Moves afoot would give student-athletes a voice
Plans spurred by union efforts at Northwestern
When a handful of Northwestern football players expressed their desire to unionize in January, they said a lack of salary wasn’t part of their reasoning.
They wanted to be heard, not paid.
“Student-athletes don’t have a voice; they don’t have a seat at the table,” said Kain Colter, a former Wildcats quarterback who led the unionization effort. “The current model resembles a dictatorship, with the NCAA placing these rules and regulations on these students without their input or without their negotiations.”
Each conference in the NCAA’s three divisions has one representative on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, which was created in 1989, but the more than 460,000 total athletes don’t have voting privileges on legislation.
That soon could change.
Today is the annual meeting of the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors, and those leaders will debate a new proposed governance model for Division I that suggests giving student-athletes a greater voice in NCAA policy making.
The Division I Board of Directors, made up of 18 university presidents, is expected to vote in August on the governance proposal, which calls for an athlete with a voting privilege to be added to the board.
The proposed restructuring also suggests the creation of another governance group called the Council, to be made up of 34 members, with two spots and voting rights going to athletes.
“What can it hurt to have an athlete’s voice in there?” said Doug Tima of Dublin, who served three years on the national SAAC, two as vicechair, as an Otterbein football player from 2004-07.
The original proposed governance model didn’t include student representation when it was unveiled at the NCAA convention in January. Members of SAAC in attendance voiced their disapproval with being left out.
“Sometimes people are scared to think that an athlete has a vote,” said Tima, who’s now a teacher and assistant football coach at Dublin Scioto. “We’re talking about two (athletes). Two people don’t win an election. The idea, though, is that you’re giving an avenue for athletes to be heard.”
The addition of athletes to the Division I governance model occurred after Northwestern’s players were granted the right to unionize by the National Labor Relations Board’s regional office in Chicago on March 26. The university has appealed the ruling, which applies only to private schools.
Ohio State, a public institution, assigns associate athletic directors to every sport to act as a conduit with the school’s 1,000-plus athletes, and like most universities, OSU has a formal committee for athletic representation.
“We think we’ve always provided our studentathletes with a voice, and we’ve done so proactively instead of just waiting for them to come in and complain about something,” said Miechelle Willis, OSU’s executive associate athletic director.
The Student-Athlete Advisory Board is composed of representatives from each of Ohio State’s 36 varsity sports and meets once a month.
“Our main goal was to promote communication between the studentathlete population and the athletic department to make sure all of our needs are being met,” said Danica Wu, a soccer player who served four years on the board before graduating last month.
Wu spent the past two years as a member of SAAB’s executive committee. As chair, she had a spot on OSU’s Athletic Council and its various committees. She also served as the school’s representative to the Big Ten Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.
Tima said the turnover of athletes makes it difficult for them, especially underclassmen, to be aware that they have a campus committee, as well as the national SAAC for representation.
“It all really depends on the institution,” Tima said. “How involved is your school? At some schools, it’s almost like their athletes have a student senate. They have monthly meetings and 300 kids show up. At other schools, it’s three kids.”
Tima suggested that college athletes would be helped if they had advocates to turn to who aren’t affiliated with their school.
Bill Becker of Dublin agreed. His daughter, Kelly, was hospitalized with rhabdomyolysis in 2012 following an Ohio State women’s lacrosse team workout. The family pushed in vain for OSU to publish a public report on the incident.
“If you want to give student-athletes a voice, give them someone they can confidentially complain to who can then investigate, with the teeth behind it to sanction the universities,” Bill Becker said.
Becker suggested the need for a “confidential ombudsperson for student-athletes” in two letters he sent to NCAA president Mark Emmert in March and to NCAA chief medical officer Dr. Brian Hainline in November.
“We’ve heard nothing from either of them,” Becker said.
Everyone else is waiting on a ruling by the national NLRB regarding Northwestern.
“If this unionization effort prevails, then student-athletes or their union will be in better position to have open discussions with their institutions,” said Alabama attorney Don Jackson, who has represented numerous college athletes in litigation matters against the NCAA. “Since they currently have no collective voice in college sports, it effectively means that they have no voice at all.
“When you’re a scholarship athlete at an NCAA member institution, even if you’re a star athlete, if you buck the system or challenge the system, you’re likely to suffer the wrath of your institution and the NCAA.”