3 former players take NU’s side
2 walk-ons say coaches helped them gain degrees
Two former Northwestern football players who started as walk-ons and had limited playing time testified Tuesday at a National Labor Relations Board hearing that they pursued demanding careers in engineering and pre-med.
They testified for the university in an effort to counter quarterback Kain Colter’s earlier testimony that he was unable to pursue his dream of becoming an orthopedic doctor because of the demanding football schedule.
In all, three former football players testified that their coaches, including head coach Pat Fitzgerald, encouraged and helped them to earn their degrees and that they had to learn to manage their time in order to play football and be successful in the classroom.
The hearing pits Colter and his player allies in the College Athletes Players Association (CAPA) who want to be ruled “employees” of the university — and thus eligible to form a union — against the university, which contends the players are students first and foremost. Though experts believe that Northwestern is the wrong school for the debate, because its football graduation rate is the highest in Division I, they say the implications could be enormous: If the football players were deemed to be employees, they could be eligible for workers’ compensation and disability benefits, including coverage of lifelong medical bills, and their scholarships would not be tax-exempt.
Hearing officer Joyce Hofstra on Tuesday declined to let lawyers for the football players ask one of the former players if he considered his playing and practicing time a full-time job — a key consideration in figuring whether the students are being paid for their services with athletic scholarships. But the football players’ lawyers did get the former players to agree that they would have suffered consequences if they had violated team rules — part of their argument that coaches can treat players unfairly and players have no representation in those cases.
The former football players saw less playing time than Colter, either because of injuries or their positions on the team.
The witnesses were Doug Bartels, an offensive lineman who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Northwestern and is now studying to become a doctor at Rush University’s medical college; John Henry Pace, an engineer who helps design future Mustangs at Ford Motor Co. who was a long snapper; and Patrick “Pat” Ward, a structural engineer at Boeing Co. in St. Louis who was a starting offensive tackle the last three years of his four-year football career from 20092012. Ward was the only one who had a scholarship during his entire time at Northwestern. The other two were walk-ons who earned scholarships.
All three had high gradepoint averages and said their coaches helped them hone lifelong leadership skills and overcome conflicts between playing football and taking the classes they needed.
Those comments, too, conflicted with Colter’s testimony on Feb. 18, in which Colter said his grueling schedule of 50-60 hours a week prevented him from taking certain courses and that his academic advisor counseled him to stay away from more demanding classes, such as chemistry, during his freshman year so that he could ease into his football role.
The five days of testimony on the issue will go to the regional director of the NLRB, who is expected to rule within four weeks whether football players are employees. The ultimate decision could go to the full NLRB board in Washington, D.C., and on to a court of appeals, depending on the future rulings.