It's Time to Write the Obituary for University Athletics

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While not immediately, the course of collegiate athletics is in the midst of what will ultimately be monumental changes. Whether that’s good or bad for sports in general and football specifically remains to be seen.

In a historic ruling Wednesday afternoon, the Chicago regional office of the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Northwestern football players meet the standards under federal guidelines to form a union. The initial petition was filed by the National College Players Association on behalf of former Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter and the College Athletes Players Association (CAPA), and had the backing of the United Steelworkers union

http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/03/26/nlrb-ruling-gives-players-first-labor-union-win/related/

Men's football and basketball pay for all of the other athletic programs, once that cash cow stops giving due to labors demands it is all over for University Athletics....there is no chance of coming up with the money from other sources. The University financial model is already doomed as States cut back on contributions and as attendance costs have gone higher than most families can afford. The lack of ability of this economy to suck up more than 40% of graduates into decent paying jobs is another hit.

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This is something us non Americans find hard to get our heads around. The only University sporting event that gets any attention over here is the annual Oxford v Cambridge boat race.

If these athletes/sportsmen are any good, why don't they train professionally. Why should someone gat a place at university because of sporting prowess? Doesn't that exclude some who have the right qualifications?

You wouldn't get a place in Man U's starting squad just because you're proficient in astrophysics. Why should academia be any different.

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@izzythepush,

American Football originated in the universities. It's popularity was exploited by them and they developed it into an incredibly lucrative business. The bottom line is the vast amounts of money generated by the athletes for the universities.

The ideal behind a sports scholarship is the "student athlete," a well rounded individual with both academic and physical prowess, and many of these athletes do fit the description. Many don't, however.

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@InfraBlue,

Thanks, it's still a hard concept to get my head around. I live just down the road from Southampton University, but there's no way I would go there to watch a game of football, not with St. Mary's stadium only a few miles away.

To be honest, not many students, other than those in the various sports clubs themselves, concern themselves with student sports. Most would be hard pressed to say when the last match was, what the score was, or even who they played against. It's not a lot different from school sports, probably even less so. At least at school there's the headteacher standing up in assembly telling the school about the performance of the school team(s), at university there's not even that.

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This is a typical Chicken Little performance--pay him no attention.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

This is a typical Chicken Little performance--pay him no attention.

chicken little was always going on about how bad things were going to happen.

Loads of people would be cheering if collage athletics die.

As per usual examination of your drive-by assertions finds them wanting.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

It's Time to Write the Obituary for University Athletics

Good riddance, I say. Let them meet their dorm buddies every morning for a refreshing jog around campus, and then let them study for the rest of their day. They're student athletes, after all.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

hawkeye10 wrote:
It's Time to Write the Obituary for University Athletics

Good riddance, I say. Let them meet their dorm buddies every morning for a refreshing jog around campus, and then let them study for the rest of their day. They're student athletes, after all.

I came to that conclusion during the early 80's when while at MSU as the admins were crying poverty, to the extent that I went to class most mornings to watch a tape of a lecture because they did not want to pay a person to lecture us, but I watched a hugely expensive indoor practice facility being built for the football program with the admins gloating. It was only years later that I understood the business decision that lead to this result, but as a person who believed that the mission of the university is to educate I was disillusioned...perhaps shattered is not too strong of a word. I was a simple young man from Illinois, who went off to the big university with many of the same ideals as John Boy Walton of what the university was. Boy was I wrong.

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Quote:

NCAA President Mark Emmert held his annual press conference at the men’s basketball tournament on Sunday, giving the NCAA’s face a chance to respond to the recent developments in the players union push. Needless to say, Emmert had nothing positive to say about the idea.

“To be perfectly frank, the notion of using a union employee model to address the challenges that do exist in intercollegiate athletics is something that strikes most people as a grossly inappropriate solution to the problems,” Emmert said, according to ESPN.com. “It would blow up everything about the collegiate model of athletics.”
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“There’s some things that need to get fixed,” Emmert said. “They’re working very aggressively to do that. No one up here believes that the way you fix that is by converting student-athletes into unionized employees.”

http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/04/06/ncaa-president-emmert-shreds-players-union-talk/related/

Sounds like a typical company boss facing the prospect of unionized labor.

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It's Time to Write the Obituary for University Athletics

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