I don’t know much about Dartmouth basketball but this can’t really be true for most Ivy League sport teams though?? I mean it’s more like a club sport where the athletes are doing it as a recreational activity for their own enjoyment.
there’s more to it than just ticket sales and TV contracts. a lot of donors, even at ivies, put outsized importance on athletics
They’re bad.
90 some percent of college athletics is the same as high school athletics. It’s an expense for the school that they take on due to the educational benefits of athletic participation and for purposes of school pride. The benefits to the school in most cases would be indirect only via increased donations and enrollment that would be less likely without their athletic teams.
If this becomes the law of the land where every college athlete is considered an employee of the school regardless of division or scholarship status, and regardless of whether the athletic programs are actually directly profiting, the most likely outcome will just be colleges across the country slashing or completely eliminating their athletic departments. This would likely directly lead to hundreds of school across the country closing too.
I’m sure many would be on board with those results, but it should be clear that’s the likely outcome here. Then we push further into the only access to athletics coming through for profit club models aka sports for the rich only.
ETA: IANAL and it’s possible I’m grossly misunderstanding something here.
But does that make them employees?
I’m having trouble thinking of good analogies but if the homeless folks at the shelter are what cause donors to donate to the shelter does that make them employees of the shelter? Like (ostensibly) the donations made with athletics in mind are for the benefit of the student athletes?
(This assuming we talking about the sports that otherwise make no money)
Hard disagree here. College athletics is largely figuring out ways to spend revenue from football and basketball. Michigan didn’t give a shit about the ‘educational benefits’ and ‘pride’ from the soccer team. They needed a way to spend the massive amounts of money brought in by revenue sports.
This feels contradictory. Like are schools running athletics programs out of the goodness of their hearts (what are the “educational benefits of athletic participation”?) or because it provides them a return on their investment?
I also think you’re overstating the scope somewhat. Like, this ruling appears to mean that your random D3 school bball team with no scholarships could unionize. Why is that scary? I don’t see why we should assume the result of player unions is the destruction of athletics programs and entire schools when it’s obviously not in players’ interests for that to happen.
why wouldn’t it
this happening at the college level would have a pretty minimal effect on actual kids
Michigan is not representative of college athletics, they are the extreme elite. Talking about Michigan in relation to college athletics is like talking about Elon Musk’s spending habits to make a point about the economics of the average American.
I don’t understand why someone getting services from an entity that receives donations to provide better services makes them an employee? Like St Jude’s wouldn’t exist or receive donations without kids needing cancer treatment but that doesn’t mean the kids are employees of the hospital.
I’m sorry but my soccer team very much is representative of college sports. The power 5 football teams are almost all very profitable, and they use that money to fund the rest of the athletic department (and pay their every increasing admins coaches and what not).
Our soccer program started in 2000 and was not a huge priority for the school at all. We still ended up with a new stadium and a kickass locker room.
While other schools don’t go as far with their money, the overall pattern of spending what you get in is there for everyone
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Let’s set aside jucos and talk only about 4 year schools. There are over 1300 4 year athletic departments in the US. Somewhere around 1000 of those operate at the D2, D3, and NAIA level. So a huge part of what you’re missing is that the athletic department is an expense to 100% of the schools at those levels. It may help bring in enrollment and other such benefits, but it’s not generating millions in revenue that they have to “figure out how to spend”.
Of the 350 or so remaining, 69 of them were in a power 5 conference this year. Of that remaining 69 only 3 (Ohio St, Texas, and Alabama) had higher athletic revenue in the last available year than Michigan. You are talking about a top 0.3% athletic department that operates in the elite tier of maybe 20 athletic departments in the entire country.
So we have 1 maybe 2 sports from less than 10% of all college athletic departments in the country being used to make rules for every sport at all 1300 some 4 year college programs.
Yeah that’s my issue with all this. Like yeah of course a D1 fencer should be able to get paid to get on magazine advert for selling epees to kids or whatever but it’s hard to imagine any interpretation of reality where their athletic prowess was being unfairly exploited by their university. Like it’s a completely different reality than SEC football or something
Like my earlier post, I think this is overstating the scope somewhat. Like, the D1 fencing team can now unionize. My question: so what? Why is this going to destroy the school? If so, how?
Maybe I misinterpreted, if all collegiate athletes were legally employees don’t they now have to get paid minimum wage at least?
I suspect the current ruling has no bearing on that. Ctrl+F’ing the ruling for “wage” finds passages like this, implying that it is in fact fine to be an “employee” (as far as the NLRB is concerned) while being paid less than minimum wage:
I think the ruling is just about whether they can unionize or not, and this ruling thinks they can, and that seems fine.
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NCAA turning into the Washington Generals of court cases.