College Football: Players as employees, unions and chaos

For most college football fans one event that happened off the field in 2014 is unknown or a trivial, faded memory. What happened that year is football players at Northwestern University attempted to use ’employee’ rights to form a union.

On the surface what transpired was a failed effort of a group of college football players to gain employee status. But the effort of dozens of Northwestern’s players was not a total failure. It was a significant motivating factor that slowly led to the NCAA adopting a Name. Image and Likeness (NIL) Policy in 2021.

The NCAA had no plan then to control NIL misuse and abuse. It has little more now. At its core NIL was a substitute for paying players to play as employees. For the NCAA, conferences and schools the cost of potentially having to pay players was not the only problem. Having player-employees would also add both short-term and long-term liabilities, with potentially high costs.

In 2016, SI.com provided an in-depth analysis of the college, employer-employee issues. In one paragraph, SI explained the fear held in 2014 and now, by the NCAA, conferences, schools and athletic departments,

"Panic swept athletic departments. Sports officials outdid each other with doomsday scenarios. NCAA president Mark Emmert called a union “grossly inappropriate.” Former Northwestern president Henry Bienen proclaimed that the university might leave Division I. “What happens if school A or school B becomes a union school?” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany asked Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander. “You don’t know. I have no idea! Places where there are unions, places with no unions, no NCAA, no NCAA rules? I think you would have chaos.”"

The players lost the fight, and still, chaos ensued.

At first, the Northwestern players won. Based on a 2014 ruling by a regional official of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the players were designated as employees. The ruling was appealed to the national board of the NLRB. Unanimously, the NLRB declined to exercise jurisdiction. The NLRB contended acting on employee status at one university could have a destabilizing impact across the world of college sports.

Chaos was not averted. The conflict and debate have never gone away. Recently there has been a stunning development.

In California, the NLRB has filed a complaint that USC, the Pac-12, and the NCAA have violated federal labor law. The complaint is based on the entities restricting the social media activity of players. As Politico reported, the complaint is about that and more.

"“The conduct of USC, the Pac-12 Conference, and the NCAA, as joint employers, deprives their players of their statutory right to organize and to join together to improve their working and playing conditions if they wish to do so,” NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said in a statement. “Our aim is to ensure that these players, as workers like any other, can fully and freely exercise their rights.”"

The dispute will not be settled anytime soon. It will not impact the 2023 college football season. Rulings and appeals could take years. The only foreseeable result is continuing chaos for college football and other college sports.