not pulling his weight for a team?

Released, right?

So now football employee Joe is out of a job, which means that student-athlete Joe will have no money to pay for his continuing education.

And what happens to professional athletes all the time? Traded.

If you play backup quarterback at Alabama, but Nick Saban suddenly has the need for a middle linebacker to win his next national championship, guess what…you’re now potentially an employee at Penn State.

Employees get drug-tested, background checked, and are subject to the same mundane problems as your average citizen, who in many cases still wish they lived the carefree college life.

Unions and collective bargaining mean all the headaches most of us have on a yearly basis. Things like FICO, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, taxes, and the threat of work stoppages through strikes or lockouts.

Yeah…sorry folks, no Iron Bowl this year as Auburn has voted to lock out players until a new collective bargaining agreement has been reached.

It would be an unconscionable mess, and nobody would want to clean it up. College football would simply become the next USFL or XFL and would fade away into the sunset.

But there is good coming out of what has happened. Now the NCAA is going to have to come up with an answer as to why they allow certain things to go on, and prohibit players from doing what is needed to live a more normal life.

It could lead to bigger stipends for players, which could be adjusted based on a player’s performance and off-field behavior.  It could lead to a profit or success sharing program, where at the end of the season a portion of the athletic department’s huge payouts would be equally divided among players. It could lead to more human practice schedules and prohibit coaches from overworking players.

The possibilities are endless, and–best of all–it could end up into a sweeping reform, or even (dare I say) a dismantling of the NCAA into a less powerful, but more student-involved organization.

No, the chances of college athletes forming unions are slim. The legal process alone will probably tire out the majority of those who seek to unionize. But the ramifications of even a remote possibility that it could happen will mean that the NCAA will never be the same.

And that is probably grandest prize of all for these student-athletes.