Four misconceptions about the realities of college athlete collective bargining

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Because I’m a Super Cool Guy Who Absolutely Knows How To Relax During The Offseason, I recently grabbed a copy of “Collective Bargaining in Professional Sports” by Scott Bukstein. I’ve spent almost my entire journalism career focusing on college sports, so I wanted a refresher on the history of professional athlete organizing, and a primer on the nuts and bolts of their actual CBAs.

Why? Because as college sports lurches through another series of “will they/wont they” with Congress, expensive litigation over athlete compensation regulation, and coaches bemoaning the state of college sports, more ADs, lawyers, pundits and activists will call for a college sports CBA.

Based on that book, my own personal experience being involved in labor organizing, and the years I’ve been reporting and covering this issue, I think I can provide a little clarity…or at least a new perspective, on some of the common tropes you may read about college athlete CBAs on social media or in other reporting.

I think this idea comes from a good place. It’s true, I believe an actual college sports CBA would provide meaningful structural stability that would benefit athletic departments, coaches, athletes and the industry as a whole. Many of the issues that now can only be solved by litigation or arbitration could instead be addressed via a CBA. That’s good!

And I also understand the human impulse to try and mitigate conflict. Conflict is often uncomfortable and unpleasant!

But take it from Marvin Miller, the legendary executive director of the MLBPA and the godfather of anything resembling an actual athlete labor movement:

The owners hated Miller. Hated him! As far as I know, Miller didn’t go out of his way to be an asshole. But his job wasn’t to appear reasonable in national publications, cable television or to be loved by management. His job was to improve the working conditions of baseball players. And that meant fighting.

An adversarial process doesn’t mean that either side has to be unprofessional, impolite, unkind or unethical. But make no mistake about it, institutional labor conditions aren’t gentlemanly disputes that can be easily solved over a 12-pack in an afternoon.

In a hypothetical college athletics CBA negotiation, representatives advocating on behalf of the schools absolutely are going to want to push for policies that will limit compensation to athletes. If athletes (and their representatives) aww shucks their way through that conversation, they’ll get steamrolled.

Management, whether you’re talking about college football, digital media, auto manufacturing or anything else, is going to bring in experienced attorneys whose entire job is to find ways to give labor less money. The only way through that barrier is conflict. When it comes negotiation time, you don’t want Mr. Congeniality. You want a mean motherfucker. Because the bosses are gonna hire one of their own.

This is a meaningful problem…but it’s also an issue with every professional sports union, and for that matter, most unions in general. As professors Robert Berry and William B. Gould IV stated in Bukstein’s textbook, “to suggest…that all players’ interests are equal and the solutions to their problems are the same, or even compatible, ignores reality.”

No matter how you create a bargaining unit, that group is gonna have players who want different things.

But it also ignores reality to suggest that any CBA conversation is just about money, or that solidarity is impossible.