Northwestern football players win right to unionize

[Kaneyoufeelit]

Northwestern's DePietro to vote no on union - LancasterOnline: Sports

“Initially, I was on board,’’ DePietro said by telephone from Evanston, Ill. Wednesday night. “I’m in favor of some changes in the NCAA, and it seemed like this would be a good way to go about it.’’

DePietro said weeks of meetings and discussions swayed him and, he believes, the majority of his teammates.

“Once I really started to think about the reality of a union,’’ DePietro said, “I realized it wasn’t the unions against the NCAA. It was the union against Northwestern, and I don’t think we need any changes at Northwestern. We get everything we need and everything we want.’’

. . . .

“I think we’re compensated enough,’’ he said. “I think we have enough things already in place, and (head coach Pat Fitzgerald) has been a huge advocate for student athletes.’’

DePietro said he first heard of the possibility of unionizing at a team meeting when the players returned from holiday break in January.

Since then there are have a number of players-only meetings, some of which because heated.

“They were also really educational,’’ DePietro said. “I feel like we haven’t exhausted all our other options for changing things short of a union, and there’s a chance that it could be a divider within the team, and between the team and the coaches.

“Some (of my teammates) are still very firm yes votes, but overall, my gut tells me it’ll go no.’’

 

[Kaneyoufeelit]

Worth the time to read

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23LateNightLongform&src=hash">#LateNightLongform</a> <a href="http://t.co/oSdayr3QsF">http://t.co/oSdayr3QsF</a> <a href="http://t.co/EMzjhiK0RA">pic.twitter.com/EMzjhiK0RA</a></p>— SB Nation (@SBNation) <a href="https://twitter.com/SBNation/statuses/459226099659309056">April 24, 2014</a></blockquote>
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[PANDFAN]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>A high-placed <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Northwestern&src=hash">#Northwestern</a> source believes the union receives in the range of 60 'No' votes out of 75 players.</p>— Chris Emma (@CEmmaScout) <a href="https://twitter.com/CEmmaScout/statuses/459716980283412480">April 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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[GoIrish41]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>A high-placed <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Northwestern&src=hash">#Northwestern</a> source believes the union receives in the range of 60 'No' votes out of 75 players.</p>— Chris Emma (@CEmmaScout) <a href="https://twitter.com/CEmmaScout/statuses/459716980283412480">April 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Wow, that is interesting.

 

[ndfi78]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>A high-placed <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Northwestern&src=hash">#Northwestern</a> source believes the union receives in the range of 60 'No' votes out of 75 players.</p>— Chris Emma (@CEmmaScout) <a href="https://twitter.com/CEmmaScout/statuses/459716980283412480">April 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Wow, that is interesting.

Good though, very good.

 

[wizards8507]

Ole Miss QB Says Players Go To Bed Hungry

What kind of shitty dining plan do they have at Ole Miss that doesn't include dinner?

 

[WakeUpEchoes]

What's funny is now some schools are asking for caps on meal plans because it is too costly.

 

[Booslum31]

Ole Miss QB Says Players Go To Bed Hungry

What kind of shitty dining plan do they have at Ole Miss that doesn't include dinner?

Just like they can't find the classroom...the dining hall eludes them as well.

 

[wizards8507]

I learned today that players from lower-income families are collecting federal Pell Grants in addition to their scholarships at a clip of about $5,000 per year.

 

[Irish Insanity]

Around these parts, students with little or no income were applying for, and receiving, welfare and good stamps. Some also received housing allowance. There was an ESPN story on TV not to long ago about athletes living in the same housing complex as single mothers and the issues it was causing.

 

[AKRowdy]

Just wondering why can't they just take out a loan?

 

[yankeeND]

Stanford's Shaw offers strong words of caution on possible NCAA changes | FOX Sports

Great article here with David Shaw's thoughts on revamping the NCAA in lieu of the right to unionize. It is pretty much where I stand on the issue, as I think the schools should make day to day life easier, but not just hand over paychecks to kids that are supposed to be earning degrees.

 

[wizards8507]

NLRB says Northwestern players cannot unionize

 

[koonja]

NLRB says Northwestern players cannot unionize

Does this mean paying players just got pushed back x-amount of years? I hope so.

 

[Cali_domer]

Does this mean paying players just got pushed back x-amount of years? I hope so.

Stipends will stay...

This is a narrow ruling and I'm sure it will be tested again. Good news though, Illinois is a pretty Union friendly state.

