After MAC became the first FBS convention to cancel fall sports, reports began circulating that Power Five assemblies were meeting over the weekend to form a consensus on the cancellation of their own seasons. Spoiler alert: Reports imply that Big Ten has already voted in favor of cancellation.
Ross Dellenger and Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated wrote an article over the weekend in which an anonymous administrator of a Group of Five convention felt that the MAC took the resolution because he knew that the Big Ten would take the same resolution and that the Pac-12 would do the same.
Later that weekend, Pat Forde tweeted that resources told him everything.
Then, on Sunday night, the players began to regroup to save the season. Publicly, he started with Clemson QB Trevor Lawrence sending a series of tweets about how he thought players would be threatened more if they didn’t play, move from home and resume life.
More than a dozen actors from each of Power’s five meetings created the shared ensemble across Lawrence in a hastily convened Zoom meeting. At midnight, he sent this tweet.
As it unfolded this morning, #WeWantToPlay raged on Twitter with players from across the country, as well as coaches and administrators. Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek, among them.
Wake Forest players arrived in practice this morning, University President Nathan Hatch was there to communicate with them and hear their thoughts on gambling this fall. Sports director John Currie retwed his own mind, adding #WakeWillListen and #WakeWillLead.
Even U.S. Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) He jumped into the conversation.
Even as others continued to participate in Monday’s verbal exchange, the Detroit Free Press released a report that the Big Ten resolution is an agreement reached, and mentioned previous reports on the Dan Patrick Show that members voted 12-2 to cancel fall sports. , adding football.
As players struggle to save the season, is there anything they can do? Or is it too little and too late?
The motion #WeAreUnited began this month with an organization of Pac-12 players who wrote an article for The Players’ Tribune. The article said players would withdraw from Pac-12 fall camp and participate in the game if their requests were not guaranteed in writing through the convention. Applications included: the option not to bet this fall without wasting your eligibility or position on the list; Player-approved physical fitness and protection criteria applied through a third-party pay cut for convention commissioner Larry Scott, directors and coaches; health insurance covering six years after the end of college sports eligibility; rights of name, symbol and likeness; 50% of the total benefit of sport for the convention; sports scholarships for six years and more.
The #WeWantToPlay movement, which demanded less, met in a few hours on Sunday but also included the hashtag #WeAreUnited. Even when reports of nearby cancellations through Power Five conferences, enthusiasts began to wonder if players can save the fall through unionization or other efforts by the organization.
However, 16 months later, the Washington-based NLRB declined jurisdiction over the issue, saying that although Northwestern is within its jurisdiction as a personal institution, its “major competitors” at its convention were public establishments subject to state unionization legislation (including not allowing state workers, such as college workers, to become undescribed). Essentially, the NLRB refused to rule the Northwest when it may not govern the much larger number of public establishments competing at the same point in school football.
Marc Edelman, a forbes collaborator, a lawyer and law professor, says the prestige of workers’ associations has had more influence in the past.
“For example, in Brady v. National Football League 2011 of the Eighth Circuit, the court describes the past efforts of an organization that called itself the New Negro Alliance to jointly boycott grocery outlets that were not rented by black employees. The organization, not a union, has benefited from some legal protections similar to its collective efforts.
Edelman says the scenario is even more applicable here.
“[D] the 1980s and early 1990s after NFL players voluntarily decertified their union, a unionless deal also known as the National Football League Players Association could still organize and effectively use antitrust lawsuits. And other tactical pressures to get some adjustments in the running of professional football.”
Neither the motion #WeAreUnited nor the motion #WeWantToPlay are calling for unionization, at least not in the legal sense. However, the fact that they shape a trade union does not mean that there is some kind of organizational framework as a pro partnership.
The National Association of University Players already has a nonprofit advocacy organization that has been involved in high-level discussions about name, symbol and similarity rights since the case of Ed O’Bannon. Its chief executive, Ramogi Huma, spearheaded the attempt to unionize the Northwest Players. More recently, the organization has partnered with the NFL Players Association to explore the organization’s licensing fees for school athletes.
So, is there anything players can do to save the season now? Most of the people I talked to said no. However, players can take advantage of this lost time to work in a more formal organization.
Anita Moorman, a professor of sports law at the University of Louisville, says players want to get a seat at the table for the next decision circular.
“In my opinion, if you focused on fitness and protection now, you will provide them with a position at the table and may simply begin to lay the groundwork for other collective actions. Focusing on fitness and protection is a way to avoid premature antitrust disorders while their claims do not favor one provider over another”.
An example of a claim that can cause an antitrust problem, he said, would be if players said they would only play with one of the two helmets they approved, because it can be argued that it would have a festival effect on the market.
Regarding organization licensing, he said it would be cost-effective for players to see how advertising teams in the music industry supply composers to make sure they get royalties.
He also believes that the formation of a professional arrangement would provide advantages to players.
“A professional agreement can be very useful in providing education and practice data for individual licensing and approval agreements or how to monetize social media well.”
Lisa Pike Masteralexis, senior associate dean of the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, expressed her emotions about the strength of a professional arrangement and the priority given to fitness and safety.
“If you are going to move to an organization that is in the most productive position, the NCPA has been looking to organize it for years.”
He said two major demanding situations prevented student-athletes from mobilizing. First, student-athletes run out of time and concentrate on their season and are picked up. Second, the rotation is maximum from year to year as student-athletes are recruited or graduated. She says that’s why the MLB Players Association has been so powerful, because baseball racing is longer than in other sports.
“On the other hand,” he said, “what we’ve noticed this summer in terms of organization around the Black Lives Matter motion is that social media and social justice have a greater mechanism for organizing people. This turns out to be a moment when an organization like THE NCPA, which already has one foot, takes a step forward for athletes, athletes are probably a little more aware of the smart elders and have time with their seasons eliminated.
Masteralexis issues to states that have passed laws on the name, symbol and image over the following year so that student-athletes can claim some of the rights they have just received at a union’s negotiating table. However, few of those expenses have to do with fitness and security, which she thinks is a mistake.
“A handful of them are thinking about this broader issue,” he said. “Now, in the days of COVID-19, let’s focus on fitness and safety. Maybe this is an opportunity for them at the table.”
She would possibly be too late to save the fall season, but this loss would possibly have created an opportunity that didn’t exist before. For the first time, student-athletes can eventually locate each other through the systems and join in enough trouble to bring about change.
I am the founder of BusinessofCollegeSports.com and in the past I was a sports reporter for ESPN. I’m the host of the podcast The Business of College Sports and the author
I am the founder of BusinessofCollegeSports.com and in the past I was a sports reporter for ESPN. I host the podcast The Business of College Sports and the host of “Saturday Millionaires: How Winning Football Builds Winning Colleges” (Wiley/Turner, 2013). After practicing law for 4 years and contributing to Forbes and Comcast Sports Southeast as a sports advertising analyst, I joined ESPN in 2011 for two years as a sports journalist. I have a bachelor’s degree in politics from the University of Oglethorpe and a doctorate. Levin Law School at the University of Florida. Follow me on Twitter: @SportsBizMiss.