1. By Mark Guarino / Staff writer
T
he historic push by football players at
Northwestern University to unionize is
a sign of seismic changes now sweep-
ing through college sports. Hanging in
the balance is the idea of the amateur student-
athlete that has defined college sports for gen-
erations yet is under attack as an anachronistic
farce.
Current and former players are turning to
lawsuits to try to dismantle what they call an un-
fair system that generates billions of dollars yet
gives them only a scholarship as compensation.
So far, the National Collegiate Athletic As-
sociation (NCAA) has tried to address con-
cerns through a series of reforms, the biggest
of which could be adopted in August and would
essentially split major college football into two
tiers – the haves and the have-nots. Crucially,
though, amateurism would remain intact.
For that reason, the reforms are not likely
to be enough, many experts say. The lawsuits
and mounting pressure from Congress point to
a long period of reform in which the NCAA is
likely to be reshaped more deeply, they say.
Perhaps colleges will be allowed to offer
more than scholarships to lure top prospects. Or
top players will be able to cash in on their fame
though image rights. Or perhaps major college
football will be broken off from universities as
a semi-independent entity with new rules. The
unprecedented nature of the challenges facing
the NCAA means it’s virtually impossible to pre-
dict what might come next. But many analysts
believe college football and basketball will be
different, and perhaps significantly so.
“We’re right on that tipping point,” says
Karen Weaver, a professor at the Center for
Hospitality and Sport Management at Drexel
University in Philadelphia. “You’re going to see
change sooner [rather] than later.”
FOCUS: COLLEGE SPORTS
HITTING PAY DIRT: A University ofTexas tailback scores a touchdown in a game in Austin. Longhorns football brought in $139 million in 2012-13, the most of any college program.
BRENDAN MALONEY/USA TODAY/AP
T imetoplayforpayincollege?
VNEXT PAGE
Americans admire amateur athletes
who compete only for the love of the
game. But much of college sports today
is a big business, with millions of dollars
of revenue at stake. Should athletes
earn a paycheck? Or can some form of
amateurism remain?What’s next isn’t
clear, but big changes are coming fast.
WHY IT MATTERSV
Push for NCAA reform
is at a tipping point.
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR WEEKLY | May 26, 2014 21

2. At the core of the reform campaign is the
conviction among players that they are becom-
ing employees without adequate compensation.
Former Northwestern quarterback Kain
Colter estimates that he spent as many as 60
hours a week on football-related activities dur-
ing summer training camps. During the season,
that fell to 40 to 50 hours a week, he said in tes-
timony to the National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) in February.
“Everything we do is scheduled around foot-
ball,” he said, suggesting that advisers warded
him away from classes that might interfere with
the football workload. “We’re brought to the
university to play football.”
That’s why Mr. Colter led the push to union-
ize Northwestern’s football team. In March, a
regional NLRB director granted it that right.
The ruling throws college football into un-
charted waters. For the moment, it is being
appealed. And Northwestern’s players might
choose not to form a union. They voted on
whether to organize in April, but the results will
remain sealed until the national office of the
NLRB affirms – or overturns – the local ruling.
What happens if teams can unionize?
Regardless of what Northwestern players
do, the ruling – if upheld – is a watermark that
threatens confusion and change.
For one, it affects only private universities,
meaning Northwestern is the only team in the
Big Ten Conference that could unionize. While
college football is dominated by public univer-
sities, six of last season’s top 25 teams were
private, and if players from these schools orga-
nized, they could in theory go on strike, causing
chaos.
The ruling could also result in two classes
of players – private-school athletes who can
unionize and public-school ones who can’t. In
Connecticut, state Democratic Rep. Patricia Dil-
lon is planning to propose legislation that would
guarantee similar organizing rights to players at
state schools there to give them “equal footing.”
How universities might respond is equally
murky. If a private university tried to negotiate
with its unionized football players, it would be
violating NCAA rules, which could affect fund-
ing for other sports. Because the NCAA controls
scholarship money and health-care costs, uni-
versities like Northwestern would likely have
limited authority to negotiate.
