Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick and Northwestern President Emeritus Henry Bienen yesterday said that if college athletes "ultimately are ruled to be employees of their respective schools, they foresee their universities withdrawing from the current setup of big-time sports," according to Steve Berkowitz of USA TODAY. Swarbrick, following a Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics meeting, said, "Notre Dame's just not prepared to participate in any model where the athlete isn't a student first and foremost -- that's the hallmark for us. If the entire model were to move toward athletes as employees, we'd head in a different direction." Meanwhile, Bienen prefaced his remarks by saying that he "does not speak" for Northwestern. Bienen: "If tomorrow you waved a magic wand and all football players and basketball players were unionized, and privates were paying them, that's not where the universities would be -- or should be, in my mind. ... If we wound up with a business where you wound up paying the players to play, I think alumni would have a different view (of college sports). I think the faculty would be unaccepting of it." SMU President Gerald Turner added, "It's too quick to say whether we wouldn't play anymore or anything like that. That would only occur after a very long review of the implications in both directions." He added that SMU "would have to weigh the implications of Texas being a right-to-work state." Berkowitz noted the comments come as the full National Labor Relations Board "continues to deliberate about an effort to unionize scholarship football players at Northwestern." In addition, there are a "range of pending federal court cases concerning athlete compensation" (USATODAY.com, 5/19).
