Skip Oliva on Letting College Football Players Unionize

A National
Labor Relations Board official has given the green light to
Northwestern University football players to form a union. The March
26 decision by the NLRB’s Chicago regional director, Peter Sung
Ohr, held that scholarship football players are “employees” for
purposes of federal labor law. While Ohr’s decision is hardly the
final word on this issue, it does accelerate the legal and
political battle against the NCAA and its century-old amateurism
rules. But, warns Skip Oliva, as long as the majority of major
football schools are state-run universities, the question of player
unionization will likely be decided on political rather than
strictly legal grounds.

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