 

[GoldenDome]

Forget the money, where is the healthcare for future injuries and head problems? At the very least these universities should set up something for kids. Players need some sort of assurance for future problems.

 

[Emcee77]

Fascinating stuff from Father Jenkins on the recent NCAA amateurism/seimprofessionalism controversies:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/s...rm-amid-shifts-in-college-athletics.html?_r=0

Love this guy.

 

[IrishLax]

For those that had forgotten how much the writers at Deadspin ahte ND:

If it’s been too long since the last time you got teeth-achingly angry over some dipshit’s explanation for why college football players shouldn’t be paid, head on over to The New York Times and read Dan Barry’s conversation with Notre Dame’s president, Rev. John I. Jenkins.

Jenkins takes Barry on a scenic walk around the Notre Dame campus, during which he opines, in gentle, fatherly fashion, on the state of collegiate athletics. Jenkins goes to great lengths to present himself as a reasonable man—a worldly man, a scholar, well aware of college football’s inequities—but also one who sees himself, and his university, as above trifling issues like billion-dollar revenue streams. This leads him to say things like this, presumably with a straight face:

The president rejects the notion that Notre Dame is morally obliged to share its football revenue with those playing the game. “I don’t think there’s a compulsion or some demand of justice that we do it,” he says.

His position — his North Star, he calls it — may be dismissed by some as trite, even convenient, but here it is: Notre Dame is an educational institution, and athletics, while diverting and instructive in its own right, is meant to serve the educational purpose.
And, unbelievably, this:

He believes that the drama and popularity of college athletics are rooted in the fact that the student-athletes are amateurs. “If they make mistakes, you know, it’s not like they’re professionals,” he says.

But if a pay-to-play dynamic is applied to college sports, he suggests, something is lost. “If you go that semipro route, we’ll see,” he says. “But I’m just not sure that we’ll not end up just a second-tier, uninteresting pro league.”

Father Jenkins says that he could see two separate collegiate athletic associations — one following the semiprofessional model, the other dedicated to preserving what he calls “the essential educational character of college athletics.” In belonging to the latter, he says, Notre Dame would be just fine, financially and otherwise.

The trouble with Jenkins is that it’s hard to tell if he’s just bullshitting, or if he really does believe a) that people watch and pump money into college sports because they are charmed by the noble ideal of amateurism and b) that getting paid fairly for the work you do is morally corrupting. If you got an SEC school’s president drunk enough, he’d probably morph into Boss Hogg and tell you that he just really likes being rich and he’s going to keep the scam running until he has to cut the kids in on it, at which point he’ll gladly do so. The Times piece, though, leaves you with the sense that Jenkins is a true believer in the idea that young people need to have the type and amount of compensation they can get for certain kinds of work set by a self-interested cartel.

Here’s a good way for Jenkins to prove his honesty: he can go right ahead and enact all of the hypotheticals he laid out to the Times. If he truly believes that football should not take precedence over education, that the university would be just fine without its TV contract and Under Armor sponsorship, and that money only cheapens college football, he can go right ahead and opt out of the machine. Nobody is stopping him from turning Notre Dame football into a club sport that doesn’t produce millions of dollars in revenue but does improve the educational experience of students who just want to get some physical activity while they learn about Aquinas and physics. If he doesn’t, it must be either because he doesn’t really want to, or he’s afraid to act on his convictions. Who can tell which it is?

Talk about an absurd overreaction.

 

[Luckylucci]

For those that had forgotten how much the writers at Deadspin ahte ND:


Talk about an absurd overreaction.

No doubt, they start the article by calling Father Jenkins a dipshit.

 

[Emcee77]

For those that had forgotten how much the writers at Deadspin ahte ND:


Talk about an absurd overreaction.

I just don't think that Deadspin's reaction is fair. I don't doubt that Jenkins is dead serious about ND dropping big-time football if it becomes true semiprofessional football. That's what I like about him.

The University of Chicago, a former Big 10 school, dropped big-time college football decades ago due to concern that it was getting in the way of the players' education rather than helping it, and we should definitely follow suit if it comes to that. We aren't there yet ... right now, our players are able to graduate with marketable degrees, so even if you think (as I do) that the time/energy commitment required to play football at a big-time school like ND is a little bit out of proportion with any educational benefit playing big-time football may provide, the program is still justifiable as long as players come in knowing what the deal is (work really, really hard for 4 years, play big-time football, get a great degree).

But if that calculus changes -- drop that shit.