Unionizing college football players blurs definition of a university

Besides the fact that only one team showed up to the Super Bowl this year and that the Winter Olympics in Sochi were clouded with controversial conditions before they even began, I think one of the most pertinent issues emerging from the sports world right now is the unionization of college football players.

In case you haven’t heard, a group of Northwestern University football players have recently announced that they will seek permission from the U.S. government to form a labor union. If successful, they would be affiliated with the United Steelworkers — who would handle all of the technical processes — and the players would then be recognized as university employees and consequently, would retain the right to collectively bargain.

The effort is being spearheaded by Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter, who, in explaining his motivation to ESPN, said, “Right now the NCAA is like a dictatorship. No one represents us in negotiations. The only way things are going to change is if players have a union.”

Colter is undeniably correct in his assertion about the NCAA here, seeing that the NCAA is indeed an unchecked monopoly that wields supreme power — mainly through athlete scholarship limitations — over the athletes who help generate its wealth. And being that it is completely self-regulated with virtually no competition, the NCAA has easily been able to transform college football into a $5 billion industry.

And the demand for football won’t go away anytime soon. Therefore, I can completely understand why these athletes want recognition and protection rights as legal employees for such a big business.

However, there’s an underlying issue here that has gone unspoken in the debate, and it concerns the intended — or maybe most desired — goals of our academic institutions. Universities are, believe it or not, supposed to be a means for students to achieve knowledge and educational opportunity, rather than self-concerned businesses that rationally seek to maximize profits, though one can certainly make the argument that they are turning into that.

While I think Colter and his teammate’s intentions are genuine, I fear that if they achieve legal employee status, it will only exacerbate the perception of colleges as businesses, rather than educational institutions.

Student athletes as employees would continue to shift focus away from the average student and toward the development of the high-profile athlete, who in this case is not only the employee, but the product as well. The overall goal of a university is not to refine football players, and they are not meant to be farm leagues catering to the NFL. 

Universities aren’t like what the Ontario Hockey League is to hockey, to use an outside example. In the Ontario Hockey League, players who are 15 to 20 years old play in a junior league where they focus solely on their sport, and they are also paid to do so because it’s a business. Teams invest in players, who, in return, earn profits by attracting crowds. Afterward, these players then continue their career paths toward the National Hockey League draft where they will hope to be selected to continue pursuing and perfecting their craft professionally.

Of course, I know that many universities essentially do this already: They invest in players by doling out money to pay for their athletes’ time in college, and in return, the players attract fans and money. The point I’m trying to make is that this is the problem in the first place. The emphasis on big money athletics undermines the value of the educational aspect of college, and paying college athletes will only continue to enforce the idea that college for the star players is, in fact, merely a farm league.

Furthermore, paying college players would inevitably render all student athletes competitors in the market, not just the employed football players.

As Slate’s John Culhane wrote, “The success of football and basketball players in earning a long-overdue paycheck might be taken out of the hide of athletes that don’t generate revenue, causing sports like wrestling to disappear even faster than they’re vanishing now.”  

Countless universities have already cut many sports programs — such as swimming, baseball and rowing — in favor of the more high-profile sports. If universities then have to face a football players union, it is not doubtful that this trend would certainly increase. The other sports simply would not be able to compete because they don’t have the resources or the means to generate competitive profits.

Yet, despite all of these things, we will always undoubtedly love our football team. But why not love them as fellow students? If players unionize, it would only further separate them from the student body as preferred money making agents.

Write Nick at njv10@pitt.edu.