Alexander: Should college athletes be reclassified as employees?
The world according to Jim:
• This item sort of slipped under the radar Thursday, but it could help rock the current foundation of college sports more than anything we’ve seen in an already turbulent era.
The National Labor Relations Board’s Los Angeles office will pursue an unfair labor practice complaint, filed by the National College Players Association, against USC, the Pac-12, and the NCAA, who are described “as joint, statutory employers of USC football players, men’s basketball players, and women’s basketball players.” …
• The gist of the complaint, as outlined in a statement by NCPA executive director Ramogi Huma: “Coaches, athletic directors, and conference commissioners are making millions of dollars while NCAA sports denies athletes fair compensation, breaks minimum wage and overtime laws, and avoids workers compensation while hazardous workplace conditions remain unchecked.” …
• This is not, to be sure, just directed at USC’s treatment of its athletes. The ultimate aim is employee status throughout big-time college sports.
The Supreme Court’s 9-0 decision in the Alston v. NCAA antitrust suit last year, in which the organization’s restrictions on athletes’ compensation were smacked down, opened the door. That the NLRB decided there are grounds to pursue this case is yet another indication that drastic changes are afoot, and the phrase “student-athlete” – originally coined, remember, to circumvent workers comp claims – will go into the dustbin of history. …
• Additionally, an antitrust suit scheduled for the fall of 2024, House v. NCAA – and including among its signatories Oregon women’s basketball player Sedona Prince – not only seeks damages related to lost name, image and likeness payments before July 2021, when the NCAA allowed NIL to be more accessible, but also contends that college athletes should share in broadcast revenues.
Amateurism is on the clock, and time is ticking away. I’m not terribly broken up about it. …
• There is this, at least: The college kids won’t be signing decade-long (or more) contracts. …
• And didn’t Carlos Correa land in the perfect place when he signed his 13-year, $350 million deal with the San Francisco Giants this week? The player Dodger fans love to hate now plays for the team they love to hate. And they’ll be able to boo him through 2035, if he’s still around by then. …
• As of Friday morning there was one shortstop left on the market, Dansby Swanson, and there’s an interesting twist here. He just got married to soccer star Mallory Pugh, who is a member of the U.S. Women’s National Team and has one year left on her contract with the NWSL’s Chicago Red Stars.
Would Swanson make his free agent determination based in part on where his wife plays her sport? And if so, would Angel City FC be willing to do their professional sports neighbor a favor and try to trade for Pugh, just to give her husband something to think about? …
• Then again, Dodger fans seem fairly divided on whether they trust Gavin Lux as the Opening Day shortstop. The “do something – and make it big” crowd seems convinced that inaction at and surrounding the Winter Meetings translates to third place in the division behind the Padres and Giants.
To which I say again, relax. The Dodgers’ track record with lower-profile signings has been good enough to give Noah Syndergaard and Jason Heyward the benefit of the doubt. Youngsters Miguel Vargas and James Outman deserve their shot, and remember this: Not only does Andrew Friedman get things done late in the winter, as noted last week, but he also has been known to get things done at the trade deadline. …
• If he doesn’t? Then we rip him. …
• Was it just coincidence that on the same night that UCLA finally received the official blessing of the UC Regents to go ahead with its move to the Big Ten, the Bruins men’s basketball team smacked around one of its future conference foes by winning big at Maryland? …
• The tributes to the late Mike Leach, who passed away this week at 61 due to complications from a heart condition, mostly tended to focus on his intellectual curiosity and his willingness to answer just about any question, on anything, no matter how far afield from football it was. And maybe that was the point. The more he talked about other stuff, the fewer questions he had to answer about his team. …
• My favorite sample came from the 2016 Pac-12 media day, when someone – no, not me – asked him about the Pokémon video game in vogue then.
“Well, I’ve seen them (players walking around staring at their phones) for the last 10 years, but nobody talks to people anymore,” he said. “I mean, there’s people (who) won’t even talk face to face. They’ll go across the room and text each other. I think it’s actually kind of disturbing. I think the days before cell phones, when it was dirt clod wars at construction sites, was a lot more wholesome and productive to be perfectly honest.”
Dirt clod wars. Classic. …
• We lost another giant, this one in women’s basketball, when Billie Moore passed away on Wednesday night. She’s best known for her years coaching UCLA, and for winning the Bruins’ first (and to date only) women’s basketball national championship in 1978. But before that she did some of her best work at Cal State Fullerton, winning a national title – this one of the Commission of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women – in 1970, her first season as coach.
Her Titans teams also reached the Final Four in 1972 and ’75, and it was her work at Fullerton that earned her the position as USA Olympic head coach in 1976 in Montréal, the first year the sport was contested in the Olympics. She made a lasting impression on one of the co-captains of that team, Pat Head, who would go on to her own Hall of Fame coaching career at Tennessee as Pat Summitt.
And she had more time and energy for a young student journalist at Fullerton than said journalist probably deserved. Thank you again, Billie, and rest in peace.
jalexander@scng.com