For these reasons, some analysts say union-
ization is not the best lever for change.
“When you really get into it, a football union
doesn’t seem a sufficient or productive way to
solve the problems of exploitation for these
kids. I do think the NCAA needs to change, but
it almost makes more sense if there was one
giant union for all football players of all Divi-
sion I schools that could negotiate en masse,”
says Eldon Ham, a sports attorney and law pro-
fessor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in
Chicago.
But the unionization push is simply a taste of
the challenges facing the NCAA, the governing
body for sports programs at more than 1,200
American and Canadian universities. Two anti-
trust lawsuits, in particular, could radically re-
shape college athletics if they succeed.
The first, known as the O’Bannon case, chal-
lenges colleges’ ability to make massive televi-
sion deals without any of that revenue going
to players. The second, known as the Kessler
case, seeks to strike down the scholarship-only
system, allowing colleges to freely offer other
incentives to recruits.
Underlying these lawsuits and others is play-
ers’ frustration that the NCAA is flush with the
cash that they have helped generate. According
to Forbes, No. 1 on the college football revenue
list is the University of Texas at Austin, earning
$139 million in the 2012-13 season. The Univer-
sity of Louisville was tops in men’s basketball,
generating $40 million during the same season.
A concerned Congress has held hearings
looking into the NCAA’s tax-exempt status. At
a May hearing in the US House of Representa-
tives, Rep. George Miller (D) of California said
the NCAA has “perfected the art of monetizing
the athletic play of their best football and bas-
ketball players and teams.”
The NCAA’s plan
The NCAA’s latest proposed reforms at-
tempt to address some of these concerns. They
would bring more Division I student-athlete and
alumni voices to the table via committee posi-
tions, and, most significantly, allow the Big 5
FOCUS: COLLEGE SPORTS
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22 THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR WEEKLY | May 26, 2014

3. conferences – the Atlantic Coast,
Big 12, Big Ten, Pacific-12, and
Southeastern – to become more
independent.
One reason the NCAA hasn’t
been able to do more for top ath-
letes is that smaller colleges have
opposed big changes. After all,
small schools don’t face the same
problems. But under the new re-
forms, the Big 5 conferences would
have more leeway to make their
own rules on issues such as schol-
arships, hours of practice, long-
term medical coverage, academic
support, and family travel benefits.
What the reforms would not
budge on is the idea that college
players are amateur student-ath-
letes. A strong majority of Ameri-
cans back that stance, a Monitor/
TIPP poll shows. Some 59 percent
of respondents say rewards for
college athletes need to be strictly
limited and regulated. Only 31 per-
cent say students should be able to
share the financial bonanza that is
generated by college sports.
Even apart from the money
question, many critics ask if a col-
lege scholarship is really a useful
compensation for many players.
Mary Willingham, who tutored
basketball players at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
conducted a study of football and
basketball players at the school
from 2004 to 2012. She found
that 60 percent read at fourth- to
eighth-grade levels. Another 8 to
10 percent read at below third-
grade levels. Some were illiterate.
“So what are the classes they
are going to take to get a degree
here? You cannot come here with
a third-, fourth-, or fifth-grade
education and get a degree here,”
she told CNN, saying she did the
course work for some players.
It all may amount to a potential
perfect storm. Players are prohib-
ited from sharing the money they
help generate and in return are
given access to an education that
many don’t want, can’t cope with,
or – in the case of Northwestern’s
Colter – are prevented from taking
full advantage of.
The NCAA has worked to im-
prove graduation rates. The 2013
graduation success rate for Big 5
football programs was 71 percent,
a historical high; for basketball,
it was 73 percent, one point off a
historical high. The NCAA national
average is 81 percent.
But player advocates say real
changes will happen only if ath-
letes get a greater voice in deci-
sionmaking. One group, Game
Changers, wants current and for-
mer athletes to fill at least half of
the NCAA’s 17-member board of
directors, up from one position
being proposed this summer.
