School v. athletics: The NCAA and the student-athlete myth.

I went to St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA. We didn't have a football team. It was deemed too expensive for a liberal arts college - both because of scholarships and equipment and time. I liked that about the school (not that the basketball team doesn't take up a lot of SMC's time - just not as much as football). There was the appearance of emphasis on education - and there was a huge emphasis for almost all students.

That's not true at most colleges. Most colleges, with football teams, have this whole "student-athlete" identifier. Don't lie, they are athletes first and students second. Any of them will tell you they put more emphasis and time into athletics than school. Just like anyone who has ever worked out can tell you - to be in that kind of shape it takes time and dedication.

The Northwestern football players - who have the highest graduation rate in the NCAA football major schools - recently sought to unionize. And shocker - the judge agreed with me. The football players are primarily athletes and students second. Because (reasons aren't listed here in order):

1. They bring in a huge amount of financial benefit for the school.
2. They are asked to schedule their classes and activities - even when required for their major - around football.
3. They spend more hours working on football and football related things than school.
4. They are subject to special conditions that other students aren't subjected to.
5. Their scholarships can be canceled at any time for non-academic related issues.

According to a judge, that makes them eligible to unionize.

And that's a good thing?

I personally think that athletics should be taken out of school. America is the only place in the world where athletics and school are so intertwined. We don't have a club system or development system. We use our schools for that. And it makes our schools worse.

But is unionizing the right step? Maybe. It might give football players a fighting chance to earn degrees and impose some conditions on their scholarships that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten. Why should they have to lose their scholarship just because they busted an arm in a game - doing something their coach told them to do. If they do their jobs right they can lose their scholarship because of injury. If they do their jobs badly they can lose it for under-performance. Who knows if they will take this step and use it as a starting point for being more students than athletes - rather than just negotiating their athlete conditions.

Maybe unionizing is the right step. Maybe not. But I'm hoping this will start encouraging other people to see that schools in the US are more about sports than academics - at least in a lot of cases. Maybe this will open the door to a discussion on the role of sports in schools - which are supposed to teach academics.

We shall see.

Link to articles discussing the ruling:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/03/26/northwestern_football_union_nlrb_says_players_can_unionize_because_they.html

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/10677763/northwestern-wildcats-football-players-win-bid-unionize