Northwestern Univ players can unionize...

dressedcheeseside

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dressedcheesid: There is one problem with this idea. All the other majors and minors are career paths and the students have to pay the college in order to obtain these teachings regarding their careers. The football players are getting free scholarships, some stipends, free food, free housing, tutors, etal, so they are bieng paid for their career training. I can't see how the administration could mesh the two.
Many artists, dancers and musicians are on scholarship, too. What's the difference? The Athlete majors could be open for paying students as well. How do the performing arts schools do it, do they have auditions/submit porfolios? The big difference would be the percentage of scholarship vs non-scholarship students would be a lot different, but football teams already have walk-on players.
 

takethepoints

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All you people are missing the obvious: the private schools, after a short knee jerk, will embrace this idea with gusto. Why?

What union will try to affiliate with the new collegiate athletes union in football (let's keep this simple by looking at one sport)? Why, the NFL players association, of course. And the private schools involved will go along with that and up the benefits for their now unionized athletes. Because why? Higher benefits and union representation tied to the NFL will mean that every 5 star football player in the country will want to play at the private schools. And those institutions will have a tremendous incentive to go along with that. I mean, does anybody here think that USCw wouldn't jump at the chance to be perennial national football champions? That Vandy wouldn't like to replace Bama at the top of the SEC? Or Duke replace FSU? Or - their players started it - Northwestern to dominate Ohio State? Yep. If this ruling stands - and I wouldn't be surprised if it does - it will change the face of college football completely.

But what about the NCAA, I hear you ask? If the scenario above plays out and I'm one of the newly favored privates, I look at the NCAA and say, "<Implement tightened with a screwdriver> them!" And I'll be right.
 

GTJason

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This is simply a group of 18-23 yr olds who don't know what they are asking for. I suspect someone is behind the scenes that conveniently has the complete plans to create a players union and will become a billionaire off of it. There are certain things the colleges should be responsible for and long term healthcare for injuries sustained in the game is certainly one of them. If you don't agree look at our military. I'm not comparing football to the military, that's Kellen Winslow's job, but if they are injured in the line of duty we take care of them for life 100%. Does anyone argue that we shouldn't? No, of course not. If Julian Burnett has back and neck pain for the rest of his life, is that just the price he paid for his top quality education? I personally don't think so.

Is a union a way to get this? I don't think so. The NCAA is already a union of sorts, they exert control over the schools on behalf of the players (theoretically.) If the NCAA said long term healthcare is on the school, every school would do it. Last time I checked unions have dues, are the players who supposedly aren't being paid going to fork out monthly dues? The school sure as crap isn't going to pay for it. All of the other items they are asking for is garbage and it'll just add bureaucracy to the game on an insane level

The specific goals of CAPA include guaranteeing coverage of sports-related medical expenses for current and former players, reducing head injuries and potentially letting players pursue commercial sponsorships.

You know CAPA doesn't give a crap about the first 2 items. They want royalties from the endorsements and that is all
 

dressedcheeseside

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All you people are missing the obvious: the private schools, after a short knee jerk, will embrace this idea with gusto. Why?

What union will try to affiliate with the new collegiate athletes union in football (let's keep this simple by looking at one sport)? Why, the NFL players association, of course. And the private schools involved will go along with that and up the benefits for their now unionized athletes. Because why? Higher benefits and union representation tied to the NFL will mean that every 5 star football player in the country will want to play at the private schools. And those institutions will have a tremendous incentive to go along with that. I mean, does anybody here think that USCw wouldn't jump at the chance to be perennial national football champions? That Vandy wouldn't like to replace Bama at the top of the SEC? Or Duke replace FSU? Or - their players started it - Northwestern to dominate Ohio State? Yep. If this ruling stands - and I wouldn't be surprised if it does - it will change the face of college football completely.

But what about the NCAA, I hear you ask? If the scenario above plays out and I'm one of the newly favored privates, I look at the NCAA and say, "<Implement tightened with a screwdriver> them!" And I'll be right.
Wouldn't the private schools have to form their own league as the NCAA would declare unionized players non-amateurs and ban them?
 

takethepoints

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Many artists, dancers and musicians are on scholarship, too. What's the difference? The Athlete majors could be open for paying students as well. How do the performing arts schools do it, do they have auditions/submit porfolios? The big difference would be the percentage of scholarship vs non-scholarship students would be a lot different, but football teams already have walk-on players.
And, I might add, all of those occupations are highly unionized already. Declaring athletics a major won't, I think, change the obvious extensions that are probably occurring to the folks who run Actor's Equity right this minute.
 

slugboy

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dressedcheesid: There is one problem with this idea. All the other majors and minors are career paths and the students have to pay the college in order to obtain these teachings regarding their careers. The football players are getting free scholarships, some stipends, free food, free housing, tutors, etal, so they are bieng paid for their career training. I can't see how the administration could mesh the two.

