Northwestern Football Players Can Unionize

http://m.espn.go.com/ncf/story?storyId=10677763&src=desktop

This is good in the long run. It will serve as a mechanism to mediate disputes between players and coaches, and hopefully will lead to monetary benefits for the players. Remember, a lot of college players have kids already (such as Fitz Toussaint). They could really use the extra benefits that a union could bring to them.

This is a terrible thing and schools can solve it easily, not give athletic scholarships. Then what happens.......the kids that really need the help won't be playing. Just might bite the greedy players in the @$$!

Horrible. The beginning of the end for college football.

rasputin wrote:

http://m.espn.go.com/ncf/story?storyId=10677763&src=desktop

This is good in the long run. It will serve as a mechanism to mediate disputes between players and coaches, and hopefully will lead to monetary benefits for the players. Remember, a lot of college players have kids already (such as Fitz Toussaint). They could really use the extra benefits that a union could bring to them.

So because a high school kid can't keep his dick in his pants or use protection so they should get union benefits to play college football. Ridiculous.

If these football players are employees then every athlete that is on an athletic scholarship in any sport is an employee of the university, correct? Also what about students that get academic scholarships? Are they employees of the school, I mean the school might be giving them soooo much work that it takes up a lot of their time!

At this point the ruling only applies to private schools. If it stands I could see some private schools reducing football to essentially a club level sport. If it stands and if it expands, then this is huge, and Big time D1 athletics will change in ways we probably can't yet contemplate.

'shoes

There's a lot more here than meets the eye.

A scholarship is not "monetary compensation". There are no income taxes paid on scholarships. It is a Grant in Aid. There is no tax paid.

Tons of stuff I don't think any of us realized should and will be "fixed". From what I hear, if a Michigan player gets injured playing against Tennessee, say if Jordan Morgan, a senior, blows out an ACL. Michigan may or may not elect to pay for an operation. It's up to them. There are a lot of other ins and outs but.......

Then, since Jordan is gone after this year, Michigan is not liable for any other health care once he leaves. I'm not sure I agree with that.

Kane Coulter (sp) would have you believe it is not Pay-for-play. The problem I see is that things tend to start for one reason and end up doing something else totally. Just because he is starting it for "health care" doesn't mean it becomes the letter of the law and college football becomes the GM of it's day and goes bankrupt.

It's a whole can of worms that will be impossible to regulate. Players from private schools will get additional benefits, not possilbe in public universities.

How do you regulate who gets how much? Multiply all the universities, by all the sports, by all the athletes and how do you control all this? Who pays the additional cost for all the controls that will be necessary?

How will this affect recruiting?

Instead of getting cars, they will just get benefits to buy their own.

Bigger schools will find loopholes to give more to players = pay to play. Some schools will concentrate on additional advantages to football players, others to to basketball players...

Ed Martin is turning over in his grave. 15 years later and he would have been a big player at the table.

Northwestern could offer player X money to play for them over Michigan.

joe wrote:

Northwestern could offer player X money to play for them over Michigan.

The NCAA could then not sanction Northwestern's games. No bowl games or not allow them to participate against member schools.

Sure. They could.

Will they do the same to USC and Miami Fla? How about Duke?

How about NOTRE DAME?

Do you seriously think they'll sanction those athletic powerhouses?

It's one thing for them to throw their weight around and sanction Vanderbilt or Northwestern. It's entirely another entity when discussing traditional powerhouses.

It's my understanding that this unionization has nothing to do with money or pay-for-play at this point. Although I'm not an idiot I can see that this is the first step to that.

I thought that at this time the players were only asking for things mostly medical and scholarship related.

Such as if a player has a life altering injury such as a blown out knee then the university should provide some sort of medical coverage for the player moving forward.

also I thought they were asking for scholarship guarantees if they are injured. Meaning if a player does blow out a knee and his/her athletic career is over then the university should continue to offer them a scholarship to pay for their schooling.

Saban and Bama push out a handful of kids every year to help them get under the scholarship limit. They cite, academic, personal, legal, etc issues but really some of these kids are being pushed out because Saban has someone bigger and better he wants on the team. If that happens then the school should be forced to honor the scholarship and the kid should be allowed to continue his/here academic career.

I haven't read up on it much yet but the bullet points I've read seem fair at face level.

For the most part I agree though, this is opening a can of worms that I don't think we be possible to regulate fairly across the board.

joe wrote:

Sure. They could.

Will they do the same to USC and Miami Fla? How about Duke?

How about NOTRE DAME?

Do you seriously think they'll sanction those athletic powerhouses?

It's one thing for them to throw their weight around and sanction Vanderbilt or Northwestern. It's entirely another entity when discussing traditional powerhouses.

Yes, if they unionize and start paying players.