CSotD: The Cost of “Education”
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Backgrounder for non-sports fans: The National Labor Relations Board ruled this past week that Northwestern's scholarship football players are employees of the university and thus entitled to form a union if a majority chooses to.
This does not mean that all college athletes can form unions. It doesn't even mean that all scholarship athletes at all schools can form unions ("employees" at state schools would fall under public employee laws).
Here's a key excerpt from SI's very interesting lawyerly take on it all:
I think one key argument was the number of hours per week playing sports. That had to have been a major factor, the idea that, even though NCAA rules limit athletic activities to 20 hours per week during the season and eight hours during the offseason, Colter testified under oath that he spent 40-50 hours a week during the season on football. To me, that’s a very crucial piece of information, because that’s much more in line with an employee than a student, especially given that there are school rules regarding the number of hours a full-time student can work. That positioned Colter to say, “I really am working in a job. I’m just not getting paid for it.”
And now, on with the show:
There was some negative response from cartoonists to the ruling as well, but it seemed to fall under the general rubric of "Unions Are Satanic" and so would be classified as kneejerk reaction and not relevant commentary.
It's interesting to note, however, that the response here, in descending order, starts with the issue of pay and progresses to the issue of larger rights. Stantis is not so much endorsing unionization as he is overall fairness, Smith points out the hypocrisy of the NCAA's position and then Anderson hits on the actual working-conditions aspect.
There are times when being The Old Man brings important perspective to an issue, but this is a moment when it could actually obscure things, because "when I was in school" hearkens back to a period before things got way out of control.
My alma mater, Notre Dame, was small enough at about 7,000 undergrads that I knew a number of fellow students whose faces appeared with some frequency in the pages of Sports Illustrated and sometimes on the cover.
But to start with, in them there days, freshmen were not eligible to play varsity sports. The change was announced my senior year and I asked a couple of guys from the football team what they thought.
They shook their heads and said that, between adapting to college academics and fall two-a-day drills, they'd have flunked out.
There were schools that played the game straight up: Not just the military academies but also — according to rumor, at least — Notre Dame, most of the ACC, Stanford and a select few others including, ironically, Northwestern.
Or at least it wasn't blatant. A friend from one major sport later went to an SEC law school where he worked out with some of the players and he told me he was appalled at how openly they collected money. He said he knew it wasn't unknown at ND for an alum to slip a star a little something after a good game, but it wasn't an organized operation.
Moreover, after one 1925 Rose Bowl appearance, Notre Dame didn't play in bowl games because it was a distraction that came at finals time. Until 1970, by which time I guess the players had developed greater powers of concentration. They've also expanded the stadium, added lights for night games and now begin the season before students arrive, and, sometimes, overseas.
I haven't given them a nickel in 20 years, but they're probably not breaking any rules and they still have a very high graduation rate for athletes.
Being the tallest guy in the room can be good when the room is full of sewage.
Students-as-employees is not the only issue the NCAA is facing. Besides the specific elements of how hard scholarship athletes have to work to retain their financial support, and shamateur rules that mean you can pay a doctoral student a stipend but you can't do that for a wide receiver, there is an overall hypocritical factor that would make Avery Brundage blush.
NCAA athletes are not permitted to capitalize on their fame or even their talent. You sometimes hear of an athlete being declared ineligible, not for something as blatant as taking money to endorse a local car dealer, but simply for appearing on the field as an extra in a sports film.
Meanwhile, member schools rake in millions selling jerseys with the names of these "amateur student/athletes" emblazoned across the back.
The NCAA took the jerseys off its own site, and, in a related matter, EA Sports paid a settlement and quit selling games that capitalized on the names and likenesses of "student/athletes."
The take-away from all this? Anyone who knows anything about sports knows that jocks aren't as dumb as emo lit majors think they are.
But now we're learning that they aren't even as dumb as their schools and the NCAA think they are.
And now here's one for the Arts & Letters crowd:
Thanks for sticking around.
There are several webcomics that riff on stuff you learned or should have learned in college, but the ones that are most popular seem mostly to play on that latter thingie. If you were paying attention in class, there's a Geico factor to those popular "smart humor" sites: "Everybody knows that."
By contrast …
The reason I like Dave Kellett's forays into literature is because he takes the stuff you are supposed to have learned and puts a spin on it, a wink which assumes, yes, you showed up for class and not too stoned to absorb a few things.
Now comes a new strip at GoComics by Peter Gordon Mann called "The Quixote Syndrome," which not only assumes you showed up and paid attention but took notes. Copious notes.
Heh. I majored in this stuff, and I'm calling it sweet, sweet payback for all those math and science jokes at xkcd and SMBC that whoosh over my head.
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