Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="sun, post: 4658943, member: 11664"] IMO college athletes are not employees but are volunteers. But I believe that the players at schools can form an association without being employees as a Constitutional right. That shouldn't need a ruling by the NLRB to form an association. Their only bargaining chip would be to not play or to strike which could have serious consequences for themselves as individuals. They already have the right to transfer schools and the schools have the right to terminate individual scholarships. To consider them employees would be meddling and I don't see anything good that could result from it. Congress would need to step in to resolve the situation because I doubt that Congress would support a large scale movement of player strikes to demand compensation. If players want to demand medical benefits or injury compensation then I could understand that. As long as some players are willing to play without any scholarship or compensation then they're all just volunteers. Or else the NLRB can begin applying the concept of being employees to high school athletes too. It's a slippery slope but schools can only give compensation if they do it voluntarily. I don't believe the gov't should allow any school to be forced to pay compensation to athletes when others are willing to volunteer to play for only a scholarship or to be a walk on & play for free, like they do at Division 3 schools. At some point the system needs to build a firewall to prevent schools from being coerced by athletes and Congress may need to do it if the NLRB decides that they're employees. If groups of players don't want to play without compensation then that's fine for them, they can transfer to a school that will pay them. If a school wants to pay their athletes then that's fine too. But it should be up to the schools & not the gov't to decide whether they pay compensation or not. What will the NLRB want to do next, give injured players workers compensation benefits? [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach