There was a mixture of confusion, anger, and overwhelming sadness swirling in the college football universe as we woke up on this Monday morning preparing for the worst. Last night, the thoughts in everyones mind revolved around a matter of when, not if, the college football season would be officially cancelled.
Over the past few days, as we have neared the official cancellation of Big Ten football this fall, athletes from major conferences have joined together for a Twitter takeover, similar to the MLB and NFL player blitz that occurred recently during their battle over playing a season. Their message on Twitter is simple: We want to play. Clemson’s star QB Trevor Lawrence, who ironically would be a top pick in the draft with or without playing this season, was among those leading the charge as were many Badgers.
#WeWantToPlay pic.twitter.com/jvQhE7noGB
— Trevor Lawrence (@Trevorlawrencee) August 10, 2020
This piece is not about whether or not they should play, but instead a part of the #WeWantToPlay message that would shift college football in the direction of the athletes.
One piece of the statements released on Twitter by many of college football’s biggest stars sticks out above the rest: “Use our voice to establish open communication and trust between players and officials; ultimately create a college football players association.”
That sentence strikes fear in every single collegiate athletic department, and most notably within the heart of the NCAA. According to statista.com, NCAA revenue in 2019 was over 867 million dollars. As we know, not a penny of that makes its way back to players pockets. The most absurd part of it is not the fact that players do not receive paychecks, but that players cannot profit on their own success and hard work while in college by using their name and likeness.
The lack of player representation has taken a new turn on a road that has never been traveled by college football or by the nation as a whole. Now, the players have had no say in the conditions with which college football will be played this fall, or if in fact they can drive towards a safe way to play with medical professionals sitting in the front seat instead of outright cancellation.
There is a good that could outweigh the bad, however, within the mess that is college football at the moment. That good is that the organizing of college players — something that has been long overdue — looks to be speeding up.
While sitting in a Madison, Wisconsin classroom this past winter alongside twenty other seniors, I had the privilege of learning from a legendary UW graduate, former MLB commissioner Bud Selig. It was in that setting with the commissioner’s insight, that I first learned the history of player unions in professional sports, which largely started with the MLB and Marvin Miller, an economist and labor leader who was the first executive director of the players union that in professional baseball.
With Miller and the MLBPA, baseball and the sporting landscape changed forever. Players had previously been held to their clubs through the reserve clause. Free agency? A completely foreign concept in 1960. Wages and benefits were extremely low, and there was no platform for the players to voice their concerns over their conditions at work.
The 1968 MLB collective bargaining agreement, organized by Miller and the new players union, raised baseball’s minimum salary from $6,000 to $10,000, but in reality changed the way trillions of dollars in professional sports revenue were handled from then on.
College athletics is not professional sports, as the NCAA tirelessly tries to remind us on a daily basis. Despite that fact, it sure feels as though colleges operate as one of the more cutthroat businesses in America, with football providing needed revenue to keep athletic departments running. The fact is that the hard work of the athletes is what keeps those departments running, and no, they are not normal students as much as the “optics” need them to be. They are essentially working a physical, full-time job — while going to class — where they have no say in massive decisions surrounding that workplace.
The pandemic could be the catalyst for representation. Power Five players now are focusing their energy on organizing for their rights as employees in a billion dollar business, instead of getting ready for the season to start as normal. We know that college athletics is going to change after all of this is over, and the silver lining of this unprecedented disaster may be that those changes come with players demanding their voices to be heard. A short-term disaster could lead to a long-term movement that finally puts power into the hands of the players.