So Your Football Team May or May Not Have Theoretically Unionized

In April, Northwestern football players voted on unionization.  The results, however, won't be known for awhile.  They will be revealed after the federal NLRB rules on the NCAA's appeal to overturn the landmark decision that allowed Northwestern athletes to be classified as university employees.  That means it will be several months before the union forms or we see an excessive celebration from Mark Emmert.

A classless display by Emmert.  In my day, NCAA presidents would simply hand their legal briefs 
to their legal team and act like they've continued the baffling marriage of a mutli-billion dollar 
minor-league sports apparatus to a university system before

What does this mean for Northwestern moving forward?

Disclaimer: BYCTOM is a legal expert on all matters of Internet Football Law.  Our legal team has been hunkered in a closed concrete bunker for the past several months receiving legal documents through a pneumatic tube system to explore every possible precedent for legal action in this case.  Do not trust other websites or so-called legal experts to explain any part of this situation to you.  There is no more trusted, accurate analysis of the Northwestern union situation on the entire internet than a blogspot website called "Bring Your Champions, They're Our Meat," and you should expect to see this post mentioned in legal citations for generations.  BYCTOM also specializes in horse-law and shipwreck treasure arbitration.

This image would theoretically get old in a blog that updates more than 
once every several months

THE BACKLASH

While Kain Colter, College Athletes Players Association, and others have been encouraging unionization, the efforts have not been popular with other Wildcats.  Quarterback Trevor Siemian opposed the measure, stating that he was satisfied with his treatment at Northwestern.  This was troubling since he and Colter combined into a theoretically unstoppable passing/running multifaceted quarterback threat for the past two seasons, and I assumed that the Cats' unorthodox sleep studies and training with Navy SEALs were experiments designed to link the two signal-callers' brains like the robot operators in Pacific Rim.  Other players have suggested that the union fight is a distraction.  The case certainly drew far more attention to Northwestern athletics in the spring at a time when the basketball team traditionally eliminates itself from the NCAA tournament and everyone forgets that Northwestern football exists.

Certainly Northwestern's administration did all that it could to dissuade football players from unionizing.  Coach Fitz has found himself in a strange position.  He has depicted himself as an earnest, crew-cutted boy scout troop leader, selling Northwestern's academic bona fides.  When Colter began to publicly ally support unionization by stenciling references to the "All Players United" slogan on his wristbands, Fitzgerald publicly supported the gesture while disagreeing with the message.  But, with a looming unionization vote, Fitz has lined up squarely behind the university.  He has sent out messages to, in his words, "educate" players and their families about the university's fears against unionization. 

Union supporters fear that the fist pumps of encouragement may turn into the 
Pinkertons' cudgels

Regardless of the results, union activism has made some impression.  Athletic Director Jim Phillips has recently argued that athletes should have voting voice in major issues that concern them.  He opposes a union, however, because he, Northwestern, and the NCAA do not believe that athletes are employees.  Phillips, like Fitzgerald, claims that schools should act in the best interests of athletes without the involvement of a union.  Union activists counter that schools will continue to pay lip service to changing conditions unless an organization representing players can apply pressure and bargain collectively.

The central problem is that the link between a massive minor league football apparatus and universities makes absolutely no sense.  Our national love affair with watching organized people smash into each other, mixed with regional pride, mixed with college students holding up signs and the pompous pronouncements of television personalities, and combined with people willing to call into Paul Finebaum's show and yell at each other like professional wrestlers for my amusement, is grafted onto an already unwieldy educational complex.  It seems unlikely that the NCAA can continue to hold this all together.  It is impossible to endorse the status quo, where enormous piles of money make their way to universities, the NCAA, conferences, and other college sports-adjacent organizations while the young people who smash into each other are governed by an elaborate set of rules designed to prevent them from capitalizing on their smashing while Ed Orgeron is allowed to use his football notoriety in order to convince people to pay him to talk in public.

COLLEGE ATHLETICS

College athletics, especially in the big revenue sports, is inherently absurd, corrupt, unfair, and hypocritical.  Northwestern's unionization efforts have contributed to the increasingly loud outcry against the NCAA.  Northwestern, which has tended to position itself as a model program that graduates nearly all of its athletes and insists on higher academic standards for recruits, now stands as a citadel against athletic unionization and for the untenable status quo.  It's certainly not news that that college sports are rife with contradictions or that the NCAA's defense of amateur athletics rings hollow.  This has been true since college sports existed.  But it is odd to see Northwestern at the front lines of organization efforts.  It's hard to celebrate college football while the NCAA and others taking a share of monstrous college sports profits comport themselves with the fiscal integrity of a nineteenth-century political machine.
 