“Only this kind of revision
would guarantee genuine change,”
Game Changers says in a report.
So how would a more radically
reformed NCAA look?
The semiautonomous model.
Some sports management experts
say universities could turn their
football programs into semiau-
tonomous enterprises that are self-
supporting, much like university
medical systems. In this model,
college athletes would earn pro-
fessional status as paid employees
instead of receiving scholarships.
They would attend classes only
outside their respective sports
seasons. The corruptive elements,
such as under-the-table payments
for signings, would be eliminated
because players would earn com-
petitive wages generated by media
and merchandise revenue.
“It’s a vision that could work,”
says Howard Nixon, a professor
of sociology at Towson University
in Maryland and author of “The
Athletic Trap: How College Sports
Corrupted the Academy.” “I am
not someone who says, ‘Let’s get
rid of all college sports.’ I think
it can change, and this is a great
opportunity.”
The academic model. At the op-
posite end of the spectrum, sports
programs could be completely
subsumed within a university’s ac-
ademic system, playing down the
role of the NCAA and big money.
In this scenario, scholarships
would be only for needs-based
athletes, and the key
employees associated
with sports programs
– coaches, trainers,
academic support
staff, medical staff,
and so forth – would
be integrated into the
university hierarchy.
For example, coaches
might work out of
student affairs. “So when you’re
fundraising, you’re not target-
ing athletics, you’re targeting the
university. These would be very
scaled-down programs,” Mr. Nixon
says.
Both models would represent
an overhaul of the current system.
Thecase-by-casemodel. To other
observers, there is a middle way
that is simpler and less costly. Be-
cause the majority of complaints
regarding compensation and resid-
ual benefits apply to a small share
of players, the NCAA could create
special rules applicable only to
those who have high market worth
and a brand worth exploiting.
“Most of the kids at Northwest-
ern are getting a scholarship worth
about $60,000, but most of them
will never make anywhere near
$60,000 playing football anywhere
else. But there will be a couple who
are good enough, and those guys
are probably underpaid. The other
kids on scholarship, those guys
are probably overpaid in the sense
that they’ll never make that kind
of money anyway, so they are not
being exploited at all,” says Profes-
sor Ham.
The issues regarding residual
compensation – the rights of play-
ers to earn money from autographs
or their likenesses in video games,
for instance – could be addressed
on a case-by-case basis, says An-
drew Brandt, director for the Moo-
rad Center for the Study of Sports
Law at Villanova University and an
ESPN analyst.
“I understand the notion of am-
ateurism and all for one, one for
all, but you can count the number
of players on two hands that have
the marketing opportunities be-
yond the game itself,” Mr. Brandt
says. “The NCAA could allow them
to capitalize on that while still con-
trolling what it wants to control.”
The most forceful voices may
come from parents and faculty
who face soaring tuition hikes,
departmental bud-
get cuts, and other
shortages at the same
universities where
athletic revenues are
at a surplus. To them,
the millions of dol-
lars football teams
like the Northwest-
ern Wildcats earn are
not necessarily help-
ing to bring down costs or boost
resources.
“For a long time the NCAA has
avoided having to deal with the
fact that it is a highly commercial-
ized business that generates a lot
of revenue yet is treated as other
nonprofit businesses,” Nixon says.
“If these schools keep raising tu-
ition, when are people going to say
‘You’re putting our kids into debt
to support athletics’? Part of this is
about the money, but it’s also about
fairness and ending the exploita-
tion of student-athletes for every-
body else’s gain.” r
UNION MEN: Ramogi Huma (l.), founder of the National College Players Association,
and former Northwestern football quarterback Kain Colter visited Capitol Hill in April.
LAUREN VICTORIA BURKE/AP
‘Part of this
is about the
money, but
it’s also about
fairness....’
– Howard Nixon, professor
at Towson University
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR WEEKLY | May 26, 2014 23

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