A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional director has issued a ruling that could change the landscape of college sports.
On Monday, the NLRB director ruled that Dartmouth College basketball players are employees of the school under U.S. labor law, opening the door for them, and possibly all NCAA athletes, to unionize.
All 15 members of Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team signed a petition in September asking to join Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union, which already represents some of the school’s employees.
“Because Dartmouth has the right to control the work performed by the Dartmouth men’s basketball team, and the players perform that work in exchange for compensation, I find that the petitioned-for basketball players are employees within the meaning of the [National Labor Relations] Act,” wrote NLRB Regional Director Laura Sacks, according to ESPN.
“Additionally, I find that asserting jurisdiction would not create instability in labor relations. Accordingly, I shall direct an election in the petitioned-for unit.”
Unionizing would allow players to negotiate over working conditions, such as practice hours and travel, in addition to salary.
Dartmouth competes in the Ivy League, which doesn’t provide athletic scholarships, unlike other Division I institutions. The ruling specifically touched on the non-monetary compensation the players receive in addition to the amount of control the school has over them, in constituting them as employees.
Dartmouth basketball player representatives Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil issued a statement, calling the ruling “a significant step forward for college athletes” and saying they’re “excited to see how this decision will impact college sports nationwide.”
“We believe that other athletes will recognize the opportunities this ruling presents and will be inspired to follow suit,” the statement said, according to ESPN.
“This association aims to foster unity, advocate for athletes’ rights and well-being, and create a platform for collaborative decision-making. We look forward to working with our fellow Ivy League athletes to bring positive change to the landscape of college sports and the Ivy League.”
The NCAA and universities have long maintained that athletes are students and not employees, even lobbying Congress for a federal law to codify the classification.
“It’s the first step to potential employee status for college athletes,” Gabe Feldman, a sports law professor at Tulane, told ESPN.
“But on the flip side, if Dartmouth men’s basketball players are employees, not only what athletes are not employees, but does this make the music students employees? So this may open the door too far?”
A Dartmouth spokesperson told Front Office Sports that the school will appeal the ruling.
“Unlike other institutions where athletics generates millions of dollars in net revenue, the costs of Dartmouth’s athletics program far exceed any revenue from the program–costs that Dartmouth bears as part of our participation in the Ivy League,” the school said.
“We also do not compensate our athletes, nor do we provide athletic scholarships; all scholarships are based on financial need.”
In a 2021 memo, NLRB’s top lawyer Jennifer Abruzzo said college athletes should be considered employees.
“The freedom to engage in far-reaching and lucrative business enterprises makes players at academic institutions much more similar to professional athletes who are employed by a team to play a sport,” Abruzzo wrote.
In October, Dartmouth argued that the players shouldn’t be considered employees because athletics are part of the school’s academic mission.
“At Dartmouth, students’ primary objective is learning,” school attorney Joe McConnell said last year. “Dartmouth has adopted policies reflecting that students who participate in intercollegiate athletics are students first and athletes second.”
The NCAA’s amateurism model has been under fire for some time, and currently faces numerous legal and political threats.
The first step was NIL, and the ability to unionize would shake things up much further.
“I think they’re all different sides to a similar threat,” Feldman said.
“And the threat is the loss of control over the ability to restrict compensation to athletes. And we are closer than we’ve ever been to a system where college athletes not only receive significant additional compensation, but also have a vote in how much compensation they receive.”
How are they compensated? Being an Ivy League school, the players do not have athletic scholarships. Any compensation they are getting should be unrelated to their play.
This is why we can’t have nice things. If you want to get a good education and continue playing the sport that you love and then you get the chance to do that at an ivy league school (that loses money on the basketball team and on sports in general) and that ivy league school pays a coach to provide you with free coaching and pays for gear that it gives you for free and then you abuse that fact to try to squeeze more money out of the school by arguing that you’re being compensated for work done, don’t be surprised when instead of getting more money you get less free gear and coaching.
“And the threat is the loss of control over the ability to restrict compensation to athletes. And we are closer than we’ve ever been to a system where college athletes not only receive significant additional compensation, but also have a vote in how much compensation they receive.”
This is the beginning of the end of college athletics.
Is Dartmouth required to engage in NCAA sports? Hm. The appeal will be long. Dartmouth -71.
Student athletes, especially non-revenue ones are digging their own grave, they just don’t know it yet.
You’d think the players at Dartmouth would be smarter than this, but apparently not. This is impossibly short sighted.
100% AGREE.
