[4everfsu]

http://espn.go.com/college-football/sto ... d-unionize

[prototype]

Just stupid...

I hope Northwestern drops football.

[Purple Haize]

Just stupid...

I hope Northwestern drops football.

It goes well beyond Northwestern and a Football.

Some would argue they only had a Club team in the 80's anyways

[lynchburgwildcats]

There's no way this sticks...but if it does make no mistake. It's the end of scholarship athletics as we know it.

No. No it is not.

[PAmedic]

There's no way this sticks...but if it does make no mistake. It's the end of scholarship athletics as we know it. A small handful of schools will keep their football and basketball teams. The rest will drop athletics altogether. The financial ramifications are simply too great.

absolutely correct.

I'm a champion of unions for obvious reasons, but this is completely ridiculous

talking about missing the forest for the trees: it would appear the NLRB has made comparisons between A. [schools providing items for their students while requiring them to perform] and B. [employers providing items for their employees while requiring them to perform] and drawing the conclusion that C. ["students" = "employees"]

all the while ignoring the white elephant in the room: THEY ARE AMATEUR COLLEGE KIDS PLAYING SPORTS

another huge problem is that while the ruling focuses on football, you know Title IX will will ensure that we end up paying women's sports as well.

funny point lost here tho: NLRB rulings affect public schools not privates (LU)

file under "lawyers can eff up anything"

[Purple Haize]

Nit picking here but interesting loop hole. As I read it, the ruling applies only to Full Scholarships. Easy work around is to offer partials with the Student athlete paying a token amount say between $1- and $2000/year. Which opens the possibility of a sliding scale maybe. 5 Star QB pays $1/year Punter pays $2000/year. Would it be possible to skirt Title IX the same way? Star MBB point guard $5/year Star WBB point guard $1500/year. Or do Women's Sports Participants all pay maximum.
Interesting

[JK37]

funny point lost here tho: NLRB rulings affect public schools not privates.

Northwestern is a private university.

And this from the article:

For now, the push is to unionize athletes at private schools, such as Northwestern, because the federal labor agency does not have jurisdiction over public universities.

I heard on radio this morning that there are 17 private schools at which football is played. I imagine they were referring solely to FBS.

[PAmedic]

hmm, looks like I got that completely backwards.

sorry for the mis-information

[Purple Haize]

hmm, looks like I got that completely backwards.

sorry for the mis-information

....geez...short people...

[olldflame]

Nit picking here but interesting loop hole. As I read it, the ruling applies only to Full Scholarships. Easy work around is to offer partials with the Student athlete paying a token amount say between $1- and $2000/year. Which opens the possibility of a sliding scale maybe. 5 Star QB pays $1/year Punter pays $2000/year. Would it be possible to skirt Title IX the same way? Star MBB point guard $5/year Star WBB point guard $1500/year. Or do Women's Sports Participants all pay maximum.
Interesting

Partial scholarships are allowed in some NCAA sports. They are widely used in baseball for instance. To the best of my knowledge, they are NOT allowed in football or basketball. It's full ride or nothing.

[ALUmnus]

Just a random thought, could unionized athletics be cause for a school being stripped of its conference affiliation?

[JakeP50]

If the B1G doesn't want to have to deal with it and since NU is their only private school it wouldn't be to hard to kick them out.

[jbock13]

If the B1G doesn't want to have to deal with it and since NU is their only private school it wouldn't be to hard to kick them out.

basis for this would be what?

[JakeP50]

If the B1G doesn't want to have to deal with it and since NU is their only private school it wouldn't be to hard to kick them out.

basis for this would be what?

This is assuming a super majority could vote to remove a school from the conference, the rest of the B1G are all public universities if they didn't want to deal with a school that has unionized athletes, and has been pulling the conference RPI down for years already. To get rid of a perennial punching bag and the problem of unions I would have to think at least 5 members would be on board right away and it wouldn't take long to convince 5 more.

[jbock13]

Considering the addition of Maryland and Rutgers, I don't exactly see them forgoing the Chicago market anytime soon.

[JakeP50]

Illinois is still there and the Illini dominate the Chicago market anyway. My high school basketball coach and Bible teacher is a Chicago native and I asked what the split was like and, other than people with some form of connection with Northwestern, everyone is an Illinois fan.

[thepostman]

Northwestern isn't going to get voted out. BJ really does have a new competitor.

[adam42381]

Can you imagine the field day all the journalists from Northwestern would have if there was any consideration of voting them out? Come on. It ain't happening.

[lynchburgwildcats]

Nit picking here but interesting loop hole. As I read it, the ruling applies only to Full Scholarships. Easy work around is to offer partials with the Student athlete paying a token amount say between $1- and $2000/year. Which opens the possibility of a sliding scale maybe. 5 Star QB pays $1/year Punter pays $2000/year. Would it be possible to skirt Title IX the same way? Star MBB point guard $5/year Star WBB point guard $1500/year. Or do Women's Sports Participants all pay maximum.
Interesting

Partial scholarships aren't allowed in D1 men's and women's basketball and football. Any full-scholarship sport (I can't remember what the others are) are not allowed partials.

[thepostman]

lets bring a law suit over that too. It is all the rage.

[lynchburgwildcats]

There's no way this sticks...but if it does make no mistake. It's the end of scholarship athletics as we know it. A small handful of schools will keep their football and basketball teams. The rest will drop athletics altogether. The financial ramifications are simply too great.

absolutely correct.

I'm a champion of unions for obvious reasons, but this is completely ridiculous

talking about missing the forest for the trees: it would appear the NLRB has made comparisons between A. [schools providing items for their students while requiring them to perform] and B. [employers providing items for their employees while requiring them to perform] and drawing the conclusion that C. ["students" = "employees"]

all the while ignoring the white elephant in the room: THEY ARE AMATEUR COLLEGE KIDS PLAYING SPORTS

another huge problem is that while the ruling focuses on football, you know Title IX will will ensure that we end up paying women's sports as well.

funny point lost here tho: NLRB rulings affect public schools not privates (LU)

file under "lawyers can eff up anything"

Only the naive believe that amateurs can be the backbone of a multi-billion dollar business.

But here is a detailed explanation of how the ruling came about, in case anyone hasn't seen that http://www.sbnation.com/college-footbal ... stern-nlrb

[PAmedic]

pretty confident I can speak on behalf of my man DUKE here and state that the one thing neither of us are is naïve

[JK37]

I think the point of the ruling is that they're not amateurs. So the "naive" argument kind of falls apart around that.

[4everfsu]

http://espn.go.com/college-football/sto ... yers-union

[ALUmnus]

So this started with football, but for the athletes to unionize, would a majority of all the athletes have to vote in favor, or just the ones on scholarship? Would there be dues (which would require a "salary")? What about walk-ons, how would that work? Introducing union bosses into college athletics would be worse than the boosters.

As far as people dismissing the idea of the B1G discarding NW over this, does the B1G really need NW? I don't think so. Also, NW is looking for any type of leverage they can find to prevent this from happening. They've already put the idea out there that they could drop football. Imagine if NW asked the B1G to threaten their membership if they unionize. What athlete would vote for that?