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The "union" of student-athletes at Northwestern is illegal, as those who still uphold the ideal of the STUDENT-athlete had hoped. The NLRB cited competitive balance and the falsity of the idea that scholarship athletes are somehow school "employees" among their reasons for denying the petition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/18/sport ... .html?_r=0

The Big South responded to that with a bunch of nothing stating that they "support" the decision, whatever that means....

http://www.bigsouthsports.com/entries/s ... b-decision

Personally, this thing the NW football team tried to pull would have opened up a HUGE can of worms. Is the union just for football, or does it apply to all teams within the athletic program? Is it all-inclusive, or would each team have to vote on whether or not to join? Would the union automatically be closed shop across the board, or would the union at each school have to vote on that? Would the union apply to the entire team, or just scholarship athletes? Would walk-ons be left out in the cold?

Best just to squash this now and be done with it. A student-athlete is at the school for the PRIMARY purpose of getting an education. Sports are merely a recreational activity and a tool to finance the education for those good enough to get a scholarship.

A student-athlete is at the school for the PRIMARY purpose of getting an education.

I don't think that's true for college football, basketball, or baseball. Maybe some other sports too. Certainly not true for FBS football and big time men's college basketball. My belief is that most of the guys playing in those sports would not be in college if they weren't there to play.

I have felt for decades that they ought to be considered student public relations workers and should be paid. To me if I got paid writing for the school newspaper there's no reason they shouldn't get paid for playing sports the school uses for public relations purposes.

The union thing is another question. But since I've been old enough to really think about it I've always thought that the idea that people like football players at places like LSU and Alabama are there because they want to be students is ridiculous. I think for the majority of them being a student is just something they have to do to play college football. And the ones who think they have a NFL shot have to play college football for some period in order to have a reasonable chance to do it. It's the NFL's developmental league. And yes I know most don't make it to the NFL but an awful lot of them think they can. Heck that's a big part of how LSU and Alabama recruit. They sell the fact that a lot of their players go on to the NFL.

For a rare occasion common sense was used