Northwestern Athletes Attempt to Unionize
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Kain Colter (left) is leading the charge for Northwestern's student-athletes. (Kain Colter/Twitter)
The movement is being spearheaded by former UCLA linebacker Ramogi Huma, president of the National College Players Association (NCPA), and Kain Colter, who quarterbacked the Wildcats this past season. The nascent stages of their collaboration came on September 21st, when Colter and other players from Northwestern, Georgia and Georgia Tech scrawled #APU – short for “All Players United” – on parts of their uniform as a means of protesting what they perceive to be unfair conditions imposed upon them by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA. The gesture was endorsed by Huma, and eventually spread to include athletes across five separate conferences.
According to its website, the NCPA’s mission is “to provide the means for college athletes to voice their concerns and change NCAA rules.” It also lists 11 specific goals for reform, ranging from raising scholarship amounts, minimizing risk of brain and head trauma, establishing uniform safety guidelines and eliminating restrictions on outside commercial ventures. The latter is a sticking point in another prominent NCAA legal matter – the partial class-action lawsuit by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon, which seeks to pay college athletes a portion of the profits generated from television contracts, ticket sales, video game sales and other revenue streams.
Together, the moves are a monumental step towards challenging and perhaps amending the NCAA’s long-held statutes on “amateur status,” which prohibits athletes from accepting any compensation for playing their sport beyond a college scholarship and stipend, but also goes so far as to grant the NCAA rights to use their image in perpetuity and forbids players volunteering their name or likeness to an outside party while participating in college athletics. The latter stipulation came under national scrutiny recently via Joel Bauman, a wrestler at the University of Minnesota who lost his eligibility by recording a rap song under his own name and releasing it on iTunes. Former USC basketball player Renaldo Woolridge maintained a rap career during his playing a career as a Trojan, even recording a song used by USC’s athletic department, but was only able to do so under the pseudonym 'Swiperboy'.
Northwestern’s attempt to unionize marks the most organized stand by current NCAA athletes yet. According to Farrey, Huma met with Colter and other Northwestern players last weekend to formalize their course of action, then subsequently filed a petition on their behalf to a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago.
“Right now the NCAA is like a dictatorship,” Colter told ESPN. “No one represents us in negotiations. The only way things are going to change is if players have a union."
Both the NCAA and Northwestern have released statements in response arguing that students are not university employees, and are therefore not eligible to unionize.
"Northwestern believes that our student-athletes are not employees and collective bargaining is therefore not the appropriate method to address these concerns," said Jim Phillips, Northwestern vice president of athletics and recreation. "However, we agree that the health and academic issues being raised by our student-athletes and others are important ones that deserve further consideration."
