Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams at the University of Connecticut won national titles earlier this week (congratulations to them both), and nationwide attention has been drawn to the state of college athletics.
We have recently considered the substandard education many college athletes receive and the temporary right to unionize won by football players at Northwestern University.
Supporting the potential unionization of college athletes, we believe some conditions athletes find themselves in are deplorable. One basketball player at UConn recently told the Washington Post that he went to bed starving on some nights.
“I feel like a student athlete,” the Post quoted the Huskies’ star guard Shabazz Napier as saying. “Sometimes, there’s hungry nights where I’m not able to eat, but I still gotta play up to my capabilities. I don’t see myself as so much of an employee, but when you see your jersey getting sold, it may not have your last name on it, but when you see your jersey getting sold, to some credit, you feel like you want something in return.”
The NCAA is said to be considering adding some monetary compensation beyond the scholarships to cover living expenses and the cost of living on campus for some college athletes. But if student-athletes are considered university employees, as the football players at Northwestern want, some consequences may end up penalizing athletes. For example, cash payments to employees are taxable as income. In some cases, tuition reimbursement for employees is also taxable.
The University of Connecticut isn’t covered by the decision by the National Labor Relations Board in the Northwestern case, because UConn is a public university whereas Northwestern is a private institution. It’s nonetheless hard to accept that some universities make large amounts of money off of athletes, their likenesses, and other materials—not to mention the ticket sales the athletes bring in—when the athletes themselves are starving on some nights.
Putting athletes through periods of starvation by depriving them of funds is nothing new at NCAA members schools, though. In 2011, athletes on the UCLA football team were deprived of checks for not attending what they called voluntary workouts during finals week, the Seattle Times reported.
In that case, the coaching staff changed their minds and stopped withholding checks when they realized it was causing hardship for several players.
Should athletes be able to unionize in order to negotiate for better treatment and possibly additional financial compensation to help defray the cost of living, college supplies, and so on?
