College Football Case Study

College Football Case Study

A regional director of the National Labor Relations Board made the ruling that a group of Northwestern football players were employees of the university and hence they had a right to form a union and hence be able to have a collective bargain. There are several benefits that college athletes may receive as a result of joining a union. First of all the college athletes normally dedicate and devote a lot of their time to football. some of them spent almost 50 hours in some weeks just in practice which is a lot of time compared to the time the normally spent in class.in fact they even spent more hours as compared to the undisputed full time employees working at their jobs. Therefore if these college students join a union they can easily be able to bargain for better healthcare as well as limited practice hours as a group. Secondly there is a lot of control that is exerted by coaches and the scholarships that the students get for being athletes. This means that they see themselves as owing the teams a lot and hence they can not afford to make any mistake .this makes the coaches control them so much especially when it comes to their studies. When the students join a union they will be able to voice out their issues regarding the overbearing coaches and hence can play football and study well at the same time.

A drawback of students joining a union is the fact that they will now be taken as employees which is not the case.

Some time back in 2004, NLRB had ruled that graduate assistants at Brown were primarily students and had been denied the petition to unionize. This however was not applicable to football players since their role as athletes was separate from their roles in academic. If the ruling by NLRB stands it come with some implications to the college athletes. This ruling could give momentum to those who hold the belief that the N.C.A. A require to make modifications to how they normally compensate their athletes. Therefore this ruling has a potential of making it possible for some the athletes to get some of the things they have long petitioned for such as better healthcare and limited practice hours. On the other hand its is not clear whether students under scholarships that take part in nonrevenue sports will benefit from this ruling.it therefore means that this ruling will only benefit some scholarship students while it would not make any difference in the lives of some of them.