|
« AAUP Homepage
|
College Athletes Seek Reforms
A group of current and former college football players announced in January that it has formed a national organization to push for reforms in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) policies governing athlete stipends, health-care coverage, life insurance, voluntary practice sessions, and earnings. The fledgling Collegiate Athletes Coalition (CAC) consists of about a hundred current and former members of the University of California, Los Angeles, football team, and hopes to encourage formation of chapters on other campuses. The organization is allied with the United Steelworkers, although it is not a union.
Contrary to widespread understanding, football players do not get a free ride through college, says Ramogi Huma, a graduate student in public health at UCLA and the CAC’s spokesperson. "We recognize that we’re very fortunate, but we earn our education through hours of mandatory and so-called voluntary participation in a sport; we risk serious physical disability, and we generate a ton of money for our schools," Huma comments. A former member of UCLA’s football team, Huma suffered a serious hip injury in his junior year and no longer plays football competitively. He has no complaints about his treatment by UCLA; the institution continued to give him a scholarship after his injury and even extended the scholarship for a fifth year so that he can get a master’s degree in public health. But he characterizes the NCAA’s financial rules as unethical.
The coalition plans to seek an increase in the monthly stipends that individual institutions give to athletes living off campus; the stipends are calculated according to an NCAA formula. Athletes residing in university housing are prohibited by NCAA rules from receiving any stipend or cash payments from their institutions. In addition, athletes’ annual earnings from work cannot exceed $2,000. According to the CAC, these rules leave some student athletes without enough income to meet their expenses. At UCLA, for example, off-campus monthly stipends are currently set at $820, but the CAC estimates that even a student who lives in a shared room and spends $150 a month on food would need $1,000 to get by. By UCLA’s estimates, on-campus students need $2,250 over the course of a nine-month academic year for transportation and personal expenses. Athletes are therefore left with a slight deficit even after they have earned the maximum income allowed by the NCAA.
Huma argues that the NCAA should increase the monthly stipend to the estimated cost of basic living expenses at each university and eliminate the annual earnings cap. The coalition also plans to push for full healthcare coverage during the off season and for medical treatment arising from voluntary summer practices. "These voluntary practices are effectively mandatory," Huma says, "and athletes should not be put at financial risk when they engage in them." The CAC also advocates an increase in life-insurance coverage beyond its current maximum of $10,000.
United Steelworkers has offered the CAC guidance on organizing and may provide some funding in the future. "We were contacted by a group of students needing help, and we saw that they were being exploited," says United Steelworkers spokesperson Tim Waters. "The CAC is fighting for basic things that we support: health care, small financial improvements." The union supports other student groups as well, according to Waters.
The alliance between the CAC and United Steelworkers does not presage a push for collective bargaining, says Huma. It would be difficult to establish that football players are employees, particularly because NCAA rules specifically stipulate that student athletes must not be paid to play. It is therefore unlikely that the CAC could become a formal collective bargaining representative.
|