The Guardian
Canceling college football season is about fighting unions, not health
Two of the biggest college sports conferences canceled their fall seasons on Tuesday. It is about a fear of the power of the players rather than of Covid-19 On the night of Sunday, August 9, at the birth of an alliance between WeAreUnited, a faction of players threatening to withdraw their jobs without improving the conditions of work, and WeWantToPlay, a lobbying group. In order to play, college football players across the United States have said they want to play this season, but they want to play on the condition that they “eventually create a college football players association.” As Hunter Reynolds of the University of Michigan and College Athlete Unity (CAU) told us, “We all want to play the sports that we play all our lives, we just want to do it in as safe an environment as possible. And I think the union talks have been the subject of discussion since the Northwestern attempts to organize years ago. Within 12 hours, reports circulated that the Big Ten was canceling its fall season and most of the other Power Five conferences – the biggest and richest in college sports – were considering doing the same. College sports governing body, NCAA, and members of the Power Five have had to cancel the college football season since March. Instead, they’ve forced thousands of players back to campus for training sessions in the spring and summer, exposing them to the threat of Covid-19, a virus that has killed more than 160,000 to date. Americans and 730,000 people around the world. Yet despite numerous outbreaks of Covid-19 in football programs across the United States, as of early August, much of the Power Five remained determined to preserve the season. Until this week, when suddenly they didn’t. While our understanding of the virus has not changed significantly over the past few weeks, one important variable has changed: Football players across the country have boldly mobilized for increased control over their working conditions. Canceling the season has less to do with athlete safety and more. to do with concerns over the massive organization of collegiate athletes. As UCLA defensive lineman Otito Ogbonnia, a prominent WeAreUnited member and signer of a recent letter to PAC-12 commissioner Larry Scott, told us: “It’s hard to guess what anyone is thinking. another, but it seems that the conferences have decided to succumb. all the challenges of the virus and now they are facing the threat of a union or a players association. It has long been clear that the cancellation of the football season is a crucial and necessary decision. As an SEC player who asked to remain anonymous told us, “Almost everyone I know seems to be playing a game of chicken. Everyone is too scared to say that playing is not safe or does not make sense to play, and I feel that those who think continuing to play football is safer for them are falling into a false narrative set up by schools. He added, “You want us to get into a fully SEC schedule? You must be high. Whether it’s narcotics, power or greed … you’re telling us to invest in a season that is a house of cards that carries even more risk for us personally. Despite this, the predominantly white NCAA college athletic directors and coaches have demanded the predominantly black workforce to fight in recent months. As a result, we have witnessed a series of inspiring movements in player leadership and organization. Take, for example, Big Ten’s College Athlete Unity, which has more than 1,000 members fighting for changes in the working conditions of athletes within a system that continues to exploit them. Or there’s the even more radical PAC-12 WeAreUnited, which has courageously made a series of demands to protect scholarships and full-fledged athletes – thus laying the groundwork for a football labor strike. university. By working together to collectively generate demands and constantly advocating for a seat at the table, BigTenUnited and WeAreUnited both beckon the promise of a union in college football. This is not the first time that unionization has appeared in college football. Between 2013 and 2015, the Northwestern University football team attempted to unionize, led by then-quarterback Kain Colter. Yet the scale this time around is profoundly different: Thousands of athletes across the country are demanding basic rights they have long been denied. It even got Colter himself excited: “University athletes across the country have empowered themselves to demand proper protections and working conditions amid the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said. Tuesday evening. “They have resisted powerful financial interests that seem determined to keep college football going without worrying about the health of the athletes. These actions required a great deal of strength, courage and solidarity; I admire them enormously for that. Additionally, CAU, BigTenUnited, and WeAreUnited are garnering support from the media, academics, and even faculty unions contingent on major universities such as Duke and UCLA. Rather than going it alone, a challenge Colter himself