Will the linemen be joining the picket line?
The major-college-sports landscape has been shifting at warp speed over the past five years.
Proposals once considered unthinkable — name, image, likeness and effective free agency for athletes — have become ingrained in the business — yes, business — of big-time college sports.
Where it will go next is anybody’s guess.
But a recent decision by a National Labor Relations Board regional director is one sign that things just ain’t what they use to be and never will again.
Regional Director Laura Sacks issued a ruling allowing members of the Dartmouth University basketball team to vote on whether to create a union. In doing so, Sacks found what athletic administration officials call “student-athletes” to be university employees.
Something akin to this decision happened in 2015, that case involving Northwestern. But at the time, the NLRB rejected the decision by one of its regional directors.
But much has happened on the college-athletics scene since then that lends itself to semi-professionalization. If the context changes, so, too, could the NLRB’s decision about unionization, especially under an administration led by a president who calls himself the “most pro-union president” in U.S. history.
Dartmouth, naturally, is going to appeal the regional director’s decision. At the same time, news accounts indicate that hoopsters’ union election will proceed.
One ironic aspect of the Dartmouth case is that the school does not provide athletic scholarships, at least not officially, and that its sports programs operate at a loss.
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