OT: Pat Fitzgerald Urges Against Union
Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald has come out against the union, and is urging his players to vote no April 25th. He had been silent since the issue began, and I assumed this meant he tacitly supported the effort. He does not.
Perhaps this board is tired of the debate, and no more may be necessary here, but from a football standpoint this seems a serious distraction. In the ESPN article there are quotes from QB Trevor Siemian and RB Venric Mark indicating they oppose the union, as well as senior center Brandon Vitabile. Division between a head coach and some of his players, versus a former QB and other of his players, on any issue, seems only likely to disrupt a common goal. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
http://espn.go.com/chicago/college-football/story/_/id/10734087/pat-fit…
Well then I guess I misunderstood the part that I had blockquoted. I thought the OP was including the former players in the common goal statement.
The NCAA and his bosses at NW are not going to let Fitzgerald be in favor of a players' union. Besides, coaches are about to have a lot of their power taken away in the nest few years if the union becomes big.
All the NCAA had to do was stop robbing players of their opportunity to get a small piece of the pie. Now it is going to cost them up the wazoo. A fitting end...
[Controversial opinion]
Second, this has to be an extremely tough decision for these players. Unlike a normal union, the players voting on this will only be in the union for four years or less. A yes vote could have a very negative affect on their future and any potential positive affect may not come while these players are still there. A yes vote could make this a very distracted and tough season, and that certainly does not help anyone's TV exposure or draft status. In addition, those distractions are just one more thing taking time away from their own training to get better.
<politics> If you're anti union, you can get off my lawn </politics>
The reality of this effort is that even if Northwestern players vote in favor of unionizing, the school has absolutely no requirement to change their stance regarding any of these issues.
The school could simply determine that the cost-analysis for the school points to discontinuing the football program as the best course of action, or that they will bargain "in good faith" with no intent of ever meeting the stated demands of the players.
If those demands were compensation/benefits not currently allowed under NCAA rules, I would assume that the team as a whole could also be suspended from play due to receiving non-allowable benefits through negotiation.
Given it has been a few years, but I do not miss negotiating with UAW, Teamsters, Operating Engineers, SIEU and Unite Here, etc etc as each and every one of them had some very good people, but at the end of the day all had become organizations that were most intent upon maintaining their own revenue streams and much much less concerned with individual rights or concerns for their membership and the funds it provided.
The powers that be would do well to ensure that players in the major sports/conferences need to close the gap on scholarships as well as emplacing some form of catastrophic insurance plan to cover injury issues past playing time, and ensure the scholarships cover the costs associated with room/board/books/tuitiion for full year. I do not feel sorry for players complaining they do not have enough $$ to have cars/dining out/etc etc, join the poor student majority who managed to scrape their way through school.
I think they would do well to guarantee 5 year scholarships that remain in effect as long as the players remain in good academic standing, they should increase football scholarships by another 10-15 and/or allow teams to cut players from the programs but they must maintain their scholarships for the 5yrs along with the academic support programs for athletes and allow those players to transfer without condition or loss of playing time.
Many of these issues are symbolic of the need to scrap the NCAA rules book and sit down and design a competent program applicable to the new realities of athletics and not some antiquated and ridiculous concept that rings hollow.
The ghost of Samuel Gompers will haunt Pat Fitzgerald this year.
He's free to urge them not to, and they are free to decide to vote against his wishes.
This is the exact reason why players are seeking the right to redress their issues via a union; becuase the management may not always agree with their stance. The majority of players could very well agree with him and vote down the union, but just because the guy at the top doesn't want collective bargaining doesn't really mean much to me.