You can think of class and study as a benefit, and at some schools and for some kids, I'm sure they think of it that way. If you think of doing the classwork as part of their job--which is easy to do--it's not a benefit, it's a responsibility.

For these kids who get a scholarship with the plan of becoming a pro, the classes are a distraction.

For baseball, international soccer, and hockey, there are kids going pro at 15 or 16. No one is stopping anyone from being a professional musician at 17, but these kids aren't allowed to play pro football at that age.

College football and basketball are weird "jobs"--we're just used to it. Where else would they run it the way we do in the US?
 

takethepoints

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Wouldn't the private schools have to form their own league as the NCAA would declare unionized players non-amateurs and ban them?
Yes. I would bet they'd do it in a New York minute. Under the scenario I laid out, they'd be running the quality football in the country. The NCAA would be, in effect, a Div 2 for public schools. Including Tech.

Now, obviously, there'd be some cultural obstacles to overcome. Places like Duke and Stanford (how did I forget them!?) hold themselves up as academic strongholds and would now be the football factories of the country. But I bet they could get used to that.

Iow, if it is upheld, this ruling could lead to the de-emphasis of big time college athletics at public universities and colleges. That's something every taxpayer in the country should welcome with fireworks. It's long overdue.
 

dressedcheeseside

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Iow, if it is upheld, this ruling could lead to the de-emphasis of big time college athletics at public universities and colleges. That's something every taxpayer in the country should welcome with fireworks. It's long overdue.
I thought AA's were self supported, not tax supported like the schools?
 

GTJason

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Yes. I would bet they'd do it in a New York minute. Under the scenario I laid out, they'd be running the quality football in the country. The NCAA would be, in effect, a Div 2 for public schools. Including Tech.

Now, obviously, there'd be some cultural obstacles to overcome. Places like Duke and Stanford (how did I forget them!?) hold themselves up as academic strongholds and would now be the football factories of the country. But I bet they could get used to that.

Iow, if it is upheld, this ruling could lead to the de-emphasis of big time college athletics at public universities and colleges. That's something every taxpayer in the country should welcome with fireworks. It's long overdue.
Do you think taxpayers are what keeps athletics going at big time universities? College football is a money making juggernaut without the need for public assistance.

Let's say this ruling actually leads to players being paid. The paycheck will have to be the same for every player in the country, then the NCAA will not allow scholarships because the player is no longer eligible. If you are being paid for college and really don't care where the degree comes from would you go a private school or a school that costs 1/3 the cost per year? In that scenario the private schools will get hammered
 

dressedcheeseside

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I wonder if the players were declared employees if they'd even have to attend classes anymore? The guys who sweep the walkways and sell cokes at the stadium don't go to class.
 

takethepoints

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I thought AA's were self supported, not tax supported like the schools?
You and Jason have mistaken me here. I know that most AAs are self-sufficient. What bothers me about big-time college sports is the humungous amount of attention that garners from the alums and the state legislatures. It's like this: state legislatures want to reduce taxes –> state legislatures reduce funds for public higher education –> public universities try to recoup difference from federal grants and contribs from alums –> public universities emphasize sports to keep alums happy –> alums pressure legislatures to favor "their" institutions with the limited funds available and with regulations favoring them and to avoid upsetting the apple cart by emphasizing academic standards –> and the public schools that are serious about high quality education for their students (a public good if ever there was one) end up like Tech.

It's a cycle you can see everywhere. It's actually not as bad in Georgia as in most places. Our state puts in a good effort for education, but it doesn't pay off too well when your state is 38th in per capita income. If you look over the border to the Heart of Darkness (i.e. Alabama) you can see just how bad this picture can get. Sooooo … short Points: public education needs to emphasize, you know, education. Leave the training of pro athletes to the businesses involved.
 

Animal02

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Many artists, dancers and musicians are on scholarship, too. What's the difference? The Athlete majors could be open for paying students as well. How do the performing arts schools do it, do they have auditions/submit porfolios? The big difference would be the percentage of scholarship vs non-scholarship students would be a lot different, but football teams already have walk-on players.

