Baylor President Ken Starr on Thursday said that if the College Athletes Players Association wins the NLRB unionization case, it "could create significant discrepancies between public and private schools," as athletes "could be able to bargain over lowering academic standards or creating exemptions for student conduct policies as 'terms of employment,' creating different ranks of students," according to Ben Kamisar of the DALLAS MORNING NEWS. Starr, speaking in front of lawmakers, warned unionization would lead to "uncertainty and instability." Starr said that students "should have a bigger voice, but he declined to elaborate on what that could mean absent unionization" (DALLAS MORNING NEWS, 5/9). USA TODAY's Steve Berkowitz writes a Congressional hearing on Thursday "became a platform for Congressional criticism of the NCAA and Division I schools' approach to addressing athlete concerns that triggered the effort to unionize scholarship football players at Northwestern." Stanford AD Bernard Muir, who was one of five witnesses, said that if his school's athletes "were allowed to unionize, the school 'might opt not to compete at the level we are competing in.'" Muir: "If (Stanford's athletes) are deemed employees, we will opt for a different model. I just know that from our board of trustees, our president, our provost, the Stanford culture, it just wouldn't be appropriate to deem student-athletes as employees" (USA TODAY, 5/9).
A FORMER ATHLETE'S TAKE: UConn AD Warde Manuel: "I don't see our student-athletes as employees. I never saw myself as an employee of the University of Michigan when I played football there. All the things we do outside of sports for our athletes who are students on our campus for 20 to 21 hours a day, I don't see them as employees. So if that's what allows you to create a union, I don't see unionization as necessary. If they are an employee what does that mean financially? Would their scholarship be taxed? Would their tutorial services, food costs, be taxed? I don't know all the details. I feel our student-athletes do have a voice in our department with the advisory council and the way the administration and I interact with them. If being a part of a union allows them to have a voice, they already have a voice in a lot of things we do here." Manuel said of possible implications from unionization, "It could cause departments to look at the number of programs they have and can support. In that sense, it's a math problem" (HARTFORD COURANT, 5/9).
THE FACE OF CHANGE: CBSSPORTS.com's Dennis Dodd wrote Ed O'Bannon is the "face of the most important piece of litigation, perhaps, in NCAA history." A month from Friday, the "landmark O'Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial," and at stake is "only the future of the NCAA." O'Bannon is "comfortable being the face of the litigation," as if "nothing else, it gives him a platform on the state of college athletics." It "would be hard to find a more suitable front man for seismic change in the system." If O'Bannon "wasn't trying to sue the NCAA back to the Paleozoic Era, he'd be perfect for one of those going-pro-in-something-other-than-sports commercials" (CBSSPORTS.com, 5/8).
