College sports won’t happen this year, but not because of covid

The NCAA’s “students first, athletes second” charade is up

College sports definitely won’t happen this Fall, and probably won’t this Spring either. The putative reason is the coronavirus pandemic and the difficulty of limiting virus spread among players who travel frequently and come into close contact with a lot of individuals.

The real reason is that to hold an athletic season while numerous universities remain remote and virtual on the academic side amounts to a tacit admission that college athletes are not, in fact, students first; they are athletes, and thus employees, first. They are students second (or really maybe third).

By holding the 20–21 season, the NCAA’s “students first” charade would finally be up. This opens the door for player unionization, which the Northwestern football team nearly succeeded at in 2014, remuneration, and ultimately the end of athletic amateurism. The threat to amateur status is the real reason the season won’t happen this year. Protecting athletes against covid is a convenient pretext, and while canceling this year’s season will result in massive short-term financial losses, the long term protection of athletic amateurism, and the maintenance of the student-athlete indentured servitude model, is a more important end goal for the NCAA overlords.

Colleges can’t compel players to participate in athletic events if they aren’t classified as employees, even as coaches try to use cynical tactics like withholding playing time. College athletes should take advantage of the leverage they now have and refuse to restart college sports unless and until they are allowed to unionize and get paid.

If you’re a college sports fan (like I am), you should support unionization efforts. Even if you think the education they get is sufficient pay, we are entering a new era of public health concerns that likely won’t go away for a decade. In the same way that NFL fandom is more justified than college football fandom amid CTE and brain injury concerns because at least the players taking the risk are paid, now all college sports athletes will take on significant health risks to play their sport. If they won’t be paid for the millions in revenue they generate, at least pay them for the health risk.