College athletes should think twice before asking to be employees
College sports need reforming, but making athletes employees isn't the answer
The doctrinaires who would liberate college athletes by defining them as "employees" would in fact be making ditch diggers out of them. Picture a scenario in which 19-year-old Arch Manning has to abide by a labor agreement with the University of Texas that could limit his paid sick leave if he gets hurt, subject him to termination and arbitration clauses and classify his $90,000 scholarship as taxable work income even though it has no cash value. How does that improve his position?
A chain of absurdities results from wrongly classifying university athletes as labor, which some well-meaners are trying do via either legislation or National Labor Relations Board cases. Game out the real impact, and here is the sort of irrationality you get. Let's say Manning becomes a union-employee-athlete activist at Texas and fails an exam in world literature. He files an unfair labor practice charge claiming the grade was retaliation. Is the NLRB really the right body to decide whether Manning read his Cervantes?
The NLRB is the wrong tool to apply to college athletes, and the sure sign of it is that a labor classification puts everyone in the dead wrong relation to each other.
"Some relations just by their nature don't lend themselves to this," says Marshall Babson, who served as a Democratic appointee to the NLRB during the Reagan administration. "That's not a criticism of collective bargaining. It's just a matter of whether or not it's appropriate. There is a serious question as to its applicability in a university environment."
In this case, it would create ill-fitting, impractical and unintended results. The simple fact is that the employment designation in college sports wouldn't create and protect economic opportunities for student-athletes. It would smother them. In practical application it would result in a mushroom cloud of costs: There are more than 500,000 athletes at NCAA schools, for whom college and universities would now have to pay not just wages or salaries but also FICA, federal and state unemployment taxes, workers' compensation, all the basic payroll taxes required of large employers.
New costs would not just be on schools. Some would fall on the players. Right now, Manning gets his tax-free scholarship and a wealth of generous medical benefits — the NCAA requires schools to cover all of his out-of-pocket medical expenses — during his playing career, plus coverage for any injuries for at least two years after graduation. And don't forget the raft of other fringe benefits he gets. All that free Texas logo apparel? Taxable. His housing? Taxable. Academic support services? Taxable. How about all those game tickets and suites for friends and family? Taxable. And all those free meals not directly associated with workdays — including catered ones? Taxable. What's the fair market value of all those extras in the eyes of the IRS?
To deal with their new employee status and tax liabilities, athletes probably would unionize to collectively bargain contracts. The outcome would be a salary scale, with coveted talents such as Manning commanding the lion's share of salaries. But college athletics are a matter of heavily blended moneys, including donor gifts, tax free bonds, state funds, student fees, etc., and are ultimately nonprofit, with the purpose of supporting as many scholarships as possible. That will be impossible in the new model. The practical reality will be catastrophic cuts to Olympic and women's sports as schools "repurpose the use of such revenues to go to a small subset of the athlete population," according to a projection by the Drake Group, a think tank that studies college athletics.
Collective bargaining in colleges would in fact result in the furthest thing from "collective" good for athletes.
Furthermore, Manning probably would have to surrender some of his economic freedom in a contract. Currently he can negotiate his own NIL sponsor deals, transfer schools if he is unhappy and promote himself any way he likes on social media. You can bet in an employment situation, universities would seek more contractual control over him and his endorsements, especially if one conflicts with the school's interest.
So, if Arch Manning is not and should not be an employee, then what is he? What is he engaged in?
The money is misleading. Don't let it distract you. A small number of college football and basketball players drive enormous TV revenue. That doesn't define employment — any more than working at a company that loses money makes you an amateur. At issue is whether the hours an Arch Manning is required to devote to college football are "work" or study. Do they have inherent educational value? The answer is yes. College athletics exist to foster extraordinary student talents that are as yet undeveloped and that require high-level teaching and long hours of practice.
He is getting training in leadership, commitment, strategic awareness, role-playing, duties to others, decision-making under pressure, resilience. The institution providing this training is not an industry operating in an open marketplace or a pro sports team generating its own revenue. It's an educational nonprofit with wholly different funding and priorities.
It's nonsensical to mash together a half-million students of varying talents and ambitions who are not at all similarly situated and legally treat them all like restaurant workers. The single most dispiriting element in the legal wrangling over college athletics is the reduction of the subject to nothing but money. As if it's ancillary, menial work with no real educational meaning or worth apart from the dollar. When in fact it teaches something incalculable and frankly unbuyable. Namely, how to manage yourself in a competitive world. Emphasize that, and quit turning it into ditch digging.