“Schooled,” and the NCAA “Student-Athlete” Designation

A bit overshadowed by the weather has been the efforts of the Northwestern University football team to unionize.

Yes, unionize, in a city known for its unions, corrupt and straight. You may recall the Chicago Teachers Union, and its continuing efforts to fight back against pension cuts so the state of Illinois can plug its ridiculous deficit. You may also remember the Wisconsin teachers strike. Often unions are all painted with the same brush: corrupt, self-serving and amoral. Few people understand what it’s like to be a teacher today, though. Few people realize that teachers no longer just teach reading, writing and arithmetic. Often, they act as parents, providing structure and discipline because they are human and they want their students to succeed.

So reading about Northwestern football wanting to unionize initially made me gawk. Really? C’mon. You’re getting a free ride, a free education at one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions. Unionize? Demand better treatment? You get a freed ride. Tuition. Room and board. Accolades. Popularity. Fame. What’s not to like? And besides, you chose to take the free ride in exchange for football. You chose to take the free ride at this particular institution. Why complain? Quit the team and be the like the rest of us: pay your own way.

Then I watched “Schooled: The Price of College Sports”, and better understood why Northwestern football wants to unionize. The only thing that is different between college sports and the working world is a phrase: “student-athlete.”

The documentary walks us through the history and founding of the NCAA, the concept of the “student-athlete” and being an amateur. I learned a fair amount, which offered a perspective I hadn’t considered. Again, I gawked when I first read that Northwestern football players wanted to unionize. As an outsider, college athletes look like they’ve got it made.

Through interviews with as many people on both sides of the aisle as possible (lot of universities, as well as the NCAA declined to participate), the phrase “student-athlete” is held up as the reason why college athletes are not compensated. They are students first, athletes second.

Read that again.

Students first, athletes second.

That brings to mind a lecture hall or classroom, a professor up at the front lecturing or engaging the students in a discussion. The traditional trappings of college life. The thing the rest of us do first: go to class.

Except that is not the case for the “student-athlete.” They have to get a workout in first. A three-hour workout, starting at 5am. Then go to class. Then game meetings before another workout.

It seems as if the proper phrase is “athlete-student.” Their sports commitments come before academic commitments. The contracts they sign for the “free ride” even make that clear!

There are a number of examples of this throughout the film. There are also examples of “student-athletes” getting caught in a labyrinth of NCAA regulations. A UNC football player who came from a college prep school, and was thus accustomed to academic rigor and understood what was expected, was found to be guilty of academic cheating because he had a tutor check a term paper for grammar. Honestly. My impression was that an NCAA staffer merely saw the phrase “violation” and answered “yes” without reading the rest of the email that provided context.

Makes me think of a story I was told about a New York public school whose administration decided its teachers should no longer teach students grammar. Most of the teachers stopped teaching grammar without thinking through what that means, or its repercussions. A small group of teachers did, though, and worked out a system to continue teaching their kids grammar. Northwestern football now strikes me as attempting the same thing.

The big take away from the documentary was student rights, and giving “student-athletes” a seat at the table. That phrase, though, “student-athlete,” presents a mental hurdle yet to be overcome. Strikes me as a matter of time, though. Even Walter Byers, the first executive director of the NCAA, believed the “student-athlete” to be short-lived. You hear him, in voice over, near the end of the film, giving a speech where he says as much. Even he saw the fallacy, but that remains lost on the current leaders of the NCAA.

One of the things pointed out is the non-profit status of the NCAA, and ridiculous amount of money it rakes in from football and basketball. Granted, the focus was on Division I schools, March Madness and the Bowl Championship Series. However, the NCAA governs all collegiate athletics, which drew comparisons to a cartel. Surprisingly, baseball wasn’t mentioned as a real-world example of a cartel. The documentary used the standard: the oil industry.

Baseball seems more appropriate, however, and if the point of college athletics is to bring in money and groom, so to speak, future professional athletes, then why not establish the equivalent to the Major League Baseball farm system?

I find myself agreeing, though, that there won’t be a solution until the students who participate in college athletics have a seat at the table.

For now, though, we’ll all just have to keep an eye on the O’Bannon law suit.