Title: The Myth of the Student-Athlete: The College Athlete as Employee
Abstract: Abstract: Grant-in-aid athletes in revenue-generating sports at Division I National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) institutions are not as the NCAA asserts, but are, instead, under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). To be an employee under that Act, these athletes must meet both the common law test and a statutory test applicable university students. In applying the common law test athletes, we describe their daily lives through interviews with current and former Division I grant-inaid athletes. These interviews demonstrate that their daily burdens and obligations not only meet the legal standard of employee, but far exceed the burdens and obligations of most university employees. In addressing the statutory definition of the term employee, we demonstrate that the relationship between these athletes and their universities is not primarily academic, but is, instead, undeniably commercial. As employees under the NLRA, these athletes are entitled to form, join, or assist labor organizations, bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection. Consequently, they will be able acquire bargaining power through collective association and negotiate their terms and conditions of employment, including wages not arbitrarily limited the level of athletic scholarships. Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands . . . are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed it, that excludes the common right of other Men.1 Every time I try and call it a business you say it's a game and every time I say it should be a game you call it a business.2 INTRODUCTION National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), a voluntary association of approximately 1,200 colleges and universities,3 has among its stated purposes promoting amateur athletics.4 Towards that end, the first stated purpose in its Division I Manual is [t]o initiate . . . and improve intercollegiate athletics programs for student-athletes and promote . . . athletics participation as a recreational pursuit.5 Despite the prominence of this assertion, the NCAA has failed realize this ideal for athletes in the most commercially lucrative college sports. For fifty years, the NCAA has used the term student-athlete describe the young men and women who are athletes at its member schools.6 Of late, its insistence that college athletes be so characterized has reached a fevered pitch. One need only consider the recent NCAA men's basketball tournaments-the self-styled March Madness-when for several years the NCAA's constant and insistent media message has been that these young men and women are learning important life lessons by engaging in intercollegiate athletics and are, therefore, student-athletes, not mere athletes.7 shrill urgency of the NCAA's student-athlete media campaign evokes Queen Gertrude's damning observation Hamlet: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.8 Why, a half century after adopting this term, should the NCAA unceasingly intone millions of viewers that these young men and women are student-athletes? NCAA's purpose in this message is shore up a crumbling facade, a myth in America, that these young athletes in NCAA-member sports programs are properly characterized only as student-athletes. This characterization-that athletes at NCAA-member schools are student-athletes-is essential the NCAA because it obscures the legal reality that some of these athletes, in fact, are also employees.9 By creating and fostering the myth that football and men's basketball players at Division I universities are something other than employees, the NCAA and its member institutions obtain the astonishing pecuniary gain and related benefits of the athletes' talents, time, and energy-that is, their labor-while severely curtailing the costs associated with such labor. …
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-02-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 46
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