Should college football players form their own players’ unions? Should they be paid a salary for their services? (If so, how much?) And are student-athletes “employees” as a matter of law? We are reposting the entry below from our friends (and fellow “forty-something professors”) at Cheap Talk because it’s the most insightful post we’ve read thus far on the recent NLRB ruling in the Northwestern football litigation.
These are my thoughts and not those of Northwestern University, Northwestern Athletics, the Northwestern football team, nor of the Northwestern football players.
- As usual, the emergence of a unionization movement is the symptom of a problem rather than the cause. Also as usual, a union is likely to only make the problem worse.
- From a strategic point of view the NCAA has made a huge blunder in not making a few pre-emptive moves that would have removed all of the political momentum this movement might eventually have. Few in the general public are ever going to get behind the idea of paying college athletes. Many however will support the idea of giving college athletes long-term health insurance and guaranteeing scholarships to players who can no longer play due to injury. Eventually the NCAA will concede on at least those two dimensions. Waiting to be forced into it by a union…
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prior probability 
Here are some of Shabazz Napier’s thoughts
http://sandrarose.com/2014/04/uconn-player-some-nights-i-go-to-bed-starving/