suggested was fatal in the Northwestern campaign, we see college players calling for massive NCAA reform – starting with the right to fair representation. As UCLA player Ogbonnia explained to us, “It’s not easy to get everyone on the same page, but we have a responsibility to come together as a labor movement to improve. things for each other and for the players who will come after us. We ask for only the most basic rights that every person in this country deserves. In response to requests from BigTenUnited, WeAreUnited, and WeWantToPlay, and the news that the PAC-12 and Big Ten conferences are canceling sports this fall, what was an unlikely week ago suddenly seems inevitable. The college football season is subject to cancellation. But why now? Rumors suggest that the real motivation behind the impending decision to call off is fear of organizing athletes. This is confirmed by the refusal of the commissioner of PAC-12, Larry Scott, to negotiate with the student organizers on their health problems, certainly “revealing”. For Power Five schools used to having their pockets filled with unpaid athletic work, the threat of the virus pales alongside the specter of a labor movement, but the cancellation of the season is also a blow to the organization. of players because it eliminates leverage. potential union action (for now). Power Five’s athletic directors know this and any cancellation of the season at this point – after months of living with Covid-19 and just weeks before the start of the season – cannot and should not be mistaken for a concern for player health. Football programs have made it clear this summer that they view the lives of college football players with ruthless contempt. While schools are clearly weighing in on other factors, such as liability issues, the sudden urgency suggests that an anti-union imperative tipped the scales towards cancellation. We are witnessing a change in tactics which varies from conference to conference. The thinking for everyone probably goes something like this: If the season is preserved, athletes will no doubt get sick (the SEC confirmed this in a leaked call with player representatives). When this inevitably happens, it gives players more leverage to push back, thereby simultaneously gaining momentum as a union and ensuring sports departments give in on important issues. Is it any surprise that the SEC, the conference with the fewest labor rumbles, is also the least inclined to cancel despite “sobering” medical advice? As the Big 12, the ACC and the SEC move forward, it seems their calculation is that the risks of a workers’ uprising are outweighed by the revenues to be harvested. In PAC-12 and Big Ten, on the other hand, where WeAreUnited and BigTenUnited were born, the analysis seems to have tipped the other way. What is happening is pretty clear: in the last two conferences, the health and safety concerns that catalyzed this movement are now being deployed to dismantle it. Cancellation is not an anti-union tactic unique to college football. Indeed, Walmart has reportedly closed stores in California to prevent workers from unionizing. Kumho Tire threatened with closure to prevent employees from forming a union in 2017. Vacation company Sandals was accused of this tactic in 2016. There is also a long history of companies that have also used the threat of closure or cessation of operations to break unionization efforts. PAC-12 and Big Ten are removing a page from this anti-union playbook. In response, the WeAreUnited and WeWantToPlay alliance is a strategy to counter by building the force in court of public opinion. Reynolds told us that “after seeing the public perception of the different movements,” they decided to “come together and let people know that all the messages were the same, they were just being delivered in different ways.” The challenges of maintaining solidarity in the face of cancellation will be immense. College football is an exceptional work environment in part because of the attrition inherent in the business. The players do not play long enough to develop the types of deep solidarity that are often necessary for organizing work. There is pressure to maximize performance when they can to get the attention of professional Scouts. These structural dynamics militate against union activism and solidarity and the cancellation of the season will only weaken the rare spirit of collective action that has formed. Counterintuitive as it feels, so it is More than ever, CAU, WeAreUnited and the burgeoning gamer movement across the United States need to double their organization, deepen the bonds that will bind them for the next showdown. Like Kain Colter before them, the current generation of leaders like Jevon Holland, Andrew Cooper, Treyjohn Butler, Hunter Reynolds, Benjamin St-Juste, Jake Curhan and countless others must focus on creating the solidarity needed to challenge their employers. that break unions. The time has come for us to have our backs. They are going to need help and they deserve it. * Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Derek Silva and Johanna Mellis are co-hosts of The End of Sport podcast
