If you go to Mizzou, I don’t have to tell you how quickly your world is changing.
I don’t have to tell you that your campus is leading the charge against systemic racism present in institutions of higher learning across the country. I don’t have to tell you that student protests have found massive successes very quickly, largely because of the impact Mizzou’s football players made when they refused to participate in football activities until UM System President Tim Wolfe was no longer in office. I don’t have to tell you there might, one day, be an ESPN _30 for 30_ film on Monday’s events and the lead-up to them.
But what if I told you the impact of the Mizzou football players’ strike will go far beyond racial relations on this campus, or any campus, in ways they probably never could’ve predicted? Mizzou football players proved this week that they have more power than their university, their conference or their governing body wants them to have or thought they had. They proved they don’t need the unions college athletes have been earnestly working for in recent years, notably at Northwestern University. They proved they could change the landscape of a university, and, collectively, can change the landscape of college athletics.
You’ll notice I didn’t use the term “student-athlete.” I won’t. For years, the NCAA’s handling of amateur “student-athletes” has been decried as unfair and even illegal. But, until now, there was little the so-called “student-athletes” could do for themselves that their grievances were rendered irrelevant. Walter Byers, the NCAA’s first executive director, concocted the term “student-athlete” in the first place for the express purpose of avoiding labor laws and worker’s compensation. Byers later published a book in opposition to the NCAA’s practices and testified before Congress in favor of overhauling collegiate athletics with new legislation. That overhaul hasn’t come. Yet.
The crux of the modern argument over “student-athletes” concerns the NCAA’s treatment of amateurism, fair compensation, and, perhaps most importantly, what constitutes an employee. Current NCAA President Mark Emmert has gone to great lengths as he tries to convince this country that “student-athletes” are not employees, but rather that they are students first who simply happen to play football once in a while. Unfortunately for Emmert, Mizzou football just gave collegiate athletics a push toward exposing the NCAA’s true and inherent hypocrisy.
After the Mizzou players announced their strike on Sunday, the pervasive argument among many tough-guy Twitter enforcers encouraged Mizzou to simply revoke the scholarships of the players who refused to play.
On the surface, that seems logical enough, right? Maybe it would be a great solution for Mizzou, but the NCAA has backed itself into a corner from which there is now no escape.
If Mizzou tried to revoke the players’ scholarships, it would be effectively eliminating the Mizzou football program, as it currently exists. In the best-case scenario, Mizzou would be unable to compete for the remainder of the season. In a worse scenario for the university, current players and future recruits would abandon the program due to the university’s open social oppression of its players.
“While the university has the greater power in this (formal scholarship) relationship, it obliterates its social role if it becomes oppressive,” John C. Weistart, a law professor at Duke University School of Law and the author of The Law of Sports, said in an email.
Moreover, the NCAA could expose its treating “student-athletes” as employees, and open the door to players seizing even more agency and, eventually, a level of fair compensation.
“They can’t revoke the players’ scholarships, because the NCAA’s attorneys have spent years spitting out court filings that claim the key reason athletes should not be paid to play college sports is that they are simply members of the student body participating in an extracurricular activity,” Andy Staples wrote on Campus Rush, a production of Sports Illustrated. “Northwestern’s attorneys argued to the NLRB that athletes are not employees because they are, in fact, regular students.”
Emmert has also voiced strong opposition to allowing his “student-athletes” to become employees.
“The notion of converting a student to an employee—particularly a paid employee—is something that is utterly antithetical to the whole principle of intercollegiate athletics,” Emmert said at a 2014 luncheon at the City Club of Chicago.
Of course, that’s pretty easy for Emmert to say after he made over $1.8 million off of intercollegiate athletics in 2013, according to USA Today. One is left to deduce that money is not “utterly antithetical to the whole principle of intercollegiate athletics,” as long as the money doesn’t find its way into the hands of those who earned it. I wonder how Emmert would feel about being paid in an education. How about some classes on just compensation?
So, if the NCAA won’t back down on its “students-not-employees” stance, universities are powerless to prevent their players from boycotting because they have very little practical leverage. They find themselves either conceding to the athletes’ demands—as happened here at Mizzou with the resignation of Tim Wolfe—or upending amateurism as it exists in college sports today, unless they’re willing to sacrifice the money brought in by their major sports programs.
Weistart agrees that the NCAA and its universities often act in their own self interest, even at the expense of their “student-athletes.”
“The NCAA has a part in the play and it sticks to its script,” Weistart said in an email. “Their financial self-interest is fully served by solemn protestations that this is not about the money.”
Bearing those points in mind, college athletes in major, high revenue sports are one well-timed, well-planned, and committed strike away from bringing the NCAA to its knees.
Previously, unionization seemed the route to progress. Now? Just don’t play.
“At most schools, if the tennis team strikes, it is a non-event,” Weistart said in an email. “The Missouri players proved that when important civil rights are at stake, effective group action can be mobilized.”
I’m not advocating for college football players to lay down their pads on a whim, but the Mizzou football players’ strike certainly sets up the potential for a chain of events that could culminate in sweeping changes to collegiate athletics. This newfound power should be used to overhaul a system that refuses to give exploited athletes their worth, even while lining the pockets of administrators, coaches and executives.