“It cannot be said that the employed scholarship players are ‘primarily students.’” With that statement, a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board last week accepted a petition by Northwestern football players that they were employees under the NLRB and could organize and form a union. His reasoning was simple and compelling. The players faced all the demands of a job — in the hours the players worked, 40-50 hours a week during the football season, the control the coaches exerted, and the athletic scholarships that are a form of pay. The players said they wanted a union largely to negotiate about health care and practice hours.
Many who love college sports can’t bear to think of it as polluted by money. But here’s the reality: it already is. Big-time college athletics — particularly Division 1 football and basketball — is a profitable, professionalized industry. The TV rights for the new college football playoffs total $7.3 billion — with a “b” — over 10 years. The TV rights for March Madness, the basketball playoffs, total $10.8 billion over 14 years. College football and basketball alone generates an estimated $6 billion a year, more than the National Basketball Association. The University of Texas football team generated $71 million in profit in 2011.
Everyone is making money, except for the players whose play generates the revenue. Famed coaches in public universities are often the highest paid employees in the state. Urban Meyer of Ohio State will be paid $24 million
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