The Bowl Championship Series, for example, made waves by 
pocketing millions from universities and dodging taxes by operating 
as charitable organizations while paying half-million dollar salaries to 
bowl executives.  The 2007 Fiesta Bowl even featured allegations 
of reimbursing employees for campaign contributions, which I enjoyed 
because it's as if the Fiesta Bowl executives were making a list of ridiculously 
unethical things to do with the windfall from college football games while 
staging some sort of boring executive bacchanal when someone said wait we 
haven't figured out a way to also make illegal campaign contributions yet and 
then a bunch of balloons fell from the ceiling while Kool and the Gang blared 
from the speakers and then they all started betting on toddler fighting or 
something equally awful just because they can

The reason why all of this money is at stake is because college football is spectacular.  I love Northwestern football.  I can't wait for next season.  I hope Northwestern's football people smash the crap out of lesser football people.  I want to hear the fight song when Venric Mark zooms past a bunch of hapless linebackers.  I want Northwestern to anger a bunch of people from Iowa.  I want to root for the Wildcats to take the Former Legends Division while being conflicted that the Big Ten has sane, cardinal-direction based divisions and I can't make fun of the LEGENDS DIVISION anymore.  Most importantly, I want to continue to support Northwestern athletics for the sole purpose of frustrating the designs of Tim Beckman, who made the grave error of trying to respect Northwestern as a rival and has thus fated himself to be ground into dust by the state's slightly less miserable conference rival.
 
Captain Beck Man spends another season in pursuit of his Purple Whale

NEXT SEASON OUTLOOK

Kain Colter, the face of college football unionization, has graduated.  He will attempt to catch on with the Minnesota Vikings along with Tyler Scott.  Both hope to join Corey Wootton, who signed with the Vikes as a free agent because the Minnesota Vikings have apparently hired me as a general manager to build the team the way I used to load all of my Madden teams with Wildcats.

Madden 05 was the last copy I owned, but it had a bunch of NU guys and the "hit stick" feature,
which let you launch horrifyingly illegal headhunting tackles that would get you fined in the modern
NFL, but let you gleefully injure Digital Brett Favre, one of the greatest villains in the history of 
video games alongside Bowser, Soda Popkinski, and those dumb birds from Ninja Gaiden that knocked
you into the game's seemingly endless array of bottomless pits

Colter's work with CAPA has deservedly taken the lion's share of attention, but the Wildcats will miss him on the field as well.  Kain Colter was probably the most fun player Northwestern has had.  He lined up all over the field, but as quarterback he was more effective as a runner than a passer.  On third and long, over and over again, he took the snap and scampered past a helpless defense that had to know what was happening but was unable to stop it.  When Mark was healthy, they formed the most exciting option attack Northwestern had ever fielded.  He  came off the bench to hit Ebert with a strike that went 81 yards to help upset Nebraska in Lincoln in one of the most memorable wins of the Colter era.  And, he clearly got that fourth down against Ohio State, regardless of what the corporate ESPN mainstream media want you to believe.


It's all very clear if you just look at the video evidence

Northwestern's outlook for the season is unclear.  The 'Cats lost Colter and a number of other talented seniors, but they will return Venric Mark and the core of an improving defense.  It is also unlikely that they will suffer from the horror of last year's impossible season when they lost game after game on plays that only happen at the end of sports movies.  Historically, the 'Cats have not performed well lately with preseason top-25 rankings and expectations, and will have the luxury of letting the season grow into what it will.

No matter what happens on the field, the unionization issue will continue to hover over the program.  We're all looking forward to the Wildcats feeling their way into a new Big Ten landscape brought about by another wave of ridiculous and byzantine conference realignment.  I look forward to developing an enmity towards Rutgers and Maryland when it comes time to actually play them.  I look forward to Sonny Dykes swearing revenge after accusing the 'Cats of faking injuries without the panache of their face-clutching basketball and soccer-playing compatriots.  And, most importantly, I look forward to a version of college athletics where players have an opportunity to challenge the NCAA and universities in order to gain fair compensation for totally wrecking an opposing quarterback.  

So Your Football Team Can Theoretically Unionize

Northwestern football has been in the news lately, and it's not because of lofty expectations for next year or a dashing transfer, or a tragic Pat Fitzgerald fist pump injury, or because the football team is no longer training with Navy SEALs and instead is being chased around downtown Evanston by graduate assistants dressed like mummies.  Kain Colter has taken the case for the unionization of Northwestern football players to the National Labor Relations Board.  They have won the ruling.  Northwestern athletes may have fired a salvo into the NCAA's confusing "student-athlete" designation.

It is somewhat surreal seeing Kain Colter's face all over sports websites.  We knew Colter's versatility allowed him to play quarterback, wide receiver, running back, backup quarterback, long snapper, dropkick specialist, wedge-buster, graduate assistant, sports information director, and United States Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs during his illustrious football career.  Now, he has become the face of the national debate about big money college athletics.  Northwestern is currently at the epicenter of the college football universe.

