Collective bargaining in college sports: Is it a third rail or an inevitability?

New York Times

5 days ago

DESTIN, Fla. — Danny White knew what he was doing. A few days before SEC spring meetings, the Tennessee athletic director filmed a video interview with his boss, school president Donde Plowman, who also knew what she was doing when she asked White how he dealt with all the issues in college sports.
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About a minute into an otherwise unremarkable answer, White dropped what qualifies among school administrators as a bombshell.
'I'll say it, we've got a camera on us (but) I don't really care at this point: Collective bargaining is the only solution.'
Plowman nodded in agreement.
'It's the only way we're gonna get there,' Plowman said.
The two Tennessee administrators had just stepped on the third rail of college sports. That was noteworthy, as was what happened when White arrived this week at SEC meetings: nothing. It would have been the perfect time for White to expound on his thoughts with media members, but after initially saying he would, he changed his mind.
Perhaps someone made a call. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, one of the many within college sports resistant to the idea of a collective bargaining arrangement with athletes, said it wasn't him.
'I've opined about bargaining,' Sankey said Wednesday. As for what he thought about White's comments: 'I'm not going to jump into some public disagreement.'
Sankey and others are hoping for approval of the House v. NCAA settlement any minute, which they hope will be followed by federal legislation, bringing a measure of stability that avoids any future need for collective bargaining. White and others think that approach is just delaying the inevitable.
Collective bargaining is the reason pro sports leagues don't have incessant court challenges to their rules the way college sports does. Pro leagues negotiate the rules on salary caps, player movement and more with players unions. Many see that as the only surefire way college sports can enforce certain rules, especially when it comes to the transfer restrictions that courts have struck down in recent years, opening up an era of unlimited player movement. White and others believe a collectively bargained agreement with a players union would mean reasonable transfer rules that would stand up in court.
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Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin has been on that side for several years, and he reiterated his stance this week.
'I think there's probably got to be something like that eventually, because for a while now it's been very player-friendly, with the regulations and rules around it,' Kiffin said. 'Now it's going to come back somewhere in the middle. But there probably needs to be (collective bargaining) because you're still going to have a lot of loophole issues and problems, for both sides, until there's real contracts that have years on them.'
There are various hurdles to collective bargaining at the college level: the turnover among athletes, fierce resistance among administrators to athletes becoming employees, state laws against public employee unions.
'We have a reality in our states around bargaining,' Sankey said.
But there are several models that could get around the issues. The Screen Actors Guild's members are contractors rather than employees because filming takes places all over the country, but the guild still negotiates work rules. Starbucks workers and Uber drivers in New York also have setups that could serve as models.
As for those state laws and general hostility to unions, it bears noting that when California passed its precedent-setting name-image-and-likeness law in 2018, many other state legislatures, especially in the South, reacted with scorn. But they changed their mind when they realized schools on the West Coast might have an advantage as a result.
Of course, another question is who would serve as head of such a players union, or whatever entity it ends up being. Several people have tried to step forward into those roles, but with the idea seeming far off, the urgency has been lacking.
The feeling among many in college sports is that collective bargaining is a last resort, and they'd prefer to let the House settlement take effect and see if federal legislation can help. Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin, asked about White's comment, cited Supreme Court judge Brett Kavanaugh's 2021 opinion in the Alston v. NCAA case, which concerned the NCAA's ability to restrict the education-related benefits schools provided athletes.
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'He said there's really only three ways what college athletics is doing would not be antitrust: One is congressional action, two is through the courts, or three (is) through collective bargaining. I think that still holds true,' Stricklin said. 'Danny obviously believes the other two are not a viable path. The fact of the matter is, if the settlement gets approved, it is an attempt to do it through the courts, which kind of goes along with what Kavanaugh suggested. So I think it has to be one of those three paths.'
Notably, that's not saying no to collective bargaining. Stricklin spoke more strongly against athletes becoming employees, although the Johnson v. NCAA case, which could go to trial next year, could still force that into reality.
'I don't think that's what anybody wants right now,' Stricklin said. 'We're doing a lot of things right now, though, that we never thought we'd end up doing. So never say never.'
Danny White wouldn't talk this week, but his brother was also in Destin: Mike White, the men's basketball coach at Georgia. That sport deals with the transfer portal in such a way that the coach half-joked that when a player returns for a second year at the same program, 'he's an outlier.'
Is collective bargaining the answer? If Mike White agrees with his brother, he wasn't saying. He also was careful not to get whatever phone call his brother got, saying he would let the administrators handle it. Then he summed up the sentiment of seemingly all college coaches.
'Give us the rules and we'll follow them,' White said. 'We'll abide by whatever the framework is and do the best we can, year in and year out.'