The Guardian
Canceling the college football season is about union failure, not health
On Tuesday, two of the largest college sports conferences canceled their fall seasons. The move speaks of a fear of player power rather than Covid-19.On the night of Sunday 9 August, in the birth of an alliance between WeAreUnited, a faction of players who threaten to withdraw their jobs without improving working conditions, and WeWantToPlay, a lobbying group to play, college football players in the US have said they want to play this season, but want to play on the condition that they “eventually create an association of college football players.” As Hunter Reynolds of the University of Michigan and College Athlete Unity (CAU) told us, “We all want to play the sports we have practiced all our lives, we just want to do it in an environment that is as safe as possible. And I think union talks are something that has been talked about since the Northwesterners tried union years ago. “Within 12 hours, reports swirled that the Big Ten was canceling its fall season and most of Power’s other conferences. Five – the biggest and richest in college sports – were considering following suit. The college sports governing body, the NCAA and members of the Power Five had to cancel their college football season in March. Instead, they forced thousands of players return to campus for training during the spring and summer, exposing them to the threat of Covid-19, a virus that to date has killed more than 160,000 Americans and 730,000 people around the world. numerous Covid-19 outbreaks in football programs in the US, in early August, much of the Power Five remained committed to preserving the season. Until this week, when impr obviously they didn’t. While our understanding of the virus hasn’t changed significantly in the past few weeks, one important variable has been: Soccer players across the nation have courageously mobilized for more control over their working conditions Canceling the season has less to dealing with athlete safety and more. it has to do with anxieties about the mass organization of collegiate athletes. As UCLA defensive lineman Otito Ogbonnia, a prominent WeAreUnited member and signatory of a recent letter to PAC-12 Commissioner Larry Scott, told us, “It’s hard to guess what anyone else is thinking, but it seems like the conferences have basically decided to succumb to all the challenges of the virus and now they face the threat of a union or association of players. ”It has long been clear that the cancellation of the football season is a crucial and necessary decision. said one SEC player who asked to remain anonymous, “Almost everyone I know seems to be playing a game of chicken. Everyone is too scared to say that it is not safe or pointless to play, and I feel that those who think that continuing to play football is safer for them are simply falling into a false narrative developed by the schools. ”He added, “Do you want us to get into an all SEC program? You must be tall. 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. ”Nonetheless, the NCAA’s college athletics directors, mostly Whites and coaches have requested that the majority of the black workforce be on duty in recent months. As a result, we have seen a number of inspiring movements in player leadership and organization. Take, for example, Big Ten’s College Athlete group. Unity, which has more than 1,000 members fighting for changes in athletes’ working conditions within a system that continues to exploit them. Or there is the even more radical PAC-12 WeAreUnited group, which boldly presented a set of demands to protect scholarship and passing athletes, effectively setting the stage for a workers’ strike in college football. Working together to ge Collectively ning claims and consistently claiming a seat at the table, BigTenUnited and WeAreUnited both handle the promise of a union in college football. This isn’t the first time unionization has arisen in college football. Between 2013 and 2015 the Northwestern University football team attempted to unionize led by then quarterback Kain Colter. However, the scale this time around is profoundly different: thousands of athletes across the country are demanding fundamental rights long denied them. This even thrilled Colter himself: “College athletes across the nation have been authorized to demand adequate protection and working conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said Tuesday evening. “They have resisted powerful monetary interests that seem determined to keep college football without regard for the health of the athletes. These actions required an enormous amount of strength, courage and solidarity; I admire them very much for this. Additionally, CAU, BigTenUnited and WeAreUnited are gaining support from media, academics, and even contingent faculty unions from major universities such as Duke and UCLA. Rather than go it alone, a challenge Colter himself suggested was fatal in Northwestern’s push, we’re seeing college players calling for massive reform in the NCAA, starting with the right to fair representation. As UCLA player Ogbonnia explained to us, “It is not easy to put everyone on the same line, but we have a responsibility to unite as a trade union movement to make things better for each other and for the players who come after us. . We are demanding only the most basic rights that every person in this country deserves. “In response to requests from BigTenUnited, WeAreUnited and WeWantToPlay, and when the news came that the PAC-12 and Big Ten conferences are canceling sports this fall, what it was unlikely a week ago suddenly seems inevitable. College football season is likely to be canceled. But why now? Rumors suggest that the real motivation behind the imminent decision to cancel is fear of the athlete’s organization. confirmed by PAC-12 Commissioner Larry Scott’s reluctance to negotiate with student organizers about their openly “eye-opening health issues.” For Power Five schools used to having their pockets stuffed with unpaid athletic work, the threat of virus pales alongside the specter of a labor movement, but the cancellation of the season is also a severe blow to the organization of and players as it eliminates leverage. of a potential work 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 a few weeks before the season starts – cannot and should not be confused with concern for player health. . Soccer programs made it abundantly clear this summer that they view the lives of college football players with callous contempt. While there are clearly other factors schools are weighing on, such as accountability issues, the sudden urgency suggests that an anti-union imperative has tipped the scales toward cancellation. What we are seeing is a change in tactics that varies from conference to conference. The thought for each probably goes something like this: If the season is preserved, athletes will undoubtedly get sick (the SEC confirmed this in a leaked call with player representatives). When this inevitably happens, it gives players more power to push back, thus gaining momentum as a union and ensuring that athletic departments yield on important issues. Is it any surprise that the SEC, the conference with the fewest rumblings at work, is also the least likely to cancel despite “sobering” medical advice from doctors? As the Big 12, the ACC, and the SEC move forward, it appears their calculation is that the risks of a trade union uprising are offset by the revenue to be collected. In the PAC-12 and Big Ten, however, where WeAreUnited and BigTenUnited were born, the analysis seems to have tilted in the opposite direction. It’s pretty clear what’s going on: in the last two conferences, the same health and safety concerns that catalyzed this movement are now being deployed to dismantle it. Cancellation is not a unique anti-union tactic in college football. In fact, Walmart was reportedly closing stores in California to prevent workers from joining the union. Kumho Tire threatened closure to prevent employees from forming a union in 2017. The Sandals vacation company was accused of this tactic in 2016. There is also a long history of companies that have also used the threat of closure or termination. operations to dismantle union efforts. PAC-12 and the Big Ten are taking a page out of this anti-syndicate playbook. In response, the WeAreUnited and WeWantToPlay alliance is a strategy to counter by strengthening the 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 messages were the same, they were just being conveyed in different ways.” The challenges of supporting solidarity in the face of cancellation will be immense. College football is a great work environment in part because of the wear and tear inherent in the business. Players don’t play long enough to develop the kind of deep solidarity often needed in organizing work. There is pressure to maximize performance as long as they can to catch the eyes of professional scouts. These structural dynamics militate against trade union activism and solidarity and the cancellation of the season will only soften the rare spirit of collective action that has formed. of players in the United States need to double the organization, deepening the bonds that will bind them for the next confrontation. 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 need to focus on building the solidarity needed to challenge their employers. that destroy the unions. Now is also the time for the rest of us to turn our backs. They will need help and they deserve it. * Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Derek Silva and Johanna Mellis are co-hosts of The End of Sport podcast