What does this all mean?

Disclaimer: BYCTOM could not be more qualified to discuss this issue.  Its team of analysts and legal researchers are experts affiliated with the Hollywood Upstairs Institute of Internet Football Law, and all readers are encouraged to use the analysis contained herein to make internet arguments and crucial decisions about their families' financial future.

BYCTOM specializes in Internet Football Law, mustache injury, leech 
malpractice, bear-baiting law, treason against fictional nations, treason in
the name of fictional nations, railroad vengeance, and Canadian constitutional 
crises involving the Governor-General

WHAT IS AT THE HEART OF THE CASE

The case centers on the NCAA's designation of student-athletes.  The NCAA clings to the idea that football players are college students who study, hang out on the quad, and occasionally go out and get run over by 280 pound behemoths.  NCAA officials argue that athletes are rewarded with scholarships (becoming more valuable as the cost of tuition skyrockets) and other amenities.  It's as if you and me and some other fellows were walking around in our Northwestern varsity jackets and saw some other fellows wearing Illini orange and said perhaps we should participate in a sporting contest for the honor of the ol' alma mater, what say you chaps and then played a football match in a local field surrounded by tens of thousands of well-wishers and a staggering number of people on TV and were also screamed at by crew-cutted millionaires in khaki slacks.

With all of this money floating around, the NCAA has to keep its eyes open to attempts to stain the purity of the sport.  Therefore, the organization has a byzantine rulebook governing the relationship between athletes and potential corrupting influences such as coaches, boosters, and the roguish Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg.  This is particularly intricate during recruiting, when high school football stars are vulnerable to all kinds of creative inducement from outright bribery to patronage to the threat of having to sit into a room with Nick Saban for hours.  More recently, potential recruits can also be yelled at by assorted yahoos on social media who are incensed that they discarded their team's hat in an overly cavalier manner.  Recruiting is an absurd tug of war between NCAA attempts to regulate contact with recruits as programs and boosters find ways to circumvent and ignore these rules.  This is good news for those of us who are disappointed that the twenty-first century is devoid of the type of intrigue and betrayal you'd find in medieval betrothal politics, where a coach might try to cement his interest in a player by recruiting a less talented friend or hiring a high school coach or destabilizing the Principality of Grubenslagen and installing a puppet ruler who coincidentally looks exactly like the Prince.

You, happy Austria, recruit a fullback 

The Northwestern players argue that they are actually employees of the school as a crucial part of a multi-million dollar sporting enterprise that depends on them to run.  They claim that football demands hours of practice and preparation that have more in common with a full-time job than a part-time sport.  They want to be able to collectively bargain with the university.

NORTHWESTERN IS SORT OF A WEIRD FLASHPOINT FOR ALL OF THIS

In many ways, Northwestern is about as close as it gets to the NCAA's model for a college football program in a major conference.  Northwestern players are held to higher academic standards than most other FBS schools.  Nearly all of them graduate.  Scholarships are worth more because of Northwestern's soaring tuition rates. This is not a football factory, and for many years, it was unable to determine whether the Wildcats' football stadium was an elaborate art installation about futility led by unusually large performance artists.

Yet, the Northwestern unionization effort demonstrates that the pressures of football fall upon all players equally.  Northwestern emphasizes its academics and graduation rate as part of its overall football brand, as integral to the identity of Northwestern football as other aspects such as empty, tarp-riddled stands and dubious claims to loyalty of indifferent Chicagoland sports fans.  Colter, on the other hand, testified that he was discouraged from taking classes that conflicted with practices during the season and reinforced the tremendous time commitments demanded by football.  I can identify with those pressures as a college student since I also had hours away from my studies dedicated to day games at Wrigley Field, leading the virtual Chicago Bears to numerous Madden NFL championships, and watching reruns of the Highlander television show where the Highlander lived on a houseboat, wielded a katana, and Roger Daltrey had a mustache.

Television Highlander Adrian Paul contemplates past head 
choppings and head choppings to come

WHAT DOES THE RULING MEAN

The ruling means that the National Labor Relations Board agrees that scholarship football players (but not walk-ons) are university employees and can vote to join the College Athletes Players Association.  If formed, this union can collectively bargain with the university.  The players are not immediately seeking direct payment, but the creation of a trust fund for athletes, guaranteed medical care for current and former players, and more control over transfers to other schools.  The ruling currently applies only to private universities.

Northwestern is appealing the decision to the NLRB in Washington.  NCAA President Mark Emmert claims the case will ultimately end up in the Supreme Court.  Regardless of outcome, the ruling has greatly upset the NCAA apple cart and dealt another blow to the bizarre marriage of universities to billion-dollar sporting concerns.  It seems clear that, in the near future, the model of college athletics will have to adjust in order to compensate athletes in big revenue sports or change into something else altogether.

