Northwestern football players seek to join union

The coach salaries in nearly all cases come from a private pool of money. It is a pool that says "here's money to pay coaches," not "here's money for whatever you need." The math simply doesn't add up to pay every athlete, and that is just pure and simple fact.

But even if it did, what would it solve to give every athlete $10,000 a year? That would be the most unfair thing on the campus, that non-revenue athletes get extra money on top of their free ride. (I should add that in nearly all cases of non-revenue athletes, their families are quite wealthy, which allowed them to pursue that sport in the first place.) And that's going to piss off the football and basketball players too, because it isn't that much money for them, and they're going to want a bigger cut, and now what you've done is acknowledged that they are professionals so there's nothing stopping a bidding war.

 

Yes, I understand all that.

 

Re: the financial consequences of paying athletes (specifically athletes in the marquee sports).

I am not at all certain that we have a clear picture of just how programs stack up on a dollars-and-cents basis. The accounting is awfully, awfully squirrelly. What is the marginal cost of a football player's scholarship? Now before many of you start chiming in, it's not a clear-cut thing. Suppose Alabama decided to award one fewer scholarship for its football team next year. By how much will Alabama's total (university + athletics) budget change? I would suspect it's a helluva lot closer to $0 than it is to whatever a year's worth of Alabama goes for.

 

Great. Let's go with that.

So, as employees, they will not get a scholarship and they will not get a degree, but they can be paid whatever agreement they can reach with the university. That should be cool with everyone playing for that notable NFL factory at Northwestern, right? The value of, say, a blocking tight end at Northwestern certainly has to be greater than a full ride at one of the more prestigious and expensive private universities in the country!

If we put it to a vote of the athletes at Northwestern -- even if you narrow it down to revenue sports -- how do you think it will come out? You can be an employee, and be paid what we think you are worth as a college football player... or, you can be a student athlete and have a full ride, free room and board, and access to tutoring for your classes, ending up with a Northwestern degree at the end of your time here. You think there's a single athlete there who thinks the "employee" route makes more sense?

 

Why can't they get a scholarship while being employees? Many schools offer free tuition and other assistance to their employees are part of the compensation package.

 

There's two schools of thought when talking about compensating athletes: A stipend, and the rights to their likeness.

The stipend can be used for all the athletes, and, as some propose, can be used to make up the cost of attendance. The rights to the likeness can be used by the star athletes in addition to what they get, meaning Manziel can sign autographs, U. of Arizona student Jennie Finch can put out her own calendar, etc.

 

I know a lot of university employees. They don't get free tuition. They have to pay their own mortgages. That's how life works if you're an employee and not a student-athlete.

Since so much of this argument is that the free education isn't really compensation for the athletes, shouldn't they theoretically be happy with this deal? "Screw the six-figure education and degree from Northwestern -- make me an employee and pay me the true value of a second-string lineman at a mediocre program in a middling conference!"

 

Northwestern has an employee reduced tuition program and a portable tuition program, and I would imagine, some of these employee-students also have mortgages to pay:

http://www.northwestern.edu/hr/benefits/educational-assistance/ee-reduced-tuition-benefits.html

http://www.northwestern.edu/hr/benefits/educational-assistance/employee-portable-tuition.html

The argument isn't that the free education isn't really compensation. The argument is that it isn't enough compensation, especially when there are some of them who can receive a lot more.

 

And I don't think that's strictly a Northwestern only type program... man, it's incredible the straws that are getting reached at on this topic.

And you hit on the key point--the scholarship, while having an intrinsic value, is irrelevant to the discussion, or at best a component piece. You need to determine the value the football players bring to the university, and then give them their cut of the pie.

I will ask the question I have asked elsewhere--why is the ratio of compensation given to the coaches so varied from the players when you compare the two entities in the same industry--NFL and college? There's not a good answer for that, because the college contributors are getting ripped off. But, we couch that in the veil of 'you get an education, son' that you might be able to parlay into something, or you might be working at the QuikTrip, too, but thanks for helping generate all these millions and billions of dollars.

And the whole comment about athletic departments not making money? Is that the players fault these entities have a flawed business model. Jesus, their fixed costs in terms of stadiums and facilities, have for the most part been paid for generations ago, even considering upgrades. If you can't figure out how to make money at college football with the licensing, ticketing, television revenues that all add to 9 and 10 figures per annum, well, you're doing something way wrong.

There's one other factor converging that will also force this needed change--the concussion factor. If people are risking their long term health, there going to get compensated for doing so. And that compensation is going to be based on the value they bring in.

This wall is coming down. And probably pretty soon, although years too late from another view.

This isn't about college athletics. For football and basketball, it's about a billion dollar industry and allocating the revenues appropriately.

 

In the business sense, it's very easy to say what they're doing wrong -- they're keeping the money-losing divisions of the company open and even continuing to grow them. I'll take my alma mater as an example because it's a pretty typical one: Mizzou has 18 varsity teams. Sixteen of them lose money, I would guess gobs of it in some cases. The football and men's basketball programs have to pay for all of that.

 

Great. Employees are eligible for up to $10 a year in a tuition reduction. So at Northwestern they can declare themselves employees and not student-athletes, and if they actually want to attend classes and get a degree, they'll only have to come up with about $15k a year old top of that. And pay for their housing and food. And pay taxes on a good chunk of that tuition reduction. If they want to be treated like employees, treat 'em like employees.

Just how much do we think a typical football player at Northwestern is worth, exactly? They won one game in a mediocre conference -- a 3 point win over Illinois. How many guys at Northwestern right now are going to play in the NFL or NBA? Could you count them on one hand?

If we're going to talk market value of a typical Northwestern athlete, they're probably overpaid already.

 

They also are devoting a tremendous amount of resources to those money-losing divisions, and to the money-making division, on the reasoning that they have to in order to remain competitive.

For most of the D-I non-revenue sports, they should be treated more like glorified D-III programs, except perhaps with some scholarship money. Instead, for the major schools, they have to treat them like big-time sports, albeit not as big-time as the revenue producers.

I knew a guy who was a head coach for a non-revenue sport at a small D-I school. The basketball teams were fully funded with scholarships. His team had a total of 1 or 2 scholarships, depending on the year, which he divided up among his athletes. They bussed everywhere for their events. His team was basically a D-III, except they competed against other D-I schools and they had that little bit of scholarship money. THat's what a lot of these non-revenue sports have to do, except they're stuck flying across the country thanks to these new super-conferences.