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Fuck The NCAA: We Own Your Likeness Edition
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D-League kind of sucks though. It's also bad from a marketing standpoint, since no one watches it.
Right to Work makes unionizing very difficult, schools in Right to Work states would suddenly be at a competitive disadvantage if this goes nationwide.
But if it's a separate union for each school, then that's a problem even for non right to work state schools because the unions would be small and ineffective, most likely.
Right-to-work means that a union has to cover the employee, even if that employee isn't part of the union and has never paid any dues, if that employee is in a position normally covered by the union.
So it's not that people get to join the union in right-to-work states, they always could (Yay first ammendment), it's that they get union benefits without ever being part of the union. This makes it hard for the union to operate, because who would pay to have coverage they already get for free, and they eventually just disappear.
!
That's just... I mean, could it... could that really happen?
It's sort of a joke, but if you've ever met an Alabama fan, it's mostly not a joke.
Minor league baseball doesn't have an audience. People prefer to watch the best, unless there's a compelling alternative (in college's case, it's things like connection with your time at school, all the stuff that is anti-corporate about the whole exercise: fight songs, cheerleaders, marching bands, tailgating, etc. Part of the way the NCAA and individual schools are committing suicide is by removing that stuff to emulate the pros. Even some of the really major powers (like Alabama!) are having attendance issues, especially from students.
Assuming that the schools keep trying to run the sports teams, wouldn't that just make them more attractive to prospective athletes? And then drive a wedge between the players' union and the athletes?
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Or open up some interesting federal lawsuits that could benefit teachers and other state employees.
I heard a comment on this yesterday that this ruling actually doesn't affect public universities at all, only the private ones.
WRT unions that may be the case. That the ruling pretty heavily landed on the "Student-Athletes are Employees" will totally affect them. Well, I guess public universities could refuse to pay them and then never ever be competitive again.
Well, I also heard analysis that they simply can't be a part of the NCAA and also pay their athletes, since NCAA rules expressly forbid it. What they supposedly can do is offer injury insurance, scholarship guarantees, etc. Which is what the union case was originally about anyway.
Now of course at this point, we're getting down into the kind of micro level splitting of hairs on what compensation actually means that one would need an electron microscope just to keep it straight. And I wouldn't at all be surprised if the NCAA suddenly adopts a much harder line about what compensation is and isn't.
The schools don't want any part of this either, and in the case of northwestern, the president has gone so far as to threaten that they would just leave D1 football all together; "You players want to screw this up, well you're going to screw it up for everyone then."
And if the Kessler case succeeds, those NCAA rules become very uncomfortable toilet paper.
Which is probably a good hint that maybe the guys doing the actual product might deserve to be paid.
Which is one of the points Pierce makes - had the NCAA been smart, they would have begun making concessions and preparing for a soft landing. But like the MLB owners, they're trying to bull their way through, and all it will take is one court ruling to have this crash all around them.
Then again, we're talking an organization that declared War on Schmears. I wish I was joking about that.
Maybe if Congress were to take a nuanced approach to reforming existing laws by improving them in an objective, facts-based manne.... ahahahahahahahaha couldn't finish the thought.
Those costs would be significantly lower for most non-revenue sports as well, due to the more limited practice requirements, and drastically smaller rosters. The schools would still have to pay, but the costs would not be anywhere as near backbreaking as people make it out to seem. Make this apply to D1 FBS schools only. Problem fucking solved.
Fake Edit: As a bonus, it would be hilarious to watch all the backass southern states descend into infighting as they try to raise their minimum wage to something that isn't laughable.
So if the private schools do unionize.... it becomes a giant mess. Not real fair if USC Notre Dame and northwestern can pay dudes and the public colleges cannot.
Or "Roll Tide" becomes the new unionization rally cry.
http://espn.go.com/college-sports/story/_/id/8245864/appeals-court-affirms-cheerleading-not-sport-title-ix
Title 9 screws cheerleaders over and over. They get no help.
It's more that cheerleading is an insanely corrupt sport - Leverage showrunner John Rodgers was rather stunned when his writing team looked into it while developing an episode based on sports. Needless to say, they went with cheerleading.
Edit: Here's his postmortem on the episode:
Its not that they're federally regulated. Public universities are technically State institutions, and as such they fall under the rules and regulations for state employees. The reason this ruling does not apply to them is because each state has individual laws governing what their employees can do.
What can happen is that the students of a public university could band together and go before the NLRB also claiming to being employees with the right to unionize. They would need to be supported by a union for state employees (such as a Teacher's Union that covers public schools).
If they did so, there's a high probability that the Northwestern case would be cited as precedent and they would be allowed to unionize for the same reasons, thus applying the ruling to public universities as well. But they need to go before the NLRB and make their case, first.
Thanks for the correction.... i knew there was something but caught the tail end of a convo on it.
its all good news. F the NCAA
We know how much their football program brings in at least - a little over $250M. And that's just direct funding, there's also soft funding and support derived from athletics as well.
So, what do you think would happen to a college president who decided to throw that away over unionization?
The amount of money they make off the Big 10 TV contracts and the like, this is never going to happen.
Would take a college pres with brass ones and a death wise to just cut off all sports.
Not all sports... just every sport that doesn't bring in $Texas (and bare minimum women's sports for Title IX purposes).
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
That's every male sport but football and maybe basketball, I forget the details of the Big Ten's basketball contracts. And then ~6 women's sports for Title IX compliance.
Yup. Increase program costs or school liability for athletic injuries and schools will cut sports left and right, mainly male sports. Same thing as we saw when Title IX went through. Its a consequence few people consider since for most people NCAA is basketball and Football and that's it.