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Tom Farrey reports that for the first time ever, a college sports team will attempt to be represented by a labor union. That team is the Northwestern football team.
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School officials and Northwestern's lawyer, Joe Tilson, publicly speak out against the football team's actions. "Student - athletes are not employees but students," said a school representative.
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Northwesterm QB, Kain Colter, testifies at the National Labor Relations Board meeting stating that being apart of the football team is work. "It is a job and there is no way around it," Colter said.
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Sports economist, David Berri, took the stand to defend Colter and the efforts to unionize saying that the football players provide entertainment services for the NCAA making them employees.
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Joyce Hofstra, who had been overseeing the hearing, stated that the player's "record was weak" and that only a single player testifying will hurt them.
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Northwestern officials countered Colter's argument that said "the program places football over academics" with statistics that proved that Northwestern football players have the highest graduation rate in the country. Also the team's overall GPA was just above a 3.0.
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The National Labor Relations Board issues a statement that a ruling for the Northwestern football team's case to unionize will be released in the coming days.
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In a groundbreaking change of events the NLRB ruled in favor of the unionization for the Northwestern football team. Peter Sung Ohr, the regional director of the NLRB, stated that the players "fall squarely within the [National Labor Relations] Act's broad definition of 'employee' when one considers the common law definition of 'employee.'"
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Ramogi Huma, president of the College Athletes Players Association and Kain Colter head to Washington D.C. to meet with legislators to garner more political support for their player's union.
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Head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, Nick Saban, offers his support of the Northwestern players, saying, "I've always been an advocate of the player and the quality of life that a player has."
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The Northwestern Football team will come together on September, 25th 2014 to vote on wither to become a union or not. Mark Emmert, the president of the NCAA, recently described the efforts to unionize as "grossly inappropriate."
