Tre’Jean Watkins
For years, NCAA student-athletes have always been simply known as students who play sports.
They get to go to a prestigious university, earn their much-deserved education without paying a dime, play the sport they love, and eventually open themselves up to multiple career paths after college is over.
Whether they pursue their sport in the professional realm or immediately find ways to join the workforce, their paths are open with many connections ready to back them up.
However, with the rise of NIL, these student athletes have revolutionized the persona of the regular student athlete. Instead of being labeled as regular student athletes, these young men and women have been able to brand themselves as something more, something significant, and in some cases, something revolutionary.
At least in the Division 1 level.
Companies are giving these men and women thousands, sometimes millions of dollars to bring eyes to their products, recruits are getting paid millions, and we’re seeing transfers occur due to the swirling emotions that come with handling NIL.
A far cry from the notoriety collegiate athletes received before the dog days of NIL.
But as usual with any revolutionary idea involving money, something seems to be missing.
Players are getting paid, but college football traditionalists, athletic directors, board members, and fans alike are smelling the stink from NIL. Or better yet, not the stink from NIL, but from paying college players in general.
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Which is fair, but on the other hand, students bring in millions of dollars in TV contract revenue, ticket sales, and even enrollment numbers.
So it’s only fair that they receive a share of the pie, right?
These differing opinions are everywhere, and there is no end to the debate in sight. One idea that has been floated is essentially giving these players workers’ rights, or in other words, making them eligible to be labeled as employees rather than students.
If that were to occur, we’d enter the realm of collective bargaining for collegiate athletes, a sentence no one thought was possible 10-15 years ago.
The argument for collective bargaining
There’s an argument for labeling players as employees.
These players bring in millions of dollars in revenue for networks like ESPN and FOX and have a direct influence on conference realignment.
Don’t believe me? Look at the ridiculous TV deals the Big Ten and SEC have negotiated with ESPN, FOX, NBC, and CBS in recent years.
The SEC is now receiving $300M a year from ESPN for exclusive rights to the best games every week, up from $55M a year from longtime partner CBS. The Big Ten has a $7B deal with FOX, NBC, and CBS to broadcast its games. FOX and NBC usually get first dibs on the best games of the week, leaving CBS with the scraps.
Which sucks as a longtime SEC on CBS fan, but that’s a discussion for another day. The TV deals aren’t the only argument, either.
These players put their bodies on the line for the sport they love. Basketball and football players suffer violent injuries at times, which leaves some vulnerable in the way of recovery,
Giving these players workers’ rights would introduce benefits that could really help students who need recovery and basic things like dental and other health-related necessities.
Add in the fact that under a CBA, every student athlete would receive a say at the table, not just the future top five draft pick or March Madness hero.
The argument against collective bargaining
But there’s genuine concern with any potential CBA possibility in college football.
You’d open yourself up to a new can of worms when it comes to legal battles and union-related headaches associated with collective bargaining.
Players would have to agree on specific issues, find association heads and subheads, organize, and prepare for stoppages. There’s just a lot that goes into unionizing and capitalizing on the pathways that open as a result.
Then there’s the issue of unionizing below Division 1, into Division 2, 3, and maybe NAIA. That isn’t a sustainable reality due to the stark revenue differences between the levels, a problem that’s already plaguing some schools even in this early stage of NIL.
Then you’d have the big-time problem facing other sports that don’t bring in millions of dollars in revenue. How would they unionize and have demands when they don’t have leverage?
And even if those sports stay within their current sphere, who’s to say their futures would stay clear due to the massive money needed to sustain a CBA environment for major revenue sports?
Collective bargaining does indeed have a place in collegiate sports.
But at what cost?
These significant changes would undoubtedly require some sort of compromise and would certainly have consequences for other sports and students.
We’ve seen universities embrace the risk within this new stage of collegiate athletics, but in order to jump to the next step, they’d have to embrace even more risk, some of which could drastically change the present and future of collegiate athletics.
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