I am cynical enough to think this kid doesn’t like being on a loosing team and is unhappy because he feels like it’s all work and no glory.
My kid did not expect to play anything in college and did not enjoy that particular perk. We are so grateful for all that being on a team has added to her college experience.
The entire thing is ridiculous IMO.
If college athletes are employees first, and not students, what does that say about college athletics? Most athletic programs - including those at big D1 schools with generous TV contracts - are net money losers. Paying athletes will just add to the financial stress and, in the long run, will result in program closures etc.
Who said they are employees first and not students?
Can’t they be students first and part time employees?
Big time football and men’s basketball return millions to the school’s athletic departments enabling them to sponsor many other sports, all of which lose money. Once colleges start paying football and basketball players (men’s and women’s) and other athletes, they will have no choice but to start cutting men’s non-revenue sports first (T9).
In Dartmouth’s case, I woudl guess that men’s lacrosse woudl be first on the chopping block. (Large team, not very diverse.). That said, lax players can be full pay. Baseball woudl be next. but prolly has the Alum support to raise money to cover its expenses. (But then if they become employees, can the Alums even cover teh cost of the baseball team without also covering the costs of the softball team?)
Yes, but not in the NCAA, at least per current rules.
I found this article helpful in understanding where athletes as employees is going and the intersection of some of the related ongoing lawsuits: Are College Student Athletes Employees? Answering 25 Questions
Why?
Yes, but “per current rules” is the key qualifier imo.
Even the NCAA has been floating proposals to pay players, although as I understand it they’d like to do so in a way that avoids an employer-employee relationship.
That’s suspicious to me, as it suggests the issue is less the money and more the rights that would be afforded to athletes if they were employees.
That link is helpful in explaining the broader context, thanks for sharing.
I’m sure they would! Everything about the NCAA is suspicious to me 
Contrary to what many people imagine, college football and basketball revenue isn’t sufficient to cover the cost of running a school’s athletic department. As a result, at most schools - across all divisions - college athletics are a red-line item. I can’t imagine adding player pay into that equation would be a positive to the bottom line. And what is to be made of the relationship between school and athlete if said athlete is paid? Should they then be given priority in terms of admission? At schools that offer athletic scholarships, should players no longer receive free/discounted tuition/room & board if they are going to be paid instead?
I am hard pressed to see how they are employees at Dartmouth I am just not seeing the employee angle they are not forced to play.
The argument for employees is far more compelling to me, as a non-lawyer, for students at D1 scholarship schools were their sport has to come first to keep their scholarship and make games. And they are already getting compensated (in form of scholarships, which come off the books as a real expense to the school I imagine)
IME the ivy athletes and AD / coaching staff do really pay attention to academics of their athletes…
I agree with your last sentence.
My understanding is the NLRB found an employee-employer relationship exists because the athletes bring benefits to the school through their work, the school determines the conditions of their work, and they already receive compensation for that work (in the Dartmouth case, in the form of equipment, lodging, etc.).
I understand the concern about budget impact, but how is that different than concerns over the budgetary impact of ballooning coach and administrator salaries? The solution to the latter isn’t to claim that coaches aren’t employees.
Maybe it’s worth thinking through a few concrete examples. The financial benefits of gear contracts flow through to the schools, the coaches, and the administrators. Less so to the athletes, upon whom conditions are imposed as part of the contract. Presumably the ability to bargain collectively might lead to a shared benefit.
Or take scheduling payouts, in which weaker teams receive large payouts from stronger programs in order to serve as cannon fodder on the schedule. Perhaps collective bargaining would impose conditions on those scheduling practices.
It’s possible that all the Dartmouth athletes want is minimum wage, health insurance paid by the employer, expanded athletic medicine funding, and some input on scheduling. Those aren’t necessarily budget busters even at Ivy programs.
But at the end of the day employers don’t get to decide who counts as an employee and who doesn’t, who can bargain collectively and who can’t. So much of this is going to be decided by courts and lawyers and then the chips will fall.
If we are gonna think about concrete examples, perhaps it helps to have concete numbers. How many millions does a ‘gear’ contract add to the AD? How many millions from espn?
(Asking bcos I couldn’t find the answer. As private Universities in a private league, such things can remain confidential.)
My suggestion is that any financial “benefits” flowing thru are minimal.
But lets not conflate the dollars that espn is paying the Ivy League to broadcast their rights with the hundreds of millions being paid to the SEC schools, or BiG by Fox Sports.
Actually, they do. Employers can just decide that the [name] team does not provide enough benefits to justify their expense. Instead of paying millions in athletic salaries, they could put that money to faculty, or research, or lower tuition/more financial aid.
If Biden loses, the NLRB will over-turn thier own decision. That said, this issue is not going away.
My daughter played D2, but she had a big scholarship (20k per year) and would not have been able to go to that school without it. However, school came first. When she had a class conflict with practice (only time that class was offered), she took the class. She was a senior, and a captain, and the coach knew her by then that she’d always put in the time on her own to be prepared. The school also worked with the athletic department to arrange quizzes and test to be at times that athletes could take them without disruption. Academics came first. Period.
Did athletes get benefits? Absolutely. They got to register for classes first. They got to take quizzes on Fridays first so that they could get on the buses to games on the weekend. They got snacks and some meals in the athletic training center. They got clothing (I used to joke I’d never seen her BF in anything not provided by his coach).
Power 5 conferences gave athletes guarantees of tuition if they played 2 years that they could finish their degrees (yes, Christian McCaffrey who makes $20M can go back to Stanford tuition free and finish his degree). A few years ago athletes started getting stipends to the COA (usually around $5k in the big schools) on top of their scholarships. And yes those are taxable if not used for QEE because they are ‘payments’ if not income. If they Ivies wanted to do that, they could.
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We’ll have to see when new contracts are negotiated in the current environment, but $10-20 million annually was not uncommon for some programs in the before times (for apparel contracts). Not including side deals for coaches in the millions. Administrators sometimes have side deals and other times are named in the main contract.
No idea what the current Ivy programs are (and I’m not sure why it matters) but it isn’t zero.
At most of these schools donor dollars are impacted significantly by the athletic programs as well.
As for whether employers can decide who counts as an employee: yes, they can eliminate programs and lay off employees. No, they can’t decide that people who meet the definition of employees are actually volunteers, 1099 NECs, or some other category that relieves them of their employee rights.
Perhaps the athletic departments can set up NIL collectives that donors can fund. I know several power 5(now 4 I guess) schools do this. Every athlete gets an equal share of what is donated to the collective. Of course, individual athletes also can have their own NIL deals.
The Ivy League schools are quite far behind on setting up NIL collectives (seems there are zero). Dartmouth’s student newspaper wrote about this issue recently:
But tons of groups get equipment and lodging, no? Debate team travels, ModelUn travels…
Dartmouth gets benefits from those kids too…(in form of enhanced repuation).
Anyway, I think there is a very strong argument that football/basketball players at the top conferences are indeed employees. They bring in $ and applicants in major ways. I just think ivy’s are very different. especially as they can get recruited and just not play with ZERO consequences once they get there.
Podcast from the WSJ on the unionization movement. Not a lot of new information but a bit of NCAA history. Why an Ivy League Basketball Team Voted to Unionize — The Journal. — Overcast