The Three Biggest Threats to Continued College Athlete Empowerment
What Could Possibly Stop the Momentum of the Last Five Years?
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.
Five years ago, during the depths of the COVID-19 summer of 2020, college football players kicked off a movement for their increased empowerment which has stretched forward to this very day. During that summer, when everyone on college campuses was being told to stay home and work and study remotely, college football players were instead being told to return to campuses and get back to work. In this moment, college football players, and everyone else, came to realize that they were and are the real essential workers of college athletics. Without college football players willingness to risk life and limb on the field, the whole system would crumble to the ground.
Like so many other workers during that COVID summer who realized the same thing about their own positions, such a realization led to new types of organizing. For college football players, it led to a nationwide movement and a list of collective demands. Because of their collective action, administrators ceded to their first four demands. The season was played but with health and safety protections — at least around the spread of the virus. Also, for those who wanted to opt-out of the season, they could do so and not lose a year of eligibility. The final demand of the players was the creation of a College Football Players Association to collectively represent them — a demand which we are trying to make good on.
This movement, and the victories gained by players, kicked off the movement of player empowerment which we have been living through over the past five years. Those wins have taken on two forms. First, players have won a series of antitrust victories in court—first in the Alston case in 2021 and then in a series of recent antitrust cases which I just discussed at this newsletter. Second, as a result of newly enacted state laws beginning in the summer of 2021, players have been able to monetize their name-image-and-likeness rights for the first time. Both of these dynamics resulted in players now sharing, in some measure, the wealth which their labor generates for their schools.
At the College Football Players Association, we believe that the obvious next step towards continued college athlete empowerment is collective bargaining. College football players should have a real seat at the table to negotiate their compensation as well as the collective protections of a collective bargaining agreement. College football is the second most popular professional sport in the country behind NFL football and so the players need to be treated with the respect that such popularity deserves. Collective bargaining is the way to make this happen.
However, there now appears to be three emerging threats towards this next step of athlete empowerment. I want to outline the three today so players and player advocates have clarity on what is happening and why collective bargaining, and collective player action, is so desperately needed.
Threat #1: Some college sports administrators are trying to regain power they’ve lost over the last five years. This attempt to recover lost power is happening at some schools but it is also happening at the higher levels of college sports administration in the NCAA and conferences. At the school level, we’re now seeing revenue sharing agreements being drafted between individual players and schools which are heavily weighted to give the school enormous power. For instance, at Florida State, egregious terms include stopping revenue sharing payments if a player becomes injured.
At the higher administrative levels, new entities like the College Sports Commission (CSC) — empowered by the recent antitrust case settlement — seem to be denying external NIL deals associated with so-called “booster collectives.” Such entities have been the primary source of college football player income over the last three years and such an attempt to unilaterally curtail their activities would greatly decrease player income. Thankfully, plaintiffs attorneys in the class action lawsuits are fighting back against these actions by the CSC but it remains to be seen if they are successful.
Threat #2: Anti-player legislation making its way through Congress. With both houses of Congress now controlled by Republicans, the NCAA and the major “Power Four” conferences have been more successful in their lobbying for legislation which disempowers players. While in other areas of American life, Republicans are a reliable opponent of university administrators, when it comes to college sports, this has unfortunately not been the case.
As such, there is now an imminent threat to players in the form of the so-called “SCORE Act” making its way through the House of Representatives. This legislation, should it make its way through both houses of Congress and be signed into law by President Trump, would severely weaken athlete collective bargaining rights. Additionally, the legislation would give the NCAA immunity from antitrust law and allow it to go back to making rules without fear of having those rules overturned by the courts.
As the five major professional sports unions have said, such an antitrust exemption is very rare in American life. Only two industries have exemptions and one of those is partial. To grant another exemption to the NCAA — despite the fact that they have been a serial violator of antitrust law — would be ludicrous. But this is exactly what the SCORE Act does and why we at the CFBPA are so vehemently opposed to it.
Threat #3: Anti-player actions by the Executive Branch. For around four months now, President Trump has made noises about getting directly involved in debates over college athletics. Some of these ideas, such as a presidential commission convened to find solutions to the future sustainability of college athletics, have potential if real player voices are included. However, more recently, there has been talk that the Trump administration will put forward an Executive Order which, like the SCORE Act, largely seeks to advance the interests of the NCAA and its lobbyists in Washington. This is not only unhelpful but once again an odd move for an administration which, outside college sports, has been attacking higher education more generally on a variety of fronts. Moreover, should Trump eventually sign the SCORE Act into law he should expect any player support for his administration to evaporate.
In the end, the forces that are seeking to stop the movement towards increased college athlete empowerment are counting on those same athletes not being organized to stop them. Only an organized movement of college athletes — and particularly college football players — can push back against administrators and government officials seeking to curtail their power. If you are a past, present or future college football player who wants to become part of this movement, I urge you to become a member of the CFBPA today.