Board Unanimously Decides to Decline Jurisdiction in Northwestern case
Washington, D.C. - - "In a unanimous decision, the National Labor Board declined to assert jurisdiction in the case involving Northwestern University football players who receive grant-in-aid scholarships. The Board did not determine if the players were statutory employees under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Instead, the Board exercised its discretion not to assert jurisdiction and dismissed the representation petition filed by the union."
August 17th, 2015 at 4:05 PM ^
Does Harbaugh really make an outrageous amount of money? If so, why were so many organizations so anxious to pay him even more?
August 17th, 2015 at 10:06 PM ^
But the reason colleges can afford to pay coaches increasingly huge salaries (average coach salary has exploded in the last decade+. Steve Spurrier was the first coach EVER to make 1m a year, now that means you're a turd boy or coaching at a mid major) because the programs are more profitable than ever while athlete compensation has remained capped at an artificially low level.
That money has to go somewhere. It'll either go to coaching staff, administration or building shit nobody needs. The artificially low compensation for athletes is warping the market and making the compensation for coaches artificially high.
August 18th, 2015 at 10:02 PM ^
But college coaches don't make more than pro coaches, whose salaries have also skyrocketed. Football and basketball coaches' salaries are pretty clearly NOT tied to anything unique to the college athletics financial setup.
Further, coaches' salaries have gone up in the schools that lose money in athletics, so salaries are clearly not based on just "spend the money just because we have so much of it."
August 17th, 2015 at 4:47 PM ^
Well, except for the whole medical scholarship and free insurance thing.
August 17th, 2015 at 1:46 PM ^
Most boards and courts lately are quite eager to take on issues, espcially idealogically compatible ones such as this (it happens on both the left and the right, in this case the NLRB happens to be majority Dem).
August 17th, 2015 at 2:36 PM ^
Caveat: I haven't actually had time to read this decision yet, although you will be sure I'll be digging into it in detail. But as a labor lawyer, I'm surprised that the NLRB declined to assert jurisdiction in this case. From a political/policy perspective, the Board has tended to issue decisions that expanded its scope of influence rather than restricted it. But from a procedural perspective, it's also rare that the decision of a Regional Director gets overturned by the Board.
August 17th, 2015 at 4:33 PM ^
August 18th, 2015 at 12:29 PM ^
The Board is too busy looking at social media policies, and non-unionized handbooks, and joint employer franchises cases, and... okay you get the point.
I was a bit surprised too, I thought they'd take a chance at this. I wonder if somehow it is just "too big" and there was a lot of scary consequences that made them want to focus on other issues instead.
August 17th, 2015 at 4:13 PM ^
So now with this and with the Ninth Circuit stay of the O'Bannon decision based on it likely being overturned, it looks like the completely misguided and pointless effort to ruin college football by making the players non-students may have actually peaked.
It's nice to see reason finally applied in this area.
August 17th, 2015 at 4:54 PM ^
I am fine with not letting them form a union. However, I do believe they should have more say in the decisions of the athletic department and NCAA. They should get democratically elected student athlete representatives to have a say on both the campus and in the NCAA. I believe this academic year is the first year that a student representative will get a vote for NCAA rules. However, they should get more than 2 votes as administrators and universities get far more than that. There are 40 members of the NCAA Division 1 Leadership Council - 2 student athletes, 27 athletic directors, 5 commissioners, 3 associate/deputy commissioners, and 3 faculty representatives. There's also the legislative council, but I can't find anything on the makeup of that council. Plus the Division 1 Board of Directors, which has no student athletes on it.
That is severe underrepresentation IMO
August 17th, 2015 at 5:16 PM ^
They are getting paid 200,000 dollars in some cases for 4 years of out of state for tuition, food, healthcare, room/board etc. plus the stipend. If they want to get paid directly, they can go to the CFL or Arena Football league. Nobody's forcing them to be there.
August 17th, 2015 at 8:40 PM ^
And foregoing college as an 18 year old would basically end any hopes of the NFL, because it would be taken as a major "Character concern." If they want to play NFL football, they are forced to go to college where they are under compensated for their work, both academically and financially.
August 17th, 2015 at 5:44 PM ^
August 17th, 2015 at 8:36 PM ^
After finding out employee athletes had no interest in unionizing. College athletes have far too much trust in their coaches to unionize. I think a lot of that trust is misplaced, because it's hard to see how coaches don't have a financial stake in keeping athlete compensation at the current artificially low levels.
But I'm not a D1 athlete, and it's not my decision to make. Northwestern, by every account, voted down unionizing and no other private even seriously considered it.