We will get more money. Who cares about what this will do long term!
I’m honestly confused about what the “compensation” Dartmouth basketball players are receiving in exchange for work is. There are no athletic scholarships at Ivies, so is it the free gear?
The only thing I can think of is athletes often have access to cushy jobs that most of the other students do not, such as working the front desk at the athletic facilities where you’re expected to do nothing but use it as time to do work for class.
Yes, according to the court.
So then wouldn’t the athletes be entitled to minimum wage then as well?
Probably, though the court ruled that the equipment, etc. they receive can be considered as part of their education.
A workaround for this for Dartmouth is to no longer give student-athletes tuition discounts, then just pay them the difference.
Dartmouth might also wind up locking student-athletes out of certain facilities to ‘limit their hours of work.’
There are still a few cards they can play that are going to make being a student-athlete a lot less fun. Playing those cards might not work if it’s one school independently, because kids will just go elsewhere, but if it’s every college doing the same thing, could be effective.
This is almost-definitely going to spiral into something worse, because the fact of the… Read more »
A 5-14 Men’s Basketball team wants to be paid for their “work”. Based on the record it appears they are not even capable of performing their “work”. But don’t worry the union will protect them from being held accountable and demand less practice, conditioning and coaching so they can succeed……hope they choose union labor jobs so they don’t have to work too hard after college………..
If you have a bad quarter selling widgets at work you should have to pay your boss.
It’s not about their win-loss record. It’s about the fact that
1) the mission of the school is to provide the student body with a great education and to prepare them for success in life after school. sports is a way to enrich the lives of the students and provide them with education opportunities they can’t get int he classroom, like learning about teamwork, communication, and leadership by experiencing them day in and day out.
2) regardless of their win-loss record, Dartmouth loses money on the basketball program. They’re willing to lose money on the basketball program because having the program creates a student-athlete experience that furthers the mission in point 1 above.
3) even if Darmouth made… Read more »
1) Couldn’t they have already gotten that in high school sports?
2) I was responding to a comment about their win-loss record.
3) Is it that or is it bragging rights, recruiting more students to the school and more donations from alumni because “we beat Princeton last year.”
1) yes, they could have and hopefully they did. That doesn’t mean they can’t build on those experiences in a higher performance context in college. Building on the foundation students have from the rest of their life (including high school) is central to the college experience.
2) yeah, sorry I was actually trying to reply to the original comment, not yours directly – I know you didn’t specifically reference the win-loss record. Although you did analogize a bad win-loss record in college sports to a bad year in sales, which I don’t totally agree with. The Dartmouth basketball team is a cost center. A sales department is a revenue center. If a player performs poorly on the Dartmouth basketball… Read more »
THE CAN OF WORMS IS NOW WIDE OPEN. What a mess. I miss simpler times when scholarship athletes get a free education while they continue to enjoy their sport of choice.
“Sure, athletes in revenue-generating sports are being viciously exploited. But Little Johnny got a curling scholarship out of it!!”
It’s ridiculous to characterize any large group of college athletes as being “visciously exploited”. First of all, you mean “profit-generating” not “revenue-generating”, and the percentage of collegiate athletic programs that generate revenue that exceed their cost is very low. I only found 2019 data in a quick google search, but in 2019 only 25 schools in the FBS made money on their football programs. The median program (and this is amongst FBS schools, ie – the 10% of the schools in the country with the biggest sports porgrams) had an operating deficit of around $15 million for the football program. Even if you look at the 25 schools that make money, the overwhelming majority of those students would have no… Read more »
Everyone in this situation doesn’t think big enough. Have Congress mandate that schools keep offering the li’l niche sports you like! Idk, get creative!
I kinda just stopped here, because think about it – what were those schools spending money on? They had to attract the best players possible. But they could not pay those players. So they had to spend a bunch of money on ridiculous spaceship facilities. (And administrator salaries, of course.)
And that’s to say nothing of the unscrupulous accounting practices most follow to make sure they don’t make money,… Read more »
I don’t think the government’s job is to mandate what private colleges should be offering to students as part of the student life experience.
Building “spaceship facilities” and paying administrator salaries (outside of coaching staff) aren’t categorized under the football budget – you’ve just strengthened my argument instead of weakening it. If you think that all of the non-football-related spending was just to attract more football players, then that means that even fewer schools made a profit on football, and the net deficit for the median school would be even greater than what I stated because the way they account for the football budget would be understating the true cost of recruiting.
I more or less agree with you on… Read more »