For college sports players, it’s first the cash and now the union

Duke's Kyle Filipowski (30) blocks the shot of Dartmouth's Dusan Neskovic, left, ahead of Duke's Tyrese Proctor (5) and Ryan Young (15) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Durham, N.C., Monday, Nov. 6, 2023. | Ben McKeown/AP

SAN FRANCISCO—College athletes shorted for years by their universities and the NCAA are taking the next step beyond the $2.78 billion settlement they won in federal court in San Francisco this past October. Now, they’re considering unionizing.

The Associated Press reported recently that three of the athletes who led the winning case against the institutions and the NCAA, Grant House, Sedona Prince, and Nya Harrison, wrote U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in San Francisco that “there still remains a critical need for structural changes to protect athletes and prevent the failures of the past.”

That structural change, they said, would be a players’ association. Also known as a union. Which wasn’t part of the so-called preliminary House settlement, approved in October.

Judge Wilken oversaw the case and will hold hearings on the settlement. House, Prince, and Harrison said they’re not complaining about the money, which will be spread out to thousands of past athletes over the next decade.

But they want the right for current and future collegiate athletes to bargain with the schools, and the NCAA, for a fair share of the billions of dollars in revenue those institutions now garner from TV and cable rights, ticket sales, video game sales, and product endorsements. That’s what a union is for.

While the athletes have won the battle over getting paid for the use of their names, images, and likenesses (NIL), the result has been a free-for-all. Athletes with high profiles at “power conference” schools, especially in football and men’s basketball, have, with their agents, raked in tens of thousands of dollars each. Except for far fewer collegiate women’s basketball players, such as Caitlin Clark, other athletes have been left with little or nothing beyond their scholarships.

Unionizing, the three players told Judge Wilkens, would help standardize NIL contracts to establish minimum payments and health protections “and to create an ecosystem where athletes can thrive.”

Besides the billions for past college athletes, the settlement calls for 22% of college athletic revenues to go to current players, starting later this year. Over the next decade, it would rise to 32.9%.

The settlement for the past players, covering lack of pay from 2016 through now, assumes 75% of the money would go to men’s football players, 20% to men’s and women’s collegiate basketballers, and the rest to other athletes. That could present a legal problem, too: Title IX law says schools which take federal funds—and virtually all do, via loans and grants—must treat all students equally.

Right now, the bosses—the NCAA, the universities, the athletic directors, and the coaches—not only exploit the players by controlling their schedules, classes, working conditions, and even their futures but also pocket the lion’s share of the money.

“While professional leagues include athletes in these decisions” over money “through their respective players’ associations, the college system continues to prevent our players’ association from representing us at the decision-making tables,” the three athletes wrote to the judge.

The players’ letter to the judge grows out of the continuing battle pitting the collegiate players against their bosses and the NCAA over money. The athletes triumphed in every legal round, from Wilkens’ court in San Francisco all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court in D.C.

Fighting a rear-guard action, the NCAA and its member institutions have lobbied lawmakers—especially Republicans—to cut the athletes out of the swag by banning them from unionizing and legally ratifying the NCAA’s fake definition of them as “student-athletes.”

The one place where the athletes’ interests have stumbled is the National Labor Relations Board. Several unions, including the Steelworkers and the Service Employees, have attempted to organize college athletes, arguing they’re “employees,” open to unionizing under labor law.

Football players at Northwestern University, outside Chicago, unionized and the NLRB’s Chicago Regional Director then, Peter Sung Ohr, ruled they were “employees,” not “students” or “student athletes” and could do so. But the full NLRB punted the Northwestern case.

More recently, varsity basketballers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire voted 13-2 to unionize with the Service Employees. The school challenged the vote, on the same grounds the players are “student-athletes,” not “employees.” The case was headed for the NLRB until January 5.

Then the local and the players suspended their petition. The local said both fear that by the time the board would hear their case, it would be 3-2 Republican, and the majority would hand down a permanent ban on all student-athletes unionizing. That suspension, for now, keeps it technically alive.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.