I would say that the possibility of a dance /theater major making it into the big leagues of their chosen career path would be about the same as that of a football player making it into the big leagues. :whistle:
 

Animal02

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Wouldn't the private schools have to form their own league as the NCAA would declare unionized players non-amateurs and ban them?

Yep.........the NLRB has no control of public universities.......and the rest of the NCAA will no cede control over to the NLRB without a gun pointing at their head. simplest way is for the NCAA to delcare schools with unions as professionals......they would have to form their own league...needless to say, the income drop would be significant.
 

ATL1

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You and Jason have mistaken me here. I know that most AAs are self-sufficient. /quote]



Actually most Athletic Departments take subsidies from their institutions; http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2013/05/07/ncaa-finances-subsidies/2142443/

I personally think the system is broken and has lost the essence of what college athletics were supposed to be. The cart jumped the horse a long time ago and I don't think it will ever get back unless it implodes.
 

takethepoints

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I would say that the possibility of a dance /theater major making it into the big leagues of their chosen career path would be about the same as that of a football player making it into the big leagues. :whistle:
I keep pointing this out to students I know. It doesn't seem to cut much ice. Btw, I'd say their chances are lower then college football players for the NFL!
 

TampaGT

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End the end I don't think much will change. 1) Players aren't force to play college sports. They know how the game is played and on the our free will sign to play under these rules. If they don't like these rules they can go elsewhere. I think the change will be the elsewhere (NFL,NBA) I don't think they are going to be able to keep players from entering the draft. 2) Yes football and basketball make lots of money, but Tech has 15 men and women sports. There is roughly 400 SA. If you just pay them $10,000 a year that is $4 million and I just don't see that happening. 3) Let's say that they start paying SA, how can you make an argument to not pay the cheerleaders, band, and everything in between that and the glee club. I think what you might see if the players force this, that it goes back to true SA. Raise the academic standards to the level or closer to the level of all students and I think most of players asking to be paid will gone because they will not qualify with the higher academic standards. By the way I was a SA (not at Tech), I just don't think SA should be paid. I think the problem is that these players don't put a value on their Edu. I was happy playing because I was getting a free edu. How many of these kids are taking Underwater basket waving classes and can barely read or write (see the paper from the football player at UNC)
 

GTNavyNuke

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Let the NCAA rot in hell for the Money Sports.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/308643/

I read this article with the preconception that the NCAA was inexorably corrupt and self serving to increase their profits while only using the artifice of "student-athletes" to cover their greed. I had that opinion based on only a few things that I knew the details of and I knew to be wrong that the NCAA has done. Firmly believing that there is never just one cockroach, I figured that there had to be systemic corruption at the NCAA.

This article provides the evidence of that systemic corruption and hypocrisy. I am not happy at all, because after reading the article, it is only a matter of time -- like maybe 5 years -- until the NCAA is gone (thank god) from interfering with college football, but what will replace it? Probably a sound business model that treats the athletes as workers, entitles them to a share of the revenue they generate and workman's compensation when they are injured. That will probably be bad for GT since our higher academics will be a hindrance compared to better partying environments at the foot ball factories.

NCAA football is unstable right now because of the magnitude of money coming in, the changes in technology driving the capabilities of the teams to recruit and technology change in general changing our lives. But there is a supreme irony in all this. The article posits that the NCAA was created at Roosevelt's behest to further Harvard over Yale and look at where they are today in college football. So there will be many unintentional and unexpected consequences. Hopefully, we will go towards the model of the Olympics, but who knows. We don't live in a rational world.

Just one excerpt - this should be must reading for all those supporting (but not supported by) the NCAA. The history of the student -athlete moniker:
"Today, much of the NCAA’s moral authority—indeed much of the justification for its existence—is vested in its claim to protect what it calls the “student-athlete.” The term is meant to conjure the nobility of amateurism, and the precedence of scholarship over athletic endeavor. But the origins of the “student-athlete” lie not in a disinterested ideal but in a sophistic formulation designed, as the sports economist Andrew Zimbalist has written, to help the NCAA in its “fight against workmen’s compensation insurance claims for injured football players.”

