Northwestern University Football Team Unionizes

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > The Football Funhouse > Northwestern University Football Team Unionizes

Basil Hayden: Oct 9, 2012; 1921!

DOOP posted:

I read some article that said a Colorado judge in the 50's ruled that "athletes" should be treated like "employees" when it comes to pay and benefits and such. The NCAA promptly created the "student-athlete" label to get around the ruling.

Waiting for a TFF lawyer to check in on on this issue

This was in the Taylor Branch article from a couple years back, and originally comes from Walter Byers' Unsportsmanlike Conduct. The Colorado cases (one where a player not on grant-in-aid was injured during spring practice at Denver and successfully sued for worker's compensation, and one about a year later where a player on grant-in-aid died on the field and his wife unsuccessfully sued Fort Lewis A&M for workers' compensation) actually came after the definition of the term, which dates back to the early 1950s:

Walter Byers posted:

... It was then that they came face to face with a serious, external threat that prompted most of the colleges to unite and insist with one voice that, grant-in-aid or not, college sports still were only for "amateurs." That thread was the dreaded notion that NCAA athletes could be identified as employees by state industrial commissions and the courts. We crafted the term student-athlete, and soon it was embedded in all NCAA rules and interpretations as a mandated substitute for such words as players and athletes. We told college publicists to speak of "college teams," not football or basketball "clubs," a word common to the pros.
... I was shocked that outsiders could believe that young men on grants-in-aid playing college sports should be classified as workers. The argument, however, was compelling. In a nutshell: the performance of football and basketball players frequently paid the salaries and workmen's compensation expenses of stadium employees, field house ticket takers, and restroom attendants, but the players themselves were not covered. Even today, the university's player insurance covers medical expenses for athletes, but its workmen's compensation plan provides no coverage for disabling injuries they may suffer.
... College officials found that the term employee was being interpreted by state officials applying state laws in the interest of the people, not college faculty representatives and athletics directors interpreting college rules in the interests of the college.

Basil Hayden fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jan 29, 2014

# ¿ Jan 29, 2014 00:28

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 09:35

Basil Hayden: Oct 9, 2012; 1921!

Fenrir posted:

Well, in a way it IS the NCAA's fault due to the collusion with the NFL that requires athletes to go through college football to go pro. Football players are more or less being forced through an unpaid farm system.

It's also unique to football - you can join the NBA or MLB right out of high school unless I'm mistaken.

For the last decade or so there's been an effective requirement to attend college for a single year for the NBA, because you have to be both 19 and a year removed from high school graduation (or at least the graduation of the class you would have been in). Surprisingly, you only had about a decade of NBA players coming right out of high school anyway, because prior to KG in 1995 only three players had ever done it.

e: beaten on that one

ROSS MY SALAD posted:

You need a year of college basketball or in europe or the D-League to get into the NBA. Lebron was the last big profile High School to NBA player.

Baseball and hockey? Knock yourselves out, kids

For MLB you just have to graduate high school, but if you choose to go to a four-year college you have to play three years or until you turn 21 (which I always thought was a fascinating requirement). And yeah the NHL requirement is "be at least 18 and, if North American, under 20", more or less.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2014 16:52

Basil Hayden: Oct 9, 2012; 1921!

Deteriorata posted:

Basically, there were no standard eligibility rules of any kind. It was entirely up to individual schools and negotiation between schools when they played. So every team was responsible for doing its own detective work on every player on every team they played.

Case in point: one-time SWC member Phillips University of Enid, OK. Former Michigan All-American halfback John Maulbetsch headed out west following his playing career to coach at the obscure college starting in 1917. Two years later, the Haymakers went 10-0-1, including a win in Austin over a Texas team that didn't lose a game the season before. Apparently, this was good enough for an invitation to the conference. In 1920, however, the team was required to follow SWC eligibility requirements (a significant step up from the school's previous lack of eligibility requirements, as far as I understand) and consequently failed to score a single point in conference play before quietly returning to independent status. Maulbetsch was hired away by Oklahoma A&M and within fifteen years the school no longer even fielded a football team; they went bankrupt in 1998 and are today largely a historical footnote.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2014 19:35

Basil Hayden: Oct 9, 2012; 1921!

Trin Tragula posted:

That's probably the closest we're going to get to the old urban legend of the geographical feature called in the local language something like "Your Finger, You Idiot", isn't it?

... isn't that a Discworld joke? :v:

Apparently there's a good chance the Yucat�n's modern name means something along the lines of "I don't understand" though.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2014 15:38

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Sports Argument Stadium > The Football Funhouse > Northwestern University Football Team Unionizes