876SBJ college sports reporter Ben Portnoy was on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this morning discussing the Dartmouth men’s basketball team’s decision to unionize, noting “nothing super similar to this has happened at least as far as actually getting a union vote together and piecing something together this distinct.”
The “important piece” with this vote is that Dartmouth is a private school. Portnoy: “The impact you’re going to see with this case specifically is just on the, sort of Ivy League, private schools in the interim. ... You look at Ivy League schools, frankly that’s the concern for a lot of administrators ... where you might see a lot of the ramifications of this case play out.”
The reality is that the Dartmouth men’s basketball team “loses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and that’s not necessarily unique in college athletics at that level.” There are “a lot of schools that say if our athletes are employees, if we have to pay college athletes, especially at the D-II, D-III level, there are a lot of schools that frankly can’t afford it.”
Portnoy: “No one wants to shut down programs, but you could see more things like club sports. Do schools end up offering less sports? Do D-I schools end up sponsoring four, five or six sports instead of like 22? It depends and we’re still a ways from getting an exact ruling" ("Squawk Box," CNBC, 3/6).