“We crafted the term student-athlete,” Walter Byers himself wrote, “and soon it was embedded in all NCAA rules and interpretations.” The term came into play in the 1950s, when the widow of Ray Dennison, who had died from a head injury received while playing football in Colorado for the Fort Lewis A&M Aggies, filed for workmen’s-compensation death benefits. Did his football scholarship make the fatal collision a “work-related” accident? Was he a school employee, like his peers who worked part-time as teaching assistants and bookstore cashiers? Or was he a fluke victim of extracurricular pursuits? Given the hundreds of incapacitating injuries to college athletes each year, the answers to these questions had enormous consequences. The Colorado Supreme Court ultimately agreed with the school’s contention that he was not eligible for benefits, since the college was “not in the football business.”

The term student-athlete was deliberately ambiguous. College players were not students at play (which might understate their athletic obligations), nor were they just athletes in college (which might imply they were professionals). That they were high-performance athletes meant they could be forgiven for not meeting the academic standards of their peers; that they were students meant they did not have to be compensated, ever, for anything more than the cost of their studies. Student-athlete became the NCAA’s signature term, repeated constantly in and out of courtrooms.

Using the “student-athlete” defense, colleges have compiled a string of victories in liability cases. On the afternoon of October 26, 1974, the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs were playing the Alabama Crimson Tide in Birmingham, Alabama. Kent Waldrep, a TCU running back, carried the ball on a “Red Right 28” sweep toward the Crimson Tide’s sideline, where he was met by a swarm of tacklers. When Waldrep regained consciousness, Bear Bryant, the storied Crimson Tide coach, was standing over his hospital bed . “It was like talking to God, if you’re a young football player,” Waldrep recalled.

Waldrep was paralyzed: he had lost all movement and feeling below his neck. After nine months of paying his medical bills, Texas Christian refused to pay any more, so the Waldrep family coped for years on dwindling charity.

Through the 1990s, from his wheelchair, Waldrep pressed a lawsuit for workers’ compensation. (He also, through heroic rehabilitation efforts, recovered feeling in his arms, and eventually learned to drive a specially rigged van. “I can brush my teeth,” he told me last year, “but I still need help to bathe and dress.”) His attorneys haggled with TCU and the state worker-compensation fund over what constituted employment. Clearly, TCU had provided football players with equipment for the job, as a typical employer would—but did the university pay wages, withhold income taxes on his financial aid, or control work conditions and performance? The appeals court finally rejected Waldrep’s claim in June of 2000, ruling that he was not an employee because he had not paid taxes on financial aid that he could have kept even if he quit football. (Waldrep told me school officials “said they recruited me as a student, not an athlete,” which he says was absurd.)

The long saga vindicated the power of the NCAA’s “student-athlete” formulation as a shield, and the organization continues to invoke it as both a legalistic defense and a noble ideal. Indeed , such is the term’s rhetorical power that it is increasingly used as a sort of reflexive mantra against charges of rabid hypocrisy."

and

"No legal definition of amateur exists, and any attempt to create one in enforceable law would expose its repulsive and unconstitutional nature—a bill of attainder, stripping from college athletes the rights of American citizenship."
 

Animal02

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I keep pointing this out to students I know. It doesn't seem to cut much ice. Btw, I'd say their chances are lower then college football players for the NFL!

I was involved in the theater at Tech, and have been off and on since.....never on stage, but love designing sets and lights, (besides.....there were always lots of open minded women involved in theater) Even taught technical theater at a local H.S. part time. There was two kids in 25 years that I met that I recommended that they pursue a theater education out of a couple hundred that did so. Of the two, one got pregnant and never made it to college, the other is on a touring broadway show. The others mostly became cashiers, worked in retail etc, many while struggling to live in NYC waiting to be "discovered"

On the other hand, a Chem E. major at Tech that I knew that was involved in the theater, got his MBA at UCLA and is a senior VP at one of the studios out in Hollywood. :smuggrin:
 

GTNavyNuke

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Fabulous article that puts the ruling into focus. Student athletes are employees. The right to unionize is only the icing on the cake and a side issue. Since student athletes are employees, they are eligible to health care like other employees. Forming a union will enable them to get better benefits, but not essential:
http://www.sippinonpurple.com/north...ased-a-statement-on-the-nlrb-ruling-and-it-is

And then, the NCAA figures if they tell a lie long enough it will become true:
http://www.sbnation.com/college-foo...8/college-football-players-union-pay-for-play

If I seem to care about this, it is because a friend of mines kid played on VTs scout team and has trouble walking because of injuries. No health care once he was off the team. Another GT scout team player I know has leg injuries that aren't taken care of either as well as being very concussion prone now and medically warned to avoid blows to the head.

It ain't right. Forget what it means to our entertainment. It ain't right.
 
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