The beginning of the end for college football?

“When people of privilege lose their privilege, it feels like oppression.”—Source unknown

 

It has been a tumultuous couple of years, and I am not referring to COVID-19.   Before the pandemic started, women in Hollywood discovered that they had an option other than a) shut up and take it, or b) shut up and quit.  A group that had been marginalized since anyone could remember suddenly put their collective feet down, and suddenly Harvey Weinstein is doing in depth research on a movie about prison conditions. 

Then, four year into Colin Kaepernick’s exile from the NFL because teams agreed that having a Super Bowl caliber QB who cared about social justice was a “distraction,” a Black man dies in police custody and now entire sports leagues are embracing Black Lives Matter, much to the chagrin of those who continue to think Black lives don’t matter but remain politic and silent.

The latest earthquake to shake up the fault lines of American society are the demands of a group of Pac 12 football players, who made a number of demands relating to player safety, working conditions, and social justice.  College football players have been fighting the system for years, struggling against the monolithic NCAA juggernaut for a few meager crumbs of the billions of dollars generated by an unpaid labor system.  They had about as much chance as a AA baseball team against the Yankees, but the tide may have turned.

Why might this latest attempt succeed, when previous attempts to gain power by unionizing and other form of organizing have failed?  One reason is success breeds success, and the players have made gains in the area of name, image, and likeness compensation.  The NCAA dragged its feet but had to take notice when California gave student athletes rights, but then Congress joined in and they had to at least give the appearance of capitulating.

But a bigger and more important factor is that the Big Bad NCAA doesn’t look so big and so bad when COVID-19 threatens the billions of dollars generated by the system.  Suddenly, strength becomes weakness; the prospect of losing all that revenue shows how terrified the colleges and the various conferences are of the loss.  After all, the students won’t lose any money because they don’t make any; but the coaches and athletic directors who make millions have a lot to lose.  And that gives the students power.

It's an application of the jiujitsu principle, allowing a smaller opponent to defeat a larger and more powerful adversary.  The schools in the NCAA have far more to lose than the students, and the students, sensing the fear in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the prospect of no autumn football, are taking the upper hand.

The loss of football revenue also revealed the importance of that money, as schools started shutting down non-revenue generating sports that lived only while football money was flowing into the system.  Universities needed football revenue like junkies need fixes.

Also, the power dynamic is different than in the pros.  If a sizable chunk of the Dallas Cowboys demanded Jerry Jones kneel for the national anthem, he could fire them all and find descent replacements.  But the bench isn’t as deep for college football teams.  If a coach has to replace a good part of his football team, he can’t poach players from other teams; all he can do is recruit hard for the next class (or start recruiting walk-ons from assorted calculus classes and anthropology seminars).  And who would want to go to a team likely to lose because of all those defections?  After a couple of seasons, he just might lose that multi-million-dollar coaching job and have to find work at a less prestigious college.

Aiding the students’ position is the fact that the NCAA is not really a monolith.  It turns out to have little actual power over the college landscape and has no way of reining in schools, especially those in the “Power 5” conferences.  The myth of NCAA power has been exposed as an emperor with no clothes, as each conference has responded differently to the pandemic, with no central authority asserting control. 

If you read a list of the demands being made by the Pac 12 players, it is notable both for its audacity and its circumspection.  These are not orphans asking for more gruel, please.  Who can argue against safety measures to avoid becoming victims of the COVID-19 pandemic?  Given support for the BLM movement, who can argue for increased financial aid for Black students?  Does it make sense to give coaches making millions per year a small pay cut that would contribute to social justice, increased player safety, and better working conditions?  Of course it does.  These aren’t a bunch of hippies taking over the administration building and demanding an end to the war; these are Stanford and UCLA students making reasonable and extremely feasible demands. 

Pac 12 college students are asking the questions that were asked generations ago by those same hippies: if not us, who?  If not now, when?