Clemson receiver thinks player unions are needed in the NCAA
By Emily Adams
If more college football players start joining Pac-12 athletes, the NCAA is going to have to listen.
Pac-12 football players made big waves in the collegiate sports world when they released a list of demands for the league. The players intend to boycott the 2020 season if they are not guaranteed health insurance after graduation, a cut of the season’s profits, and strict COVID-19 safety protocols. Now, players outside the Pac-12 are calling for changes too.
Clemson wide receiver Amari Rodgers tweeted his support for player unions forming within the NCAA. It’s an idea that has been suggested time and time again over the years, but the NCAA has always shut it down with its assertion that athletes are not employees and therefore have no rights to organize or negotiate with the organization. Now that supposedly hundreds of Pac-12 athletes have come together to release their demands, this might finally be the moment where something changes.
The NCAA currently makes decisions with very minimal representation from the players whose fates they are deciding. Because of amateurism rules, the governing body places severe restrictions on how and from whom athletes can receive benefits and prevents them from making any money related to their sport while they are members of the NCAA. This allows the NCAA to bring in more than $1 billion in revenue annually from players who do not ever have an opportunity to challenge them.
COVID-19 has exposed many of the problems with the players’ lack of representation in the NCAA. The Power 5 conferences are trying desperately to play football this year, but athletes have repeatedly said that they do not feel confident in the safety measures being proposed for the fall season. Unlike the professional leagues, which have gone through extensive negotiations about safety and scheduling, college players are beholden to whatever the NCAA decides.
Division I athletes, especially football players, are being asked to put their health and lives on the line so that their institutions can make money without ever seeing a dime of it. The Pac-12 players have started the movement for change, but if athletes like Rodgers from the most major football schools in the country join in, they could be unstoppable. The NCAA can’t risk Clemson or Alabama sitting out a season the way they can Washington or UCLA. In this moment of reckoning on social justice, it’s time that college athletes got their due.
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