An examination of the practices of the NCAA is again a topic for N.Y. TIMES op-ed columnist Joe Nocera, who today writes NFLPA Exec Dir DeMaurice Smith has “wrestled with the bullies running the NFL” and is now “setting his sights on an even bigger bully: the NCAA.” Nocera: "It is about time. Over the past few months, as I have been looking into the practices of the NCAA, I have been struck by the fact that the players, exploited by everyone else in the system, have no one to advocate for them.” Nocera added, “I had traveled to Washington to see Smith because I had heard through the grapevine that he, too, had begun to poke around the NCAA -- and had been shocked by what he had discovered.” Smith said, “Part of the problem is that everyone in the system starts by thinking of the players as athletes first. That is the wrong starting point. An athlete is a person first. When you start there, it changes the way you think about everything.” It is “unclear how Smith will approach this crusade.” He knows that the NCAA “will fight to the death to keep the players in their current shackled state.” And given the “turnover in the college ranks, he conceded that it is virtually impossible to unionize the players using the tried-and-true techniques of union organizing.” The one thing he is “sure of is that change will come when college athletes start to see themselves as people first, with rights like everyone else.” That is where Smith “plans to start” (N.Y. TIMES, 3/6).
