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As I mentioned in my “Show Me the Money!” blog last week, back in March of 2014 the Chicago District (Region 13) of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) held that Northwestern University football players qualified as employees and could unionize and bargain collectively.  Although this decision was later overturned, the national level NLRB’s final holding specifically targeted unionization efforts at private schools – leaving the door wide open to revisit this issue at some point with respect to public universities.

Although the Regional decision was reversed, I was interested in Peter Sung Ohr’s (Director of Region 13) analysis, especially with respect to athletic scholarships.  He noted that although student-athletes don’t officially receive paychecks from universities, they do receive “a substantial economic benefit for playing football” in the form of scholarships.  He also focused on the extent of control exerted by coaches on players (something that has been touched on quite a bit in academic literature) and the amount of time players spend on football related activities, ultimately concluding that receiving scholarships in exchange for playing football amounts to a contract-for-hire between employer and employee.

I was inspired to write my 3rd sports/ tax paper, Northwestern, O’Bannon And …

So, Duke is the 2015 NCAA Men’s Basketball champion. As a Michigan State basketball fan, this was at least mildly gratifying because the Spartans final losses the past two seasons have been to the eventual champion. (MSU’s final two losses this season: Wisconsin and Duke.) Hardly the same as winning the whole thing, but after a loss, one takes what one can get. 

This semester I am teaching Sports Law for the first time, and it has been an interesting and rewarding experience. As our recent guest, Marc Edelman, recently noted, there is a lot going on right now in college sports (there probably always is), with questions about paying NCAA players and players’ rights to unionize, among other things, leading the way.  

I am a big fan of college sports, and I generally prefer college sports to professional sports. I don’t, however, have any illusion that big-time college sports are, in any real sense, pure or amateur. (For that matter, I don’t know what “pure” means, but I hear complaints that colleges sports are “no longer pure,” so it appears there is some benchmark somewhere.)  College sports are a modified form of professional sports or, as the term I used to hear from time to time in other contexts, semi-pro sports.

What College Sports Are

College sports, in the simplest sense, are highly talented young people competing on behalf of educational institutions in exchange for the opportunity to pursue a mostly funded college education, if they so choose and can make it fit in with their athletic obligations.  The athletes are compensated for their efforts with opportunities that are varied and wide ranging, depending on the athlete and the institution for which they compete.  

Obviously, the experience for the high-profile college athlete — generally football and men’s and women’s basketball — is different from that of the less-watched sports, such as gymnastics, track, and golf.  But in all instances, the athletes represent their institution on and off the field, and they all have significant obligations that come along with their participation on their team. (Not all athletes have full or even partial scholarships, which can vary the obligations, though often all athletes have similar requirements.)

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