This is a free online newsletter for Jason Stahl, Executive Director of the College Football Players Association (CFBPA). If you are a past, present or future college football player, I ask that you consider becoming a member of the CFBPA. For a short YouTube introduction on the CFBPA, click here. Members of the general public who would like to support the CFBPA can donate at this link or volunteer at this link.
About a month ago I, along with CFBPA Vice Presidents Justin Falcinelli and Maddie Salamone, went to Capitol Hill to speak with lawmakers about our proposal to give college athletes unique non-employee collective bargaining rights. We met with several offices on the House and Senate side, both Republican and Democrat. We’re happy to report that we received positive responses to our idea. Because of this, we now feel that it’s the right time for us to come forward with an introduction and outline of actual legislation in order to give lawmakers and other interested parties a clearer idea about how such an idea would work in practice. This week and next we’ll be finalizing this introduction and outline and sending it on to the various offices we met with on Capitol Hill. We’ll also be making these documents public for debate and discussion. As we enter into a new era of college athletics, we believe that collective bargaining with players needs to play an integral role in the future. Hopefully, our proposal can play a part in debating what such a world would look like in practice.
Additionally, in looking towards the future, the College Football Players Association is expanding our institutional footprint. This week, we are announcing the launch of two new partner organizations which will work closely with the CFBPA as we work to be in service to past, present and future college football players. We believe that the combination of these three organizations will be the foundation from which we can continue the work of implementing our seven-point Platform for Change. So, today, I wanted to give a rundown of the three institutions and how they will build on the work of each other.
First, the heart of what we’re doing is the CFBPA itself. Founded nearly three years ago, the CFBPA is a 501(c)(7) nonprofit fraternal social club. It is the organizing vehicle for all we do and as it seeks to bring together past, present and future college football players in a strong membership organization. Given that current college football players are young, and given that they remain in their workplaces for such a short period of time, we have always believed that former players could provide a solid foundation from which to organize current players. Additionally, former players have stories that we believe current players need to hear — stories which will better help them prepare for the future. The most powerful way this can happen is offline. For instance, we’ve hosted Super Bowl parties and dinners which have connected former players to current players in new ways. In these social settings, we have seen the power of building new forms of community which have the potential to be transformative. Additionally, over the coming months, we hope to ramp up our online activities which showcase our membership in new ways. Towards this end, we’ve started a new podcast series called “Alumni Member of the Month” which seeks to highlight the unique stories of our Alumni Members. First up in these series is former Stanford football player and CFBPA Alumni Member Mike Dotterer.
Our main institution also seeks to create a sustainable grass-roots fundraising base for our movement. Any former college football player can become an Alumni Member for $50 a year and any former player can become a Lifetime Member to support our movement in a more significant way with dues given once for the remainder of their lifetime. I am happy to report that two members of our Alumni Member Leadership Committee have chosen to move from the Alumni Member category to the Lifetime Member Category. With two very generous gifts, Tremayne Anchrum and Ed Garrett thus become our very first two lifetime members. They are now honored on a special section of our website that we hope will only continue to grow. The gifts of our Lifetime Members; our Alumni Member base; as well as our traditional fundraising efforts will continue to ensure that our High School Members and Current Player Members will always pay $0 in dues.
Outside of our main player-centric institution, the CFBPA, we’ve now developed two new institutions to guide our advocacy work. Thus, our second institutional pillar is The Institute for College Football Research and Education (ICFRE). ICFRE is our new 501(c)(3) non-profit research and education arm. In the coming year, we will use ICFRE to launch new research projects which we will then deploy to educate our members and prospective members about the realities of their industry. Many of these projects will seek to marshal the unique research of the many fantastic academics on our Board of Advisors. We are looking to unveil our first project this calendar year. Additionally, the ICFRE now gives us a new vehicle to solicit donations from sympathetic individuals and institutions beyond our main player network. If you are a member of the general public who would like to support this new institution, your donation is completely tax-deductible. You can donate at our website or please reach out if you are interested in giving a larger gift.
Finally, we have developed a third institutional pillar: CFBPA Action. CFBPA Action is a nonprofit which we have recently put in the paperwork with the IRS to operate as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Given that our other institutions have limitations on political lobbying, we needed this new institution to do the political work we’ll be doing in the future. Additionally, as we organize for a future which may include current football players engaging in some form of non-employee collective bargaining, we’ll be running such activities through CFBPA Action. Finally, should college athletes at some point on the horizon be deemed employees with formal collective bargaining rights, at that point we’ll work to transition this institution into a formal labor organization which can do that work. I would like to thank Tom Dieters of Charitable Gift America for providing the founding donation for CFBPA Action. Tom has been active in providing hundreds of collegiate men and women athletes with charitable NIL opportunities, and he is passionate in his belief that collective bargaining is the new frontier in college athletics. Tom agrees with us at the CFBPA that only collective bargaining with independent players associations can give college athletes the necessary health and safety protections that they so desperately need. Only independent players can then enforce these health and safety protections. We look forward to taking up this fight in the coming months and years.