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.
On June 14, 2021, I first spoke to Jordan Meachum. A former running back with Sacred Heart University and South Dakota State University, he was exactly the type of person I wanted in leadership as I was considering founding and organizing the College Football Players Association (CFBPA). We met through Twitter after he had a tweet go viral.
So, we arranged that June 14 call. Like many of the roughly 1,000 organizing phone calls I’ve done over the past three and a half years, this one went well. Jordan was into the idea of a member-driven players association and seemed like he would support the organization publicly when it was announced a month later.
Then, as so often happens in the grinding work of organizing, Jordan decided not to get involved at the outset. We needed to have a few more calls after that before he got on board. By the end of this 10-month process with this one former player, he was ready to become an Alumni Member of the CFBPA. On April 12, 2022, he was convinced that the institution could work in large part by harnessing the collective power of former college players like himself. Shortly after, he agreed to sit on the CFBPA Leadership Committee which would take the lead in organizing past, present and future college football players nationwide.
Last week, on November 8, 2023, Jordan visited the White House and met the President of the United States as a CFBPA representative of our Leadership Committee. That’s him, standing on President Biden’s left, in the photo at the top of this newsletter. He was there, along with several other former players, participating in a White House roundtable on organizing and supporting the rights of college football players. Here’s a picture of him participating in that roundtable:
There was a lot of great press coverage rounding up this event from different outlets including in Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, The Athletic, USA Today, Front Office Sports and On3. Jordan gives his perspective on the event in most of these pieces and so I urge you to check them out. From my vantage point, I thought this event mattered for three key reasons which I want to lay out here:
First, we were honored to be recognized by the White House as the only membership-driven labor organization in the country actively working to organize college football players. I particularly want to thank my White House contact Harin Contractor who is the Director of Labor Policy at the White House National Economic Council. I’ve been talking with Harin for the past three months as he was trying to bring this event to life and it was by his effort that it came to be.
Harin told me that they wanted to highlight the organizing work of the CFBPA in the same way the White House has been seeking to highlight labor organizing efforts happening outside traditional unions. Previous White House events highlighted the Amazon Labor Union, the Starbucks union organizers and those who worked to unionize minor league baseball players. We were honored to be thought of in the same light as these movements. As the story I told about Jordan at the outset suggests, there are no shortcuts to real organizing. Most of it takes place outside of the limelight and so it is very gratifying to see our years-long efforts bearing fruit at the White House.
Second, I thought the voices chosen for the event were unique and innovative. When talking “college sports reform” things often move into the realm of policy experts as opposed to players or former players. The traditional choice of policy experts can make sense, but then we’re often left wondering what experienced players have to say about important topics such as player health and revenue sharing.
So, I was heartened to see that besides Jordan, the roundtable included many former star players with big megaphones including Desmond Howard, Rod Gilmore and Ryan Clark. Keith Marshall was an outside-of-the-box pick who, as you’ll see from The Athletic report, brings a unique perspective to the issues. Finally, when thinking about health and safety concerns, I was very much interested to hear what Andrew Luck brought to the table given his early retirement from the game stemming from such concerns. The White House decided to not invite any current players given potential concerns about ongoing litigation, but the former players they did bring brought new insights where they are desperately needed.
Finally, and most importantly, it was fantastic to see the White House use its bully pulpit to advocate on behalf of college athletes. With the NCAA and college sports conferences spending countless amounts of behind-the-scenes money to disempower college athletes it was great to see the White House use its megaphone on behalf of the players. By taking a clear stand with the workers of college athletics, the White House has shown that it won’t support any legislation that comes out of Congress seeking to minimize the rights of those workers. This is a massive win and we were happy to be a part of it.