A point I brought up a while ago was what happens when Athletes really start pushing for a players union.... I really believe it's coming, how soon?? I don't know but it just seems like the next step in the evolution of how things are going....
With that said I asked (Original Cane gave an opinion on it) who do they negotiate with???
Who are the owners?? In pro sports you have the owners and their commissioner and on the other side you have the players union and their rep...
As of now the schools wouldn't be considered the owners, right??
What about the NCAA?? ( I know the answer there is "**** NO!!!").... LOL!!!
The Collectives???
So who's on the other side of the table from the players and their reps???
Where and how is that line drawn???
Great questions and why it is so much harder to make sense of how a union would work when their isn’t an entity on the other side that has overarching power to negotiate for the other side.
In an ideal world, the NC2A, or is successor entity would operate like a commissioner in pro sports, which means that first that entity, or person would have to be agreed upon by the universities, and the universities would have to cede power to that entity to make the rules. One could argue that already exists wit the NC2A, except that it has crumbled and keeps ceding power back to the conferences and universities.
But even when the NC2A ostensibly was the agreed upon negotiator and rule setter for college sports, it lacked the enforcement mechanism to stop schools from cheating expect in the rarest of situations. Part of the reason, maybe the main reason, why commissioners in pro sports have authority is because the owners have willingly ceded a lot of power because they believe it is in their collective best interest to do so. In turn, the owners police themselves and simply cheat less than their college counterparts. Salary caps have actual meaning in pro sports. Will they in college sports or will we return to a world of over the table payments (NIL) being supplemented by under the table payments? College kids will always be easier to buy off under the table because even with NIL, the dollars are so less, which means offering a kid $20,000 in cash can still have some sway. Boosters also don’t play a part in pro sports, again because the $$$ in pro sports make $20,000 in cash meaningless.
Colleges in sports still see everything as a zero sum game. Meaning that every school wants to win even if it means all the others are terrible. In pro sports, parity tends to mean higher attendance. If I’m the Lakers I want the Kings to be pretty good so that more people will attend when the kings come to LA. Alabama has no such feeling about Auburn. UM fans want FSU to be terrible even if that means lower attendance for the game. Su the schools themselves need to start seeing each other as partners in this business model.
So as you noted, there is so much to figure out, but I agree with
@Brooklyndee that unionization and collective bargaining is inevitable in college sports.
