Is College Athletics Ready to Take On Players Unions?
Today’s guest columnist is Joe Moglia, chair of athletics and executive advisor to the president at Coastal Carolina University.
NCAA president Charlie Baker’s call last week to create a “subdivision” to allow schools to directly pay players using NIL deals would radically transform college sports. For one thing, it will hasten the independence of Power Five football—something I’ve argued has been inevitable for years, thanks to the flood of TV revenue—while still maintaining a role for the NCAA. He should be commended for leading on this. However, it also opens the door for yet another dynamic that athletics directors and universities are unprepared for: players unions.
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This is going to happen no matter what. Even if Power Five football doesn’t break away or enter the proposed subdivision, there will be collective bargaining, at the very least between the players and the booster collectives. The NCAA ducked on NIL when it was happening; they can’t duck unions now.
Until the introduction of NIL, the NCAA and schools did whatever they could to stonewall the ability of a player to be paid. The NCAA took the matter all the way to the Supreme Court, rather than lead on it themselves. (It’s worthwhile to remember this happened before Baker took over.) In the aftermath of that ruling, NIL has become the wild west, with a patchwork of rules and schools scrambling to compete, while paying lip service to the NCAA’s prohibition against giving money directly to any of their players. And schools are figuring out ways of taking care of players, whether they’re on scholarships or not, via collectives.
So, student athletes are already being paid, but they’re nevertheless left out of the monster TV revenues generated by college football and to a lesser extent the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
The creation of the new subdivision would allow them to be paid directly. And a recent blockbuster class action lawsuit against the NCAA and Power Five could further open the door to college athletes sharing in TV revenue.
On Nov. 6, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that lawsuits against the NCAA and college athletics conferences—including the Power Five—could proceed as a class action. She’s the same judge who handled the Alston case at the district level before the Supreme Court ruled against the NCAA, ushering in the NIL era in 2021. Now, the potentially $4.2 billion class action suit, brought by Arizona State swimmer Grant House, TCU basketball player Sedona Prince and former Illinois football player Tymir Oliver, has framed the obvious question: Do universities and conferences profit from college athlete’s name, image, and likeness when they broadcast games on TV?
Judge Wilken has already indicated that she finds the athletes’ claim to be owed at least 10% of TV revenues to be worth considering (as Sportico previously noted, this would be in line with group licensing royalties for professional sports). If the NCAA loses this lawsuit, it will greatly shift power toward the biggest conferences, who could then freely pay players. The NCAA’s move to establish the subdivision seems to be a proactive effort to get ahead of that lawsuit, which I would applaud.
But what happens next?
College athletics cannot do what they did with NIL, which is make believe it wasn’t happening. Instead, they need to step up and be proactive. Direct NIL deals between schools and athletes or TV revenue sharing would almost certainly mean players unions would soon follow. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s the result of a lawsuit or a proactive rules change by the NCAA. The rise of unions is inevitable due to the gusher of NIL and TV money flowing into college athletics. Now, athletics directors and schools must not wait to prepare themselves for those labor negotiations.
Whether the subdivision is established or the NCAA loses in court (or both), it will instantly push student athletes to join together to ensure those revenues and deals are shared fairly. This isn’t theoretical. The Dartmouth men’s basketball team has already sought to unionize. More teams will likely follow in their footsteps, pushing to support the entire team, even as superstars earn supersized NIL deals.
We can expect college athletes to seek a basic floor and protections for all athletes in revenue sports—at a minimum—and potentially across all college sports. With the amount of money at stake, and the well-being of our athletes on the line, universities and athletics directors can’t just wing it or figure it out as they go along. These kinds of negotiations, while common in professional sports, don’t exist in intercollegiate athletics.
Collective bargaining covers the basics—the minimum salary a rookie gets through a player’s tenure at the school. Professional sports already do this. In the NFL, it’s just a standard part of business. But universities—and a lot of athletics directors—have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to negotiating. Several of our major football programs have figured out already how to run their NIL programs, but there’s no coordination across all of Power Five football. We need transparency, structure and guidelines in a way where all Power Five programs are operating on the same foundation.
The reality is, the rise of players unions could actually benefit college athletics overall, because it would set standards for how the top teams compensate their players, rather than maintaining a free-for-all that encourages people to bend the rules to the breaking point. Most athletics directors won’t feel that way, of course. But like it or not, they need to get smart on this part of the business.
That’s going to be tough. Do we really believe that the average athletics director is prepared for this? Probably not. For proof, just look at how poorly they negotiate severance clauses in coaching contracts, handing out millions and throwing away leverage in desperation to fill open positions at the end of the year. If the NFL was run the way college athletics are currently being run, the league would go out of business.
It’s wishful thinking to suppose that college athletics departments are able to effectively launch into a negotiation with a players union right now. They’ve got a lot of work to do, and in an ideal world would have already started figuring out how they’re going to deal with this years ago.
Making collective bargaining work in college sports is going to take a while. The first step is for someone to show proactive leadership on it, whether that’s the NCAA, the Power Five or a university president with a lot of clout. The second step is looking at what the professional leagues already do and shaping it to the unique requirements of college athletics. And the third step is actually cutting a deal with the players.
College athletes will be paid as professionals sooner rather than later, whether loosely under the auspices of the NCAA or via an independent Power Five. Players unions will come soon after. It’s time for athletics directors and their superiors to go to school and learn how to negotiate.
Moglia is the former CEO and chairman of TD Ameritrade, and current chairman of Fundamental Global LLC and Capital Wealth Advisors. In 2012, he became Coastal Carolina University’s head football coach, leading the team to four conference championships and an overall record of 56-22. He is now the Executive Director for Football and Executive Advisor to the President at Coastal Carolina. You can find him on his website, on his LinkedIn page and on Twitter.
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