March 27, 2014, - 2:58 pm
NLRB Northwestern Football Ruling is All About Race, Entitlements & Reparations
Yesterday’s NLRB decision that college athletes can unionize is all about race. And it is only about race. It is another promotion of reparations and entitlements for those coming out of urban America–most of them minorities. If White college golf players filed this case, I guarantee you the NLRB would have come out against unionization of college athletes. This is just another form of 40 acres and a mule . . . plus interest. To be subsidized by YOU.
Kain Colter, the former Northestern University quarterback who led the effort to unionize, is Black, and Peter Sung Ohr, the regional director of the Chicago NLRB office, is a career government liberal and an Obama guy. The decision applies only to basketball and football players, and those are both–in excess of 75%–dominated by Black athletes, who’ve long insisted they should be paid beyond the payment they already get: undeserved admission and four-year tuition to colleges for which they aren’t prepared, meals, gifts from boosters, and money for incidentals and tickets for their families.
The NLRB and the media are hyping the decision as appropriate for college football and basketball programs because they allegedly “make money” and “make billions” for colleges and universities. But that’s just not true. In fact, most college football and basketball programs operate in the red. Few make money except the ones at the very top, such as at my alma mater, The University of Michigan. And the NLRB decision doesn’t apply to public universities like Michigan. Northwestern University is a private school. For the most part, the football and basketball programs that make money are at public schools, with few exceptions (like Duke). (I predict, though, that eventually this decision will take hold and be applied to public university athletes, too.)
The decision was of special interest to me because I’ve written repeatedly over the last two decades or more that colleges and universities should get out of the pro sports development league biz. If you are struggling to pay tuition bills for yourself or your children, do you really think you should also be financing the developmental leagues for future millionaires to perform test patterns for current billionaire owners of NFL and NBA teams? Well, that’s exactly what you are doing. You are paying for the beta testing of wannabe pro athletes, most of whom are not that good and only a small scintilla of a fraction of which will every really play in the NFL or NBA.
That’s why it’s so ridiculous that these guys think they are so valuable that they should be allowed to unionize. In fact, most of these guys will end up making less money in life than a welder or a truck driver. And, yes, many welders and truck drivers are unionized, but welders-in-training and truck-drivers-in-training are not unionized, especially the ones who never make it to the job.
I’ve also noted over the years that, as a tutor for the University of Wisconsin Athletic Department when I went to Law and then Business School, the athletes are–for the most part–not real students and have no business in college. I can’t tell you how many Wisconsin Football players I basically had to rewrite papers for from scratch because these guys–most of whom emanate from the killing fields of America and just don’t have basic reading, writing, or comprehension skills–couldn’t string a complete sentence together. I also tutored hockey players–mostly White–and they were no Einsteins, either. Not even close. We already know how stupid and ignorant the college students, who actually got admitted based on test scores and grades, are. So multiply the stupidity quotient geometrically, and you get these kids who are called “student”-athletes, but aren’t real students at all. (I wrote about all of this in an op-ed piece in the Wisconsin State Journal, once I knew I was leaving town. I was promptly fired by the Wisconsin Athletic Department, and my life and safety were threatened by football and basketball players in the same way that Muslims do that to me, today.)
And all this begs the question about other sports and those who compete in them at colleges and universities.
Do lesbian sports, er . . . “women’s sports” get to unionize at colleges? They are like tiny ants urinating on the sidewalk. Nobody cares about them and nobody watches them. The few college men’s basketball and football programs that make money subsidize these butch chick sports. And these women definitely aren’t “students.”
The absolute dumbest athletes I tutored were the female ones. As I’ve pointed out over the years, colleges and universities eager to pass muster on “gender parity” and other stupidities of Title IX court rulings and federal regulations, will take anyone with a vagina and a pulse to field and compete on their teams for crew and other fake “sports” nobody cares about. You gotta regatta lesbiatta! is kind of the motto for desperate athletic department coaches and recruiters. A woman can have an SAT score of 500 and a GPA of 1.9 and get a scholarship to a college where non-athlete students are rocket scientists in comparison to these idiotettes.
But, even though the Northwestern NLRB case applies only to men’s basketball and football, federal law is not gonna dictate that only male sports can unionize. So women whose sports programs draw no audience will be allowed to unionize and demand pay that they haven’t earned. In fact, their scholarships and free food and board are bleeding money from athletic departments all over the country. When a Ford or GM plant does that, they don’t negotiate a union contract. They close the plant and give everyone a layoff notice.
As I mentioned above, college athletes get about $2,000 each for incidentals, and the schools fly in their relatives for visits, as well as flying the players home for holidays and vacations. Do your kids get that spending money? Do they get free trips for you or them, so you can see each other during the school year? Hell, no! Yet, you’re subsidizing this welfare benefit for these athletes, plain and simple. It’s laughable that these athletes–more than 90% of whom, again, are not nor will ever be good enough for the pros–have compared themselves to “slaves” and called the college sports programs “plantations.” It’s a four-year paid vacation to attend an institution they don’t deserve to be in, in the first place, under the ruse of being students AND athletes, when they are only the latter.
And if these scholarship “student”-athletes get to unionize, what about kids at school on music scholarships? They have to practice many hours each day, just as college athletes do. Are they “slaves” of the colleges and universities, too? Shouldn’t they get to unionize? The ability to unionize isn’t predicated on whether or not the employer makes money on your work or the product or service you provide. Profitability is only a negotiating point for a collective bargaining agreement. It’s not a prerequisite to organize to negotiate the contract.
The bottom line is that the NLRB is all about liberal appeasement of race merchantry. Nothing more. And these colleges and universities are hypocrites. The NCAA–populated entirely by liberal college and university members and their uber-lefty academic presidents–should welcome this decision, as the schools teach Race Card 101 in virtually every curriculum in every department. They teach that this kind of thing–Black athletes being given the gift of a free four-year (or five, in some cases) party courtesy of you–is the least you can do. And that you should do more. But even liberals have venal self-interests and financial bottom lines . . . when it comes to their own purses and wallets, especially at a time when the college degree is more worthless than ever and being seen more and more as a bad investment. And that’s why they are appealing the decision.
But, if anyone is in indentured servitude here, it’s not the athletes who get four years of the good hedonistic life, partying, pampering, sex with multiple groupies, and all expenses paid.
It’s the taxpayers, students, and parents, who subsidize idiots blessed with an accident of birth in being unnaturally big, tall, fast, and strong. You are subsidizing the NFL’s and NBA’s minor leagues.
And if student-athletes get the right to unionize, it should be at the expense of those leagues. Not you.
Since the NRLB is saying these are employees rather than students, it’s time for colleges to get out of the sports industry, as it has nothing to do with higher education.
Don’t expect college president geeks to give that up, though. After lifetimes as eggheads who aren’t “cool,” they finally get to be like Mark Cuban and Jay-Z and the Wilson and Mara and Tisch families.
And they won’t walk away from that willingly.
Sadly, neither will the tax and tuition payers who make this idiocy all possible.
If you root for your alma mater on the gridiron or hardwood court, you are part of the problem. The problem that the NRLB just exacerbated.
I think they should be paid. Then they can use that to pay their tuition, books, dorms. apartment, etc instead of the full rides and other perks they’ve become accustomed to.
Can’t have it both ways….
IceNoMore on March 27, 2014 at 3:04 pm