What type of action could players use as leverage?  Should the CAPA form, how far would they and their representatives push for compensation?  Could there be a strike?

A BRIEF SUMMARY OF "THE PICKET LINEMEN," A TERRIBLE HYPOTHETICAL COLLEGE FOOTBALL STRIKE MOVIE WRITTEN BY MARK EMMERT

In the year 2020, the United States Supreme Court has made it legal for college football teams to unionize.  Players demand payment in money, flashy cars, and gilded pantaloons while burning textbooks on their stadiums' 50 yard lines.  The American people are outraged, but helpless in the face of this reign of terror because of the government.

Lance Stryker, the President of College Football looks on with consternation.  He expects a delegation from the College Football Union to bring their list of extravagant demands.  Stryker's secretary tells them to have a seat, but they march past her and burst into Stryker's office.  The head of the union, Trench Bludgeoner, wears a fancy suit, carries a gold-tipped cane, and polishes a monocle that was surely and inappropriately given to him by a booster.  His right-hand man is a tough guy named Bill Flint played by Steven Seagal who waddles into the office and regards all parties menacingly.  Bludegeoner removes a list of College Football's concessions to the players that includes a reasonable stipend and a free education from a stainless steel briefcase and burns them on Stryker's desk.  The players' demands include payment in canvas sacks with dollar signs on them.  "I don't know if they even make these sacks," Stryker says.  "Then make them yourself," sneers Bludgeoner.  "We're on strike."  Bludgeoner leaves the office, flourishing his cape.

Flint leans into Stryker.  "Don't even try to break this strike," he says in a growling half-whisper.  "Or I'll break your organization, your fancy desk, and your bones."  Actually he has to write that last part down on a whiteboard because his whisper has gotten too quiet by the end of his threat, and while he's at it, he draws a quick caricature of his own scowling face to let Stryker know he means business.  On his way out, he headbutts two College Football officials in the lobby. 

The strike is disastrous.  Stadiums sit empty.  Mascots desperately prowl campuses, accosting unsuspecting students with antics.  A trombone plays, sadly.  Soon, stadiums become the sites of violence as fans demand football action.  In Wisconsin, a riot leaves thousands of bratwursts trampled.  Stryker remains resolute, but the government gets involved and forces College Football to pay the players.  Within a week, a fleet of trucks with billions of dollars in gold and canvas sacks stands at the ready to distribute.

But then Stryker realizes that Bludgeoner, Flint, and the union are not going to distribute the money to the players after all.  He enlists the Head of University Computers to dig into the records and enhance a lot of photos.  They discover that Trench Bludgeoner is not a college football player at all.  He's the head of The Organization, an international outfit responsible for 75% of the world's heinous crimes involving transporting counterfeit money hidden in illegal guns made out of narcotics on illegal whaling vessels.  This information is shown on a pie chart.  Also, Bludgeoner has secretly been behind every recruiting infraction for the past twenty years, someone that Stryker has known only from the monogrammed handkerchief he leaves at hat ceremonies as his calling card to let Stryker know that he has successfully corrupted a players' recruitment.  Stryker is infuriated and punches through a plate glass window while shouting in slow motion.  We see a montage of him putting on tactical suspenders, holstering a stapler, and swapping his reading glasses for bifocals.  This is one violation that can't be self-reported.

Stryker knows he is the only person who can stop Bludgeoner from stealing College Football's gold and using it to invest in an unprecedented criminal infrastructure.  He takes out the lead truck driver and leads the fleet into an abandoned factory.  But Flint is waiting for him, and attacks with dozens of slow-moving aikdo maneuvers.  Flint is about to strike the killing blow on a bloodied Stryker when Purdue Pete drives a train into his chest.  Bludgeoner escapes, but without the money.  College football resumes with a lucrative post-season tournament.  But after the credits roll, Stryker turns on the news to see that youth soccer players are attempting to organize in Peru.  He tightens his suspenders, grabs his briefcase, and looks directly into the camera with steely determination. 

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR NORTHWESTERN FOOTBALL

The possibility of union action has left a rift between the university and the players.  Pat Fitzgerald testified on behalf of Northwestern. 
 
The hearings have been hell on Fitzgerald, who is forced to spend time in a 
buttoned-down hearing where fist pumps are discouraged, steering gestures 
questioned, and all manner of butt bumps banned

Meanwhile, spring football looms as players prepare for the upcoming season.  The 'Cats are already trying to rebound from a disastrous season where preseason hype for a possible LEGENDS DIVISION title fell apart in a series of unfathomable last-second defeats.  We have no way of knowing how the unionization battle will affect the Wildcats on the field,but it may somehow stand in the way of Northwestern winning a BCS championship.