Sunday, August 2, has given us a story which invites extensive discussion and reflection: Pac-12 athletes made a set of public demands in the Players Tribune, asking commissioner Larry Scott and the conference for various protections, rights, forms of recognition, and material benefits.
Many people will go line by line through the athletes’ list of demands — as though vetting a piece of proposed legislation — and assess the political possibilities for each demand.
Two of the players’ bigger demands, as directly quoted from the article:
“1. Distribute 50% of each sport’s total conference revenue evenly among athletes in their respective sports.
2. Six-year athletic scholarships to foster undergraduate and graduate degree completion.”
A lot of people are going to read those two demands and say, “Come on. That will never happen. Totally unreasonable.”
My first response: Correct. Those two things will never happen, at least not under present conditions.
My second response: Why does that make the players’ demands unreasonable?
It is a basic principle of negotiations to start with your strongest offer, the full amount or extent of what you want, so that in a negotiating process, making concessions can still leave you with a good chunk of what you initially asked for, which gives you a relatively satisfying result.
There is no point or purpose in making a limited set of incrementalist demands. Doing so merely limits the ceiling of what you want. Any subsequent compromises will take your already-small ask and erode it even more. Certainly in relationship to the 50-percent revenue share and the six-year scholarships, the Pac-12 athletes are appropriately asking for a lot, so that if they continue to push and protest, they might wind up with a 15-percent revenue share and a five-year scholarship.
Would that be a terrible result for them? I don’t think so.
There’s more to the story, however, than merely executing (or setting up) a negotiation strategy.
The Pac-12 athletes are negotiating in what can reasonably be viewed as a crisis situation for collegiate athletics. They know the football season in particular and the larger sports cycle (for 2020-2021) are in danger. They know conferences and schools are scrambling desperately to save a measure of revenue. They see that if there was ever a time to protest and demand more, this is it.
Are they wrong?
Ask yourself this question if you think the Pac-12 athletes are being unreasonable and/or full of themselves: If there was ever a season to sacrifice for the sake of protesting what one personally felt — as a football or basketball player — was a set of inadequate conditions, wouldn’t you pick this season, and this moment?
You can disagree with the choices these athletes are making. You can disagree with the terms they put forth. It’s a free country.
However, can we at least look at these athletes and say that while college football tries to ask them to play in a pandemic without hazard pay or guaranteed health care coverage, they at least have a legitimate point?
Can we at least do that?
The statement of demands is not just a negotiation tactic; it is a declaration that in this pandemic and economic crisis, athletes can’t just be pawns moved around as power brokers see fit. Athletes deserve a voice — and a place — at the table.
What they are bargaining for is — in a sense — secondary. The primary point is that they need to be able to bargain — and be heard — in the first place.