In the next few days, several hundred thousand high school seniors, along with their parents, will be figuring out how they might pay for college tuition, housing, meals, books, accompanying fees and the travel to-and-from.
On Friday, scholarship football players at Northwestern University will vote on whether to unionize. Across the country, college athletes will be mulling the possibility of getting paid to play — in addition to not having to pay for tuition, housing, meals …
Regardless of the vote by Northwestern’s football players, unionization advocates will press the case. Ultimately, judges (sitting on an array of benches, and uniformed in black robes) will decide if there is to be a new playing field for college athletes.
Union lawsuits and lobbying are on the schedule. If big-time-sports universities and the NCAA don’t respond with a set of proposals for athlete welfare, the National Labor Relations Board may well replace the NCAA as the moral monitor and disciplinarian of college athletics. From the frying pan into the slow-cooker?
Will anyone be able to keep score of the unintended consequences? Will nonathletes (weighing debt burdens) and their tuition-paying parents begin to imagine how payments and perks to athletes might impact their costs?
Still, the unionization movement might well present a business opportunity for those who devise the questions for the SAT and the ACT — the college-admission hurdles.
With football programs in mind, here’s a sneak preview of a few of the multiple choice and true-or-false questions that might be in next year’s tests:
If a pay-for-play formula is devised, all Division I athletes will be paid
*At the same rate, regardless of how much or how little they play
*At the same rate, regardless of how well they play or how much they contribute to the team’s success
*On a bonus system, which will be calibrated to individual performance; rates to be determined by the employing university so as to effectively compete with rival schools
If a paid player is found to be in violation of team rules, school honor codes, or is charged with criminal conduct, and is rightfully suspended or cut
*His payments and perks will be terminated
*He will have the right to file a grievance with the NLRB
*He will have a statutory right to sue for damages
In order to discipline a unionized athlete for serious misconduct, the college or university that employs him will first have to
*Seek permission to do so from his local union rep
*Seek permission from the national union’s head of player protection
*Seek permission from the NLRB
*All of the above
Unionized players will have the right to
*Engage in work slowdowns and/or walkouts
*Strike and picket
*Submit their grievances directly to the NLRB
*All of the above
Unionized players will have the right to
*Refuse to play non-union teams
*Appeal referee calls to the NLRB
*Appeal the score to the U.S. Department of Labor
*All of the above
If football players at Northwestern and other universities vote to unionize as members of the United Steelworkers, those team members who vote against unionization will nevertheless be obliged to
*Pay union dues
*Accept union dictates as to practice hours and allocation of playing time
*Walk out whenever the United Steelworkers calls for a slowdown, work stoppage, or strike at any plant or workplace
A unionized player will be covered by the rules and regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
*True
*False
If a unionized player fails an academic course, he will have the right to appeal that failing grade by filing a grievance with the NLRB
*True
*False
By union contract, a unionized player may be entitled to graduate with a standard diploma and an actual valid degree, even if he did not successfully complete coursework required of students who are not athletes
*True
*False
A unionized player will no longer have his or her privacy rights protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
*True
*False
A college or university that employs unionized athletes will have the right to lock out a team if there is a “labor” dispute that resists settlement; and the right to terminate said employment and de-enroll all such players
*True
*False
If scholarship football players are accorded special benefits by virtue of unionizing, comparable benefits will have to be extended to
*All the intercollegiate athletes on non-revenue-producing and money-losing teams, per Title IX of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act
*All students who participate in intercollegiate debate, science, math, engineering and robotics competitions, which surely enhance any university’s reputation
*All adjunct and part-time faculty
If scholarship players are accorded compensation over and above the traditional “free ride,” universities whose games are played around the country will have to hire payroll and tax-return specialists to provide special W-2s for the players
*True
*False
At colleges that pay athletes (football players, in particular), in addition to granting those athletes a “free ride,” nonathlete students and their parents who pay tuition may conclude that their tuition dollars might be better spent at colleges that do not have football teams
*Not likely
*Possibly true
*Increasingly likely
The financial, administrative, accounting, human resources, workers comp and legal costs of attending to such a new category of employees — along with the escalating costs of such expenditures and player payments — may prompt a number of colleges to do serious cost-benefit analyses of their intercollegiate athletic programs, and the impact of such costs on serious students and serious education
*No way
*True
*Just maybe
Joseph H. Cooper teaches ethics and media law courses at Quinnipiac University, which does not have a football team.
