The book’s conclusion is already known.
College sports will be acknowledged as people of their institutions, as well as likely their meetings and the NCAA. They will then be compensated for their workers.
Could a school “skip away” and declare that its athletes are staff members?
It might appear ridiculous. Schools are obligated by NCAA and event rules that prohibit members from participating in pay-for-play events. Another obstacle is express NIL rules. They forbid paying school sports in exchange for participating in a game.
But when the alternatives are taken into account, “skipping back” might not be so improbable.
The process of obtaining jobs as a university athlete goes through the courts. Given the deliberate rhythm of the court, the speed limit is set low on this winding path.

There are three conflicts going on right now. Recently, Dartmouth men’s hockey players persuaded an Employer regional director that they are personnel in accordance with the National Labor Relations Act. The board of directors of the agency will hear Dartmouth’s elegance, and a U.S. Court of Appeal and the US Supreme Court may follow suit. An NLRB administrative law judge in Los Angeles is examining the employment status of USC men’s sports, women, and football players. Eventually, authorities could examine that. Johnson v. NCAA is another case. According to the Fair Labor Standards Act, a federal law that mandates companies pay overtime pay and the minimum wage, including for work-study individuals employed by universities, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is deciding the normal to determine whether college players are staff.
The NCAA and its people have day on their side, on the one hand. Several sessions of judicial review may be conducted in each of these conflicts. It’s possible that finality wo n’t appear for several years. For the foreseeable future, a school could do nothing on the employment front ( aside from paying attorneys and lobbyists to fight employment ).
On the other hand, the plaintiffs ‘ early results are nothing short of frightful. The same concept is being repeated: Because schools control the life of sportsmen like employees, they are employees. This is true whether the federal prosecutor is Republican or the NLRB official is Democrat.
The NCAA and schools are equally concerned about outright failures of steadfast mechanisms. Brett Kavanaugh of the conservative U.S. Supreme Court and Jennifer Abruzzo, the liberal general counsel for the NLRB, have criticized colleges ‘ claims that they should n’t be required to pay athletes because they are amateurs and because colleges have adopted rules prohibiting them from doing so.
Similar to this, institutions that are allegedly losing money on sports do not necessarily mean that the athletes are not employees; rather, employees of a failing company are also employees. Colleges have also been parried as factually suspect (schools find ways to pay coaches high salaries and build expensive facilities ) or as legally irrelevant ( the duty is on the school—not the players or the court—to figure out how to comply with all laws ). These colleges have warned that they ca n’t afford to hire the labor—the athletes—and that Title IX compliance would raise labor costs. It is possible for colleges to turn collegiate teams into team teams without paying the athletes a salary, but this does not imply that they are not employees.

Regarding NCAA leader Charlie Baker’s idea that colleges pay players directly, it is both a novel idea and helpful proof for players ‘ lawyers to use in work disputes. After all, it ca n’t be all that bad for college sports if the NCAA president supports some form of pay-for-play.
The defendants, particularly in Johnson, may be concerned about the possibility of judicial discovery. Since the Third Circuit’s dental debate on whether U.S. District Judge John Padova was wrong to conclude that amateurism does not shield the NCAA and universities from the FLSA, more than a year has passed. When Padova rejected the NCAA’s action to ignore in 2021, he made that decision. The longstanding judge, who was appointed to the chair in 1991 by President George H. W. Bush, emphasized how widely the word “employer” should be used. In an FLSA case involving unpaid student interns ( Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures ), Padova also used the “primary beneficiaries” multifactor test, which focuses primarily on the economic relationship between employer and employee, to determine that the players had demonstrated sufficient merit for further review.
NCAA regulations requiring school athletes to signal timesheets as if they had a job are among the factors Padova found to be suggestive of an employment relationship. Athletes who put in roughly 40 days (occasionally more ) per week for activities were also regarded as important. Padova also emphasized how staff obligations affect athletes ‘ choice of courses, indicating that they are more athlete-students than student-athletes. A multibillion dollars school sports business is even supported by athletes.
If the Third Circuit agrees, Padova will be tasked with overseeing pretrial discovery and the situation will go back to him. According to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, accused colleges would probably be required to inform current and former students that they might be involved in a proposed course action. In contrast to competitive cases, where, for instance, broadcast contracts can be sealed, FLSA discovery is also more widely known. FLSA is about the less glitzy, day-to-day interactions between employees and businesses. In order to achieve this, coaches and school administrators may be required to respond to challenging oath-taking questions about the connection between athletes and the institution. Their responses may probably be made public in court documents.
For schools and their officials, none of this is encouraging information. They may bet on the possibility that Congress will enact legislation stating that college athletes are not employees. There has n’t been a shortage of Congressional hearings on employment and NIL. However, not a single act has been approved by the committee, and that is unlikely to change in the upcoming election.
Would that declaration apply to both the NLRA and FLSA even if Congress passed legislation stating that college athletes are n’t employees? Would this law prevent state employment laws, or says ‘ rights, and then be able to withstand inescapable legal challenges to that preemption’s legality? Would the laws be able to tolerate a challenge to the Equal Protection Clause made along the lines of Paul McDonald, the plaintiffs ‘ attorney for Johnson? Waiting for Congress to intervene is fraught with uncertainty.
So maybe it’s not too far-fetched for one school president to declare that the athletes in their plan are people and say,” Enough is enough.”
Some people may applaud this chairman for adopting a forward-thinking and labor-friendly stance. Additionally, the senator may receive a lot of media attention and possibly increase their school’s admissions and students fundraising efforts. According to polling information, the majority of the government would support immediate settlement of runners by their colleges, according to a joint study conducted by Sportico and The Harris Poll last month. Past would at the very least recall this leader.
On the other hand, a fatal fallout might wheel. The NCAA and the college’s conference have the authority to suspend or eliminate the school, declare all teams and players unsuitable, and also file a lawsuit against the institution for contract violations. The board of trustees might disapprove of such a bold and disruptive action if it was n’t part of the president’s decision. Perhaps the committee decides to remove the president. Although pay-for-play is currently taking place through NIL collectives and, damningly, no state official has taken action to prevent a home school from gaining an advantage in recruiting, the president could have also ordered their college to violate state laws prohibiting it.
Do the NCAA, however, engage in another constitutional battle? Johnson, the In Re College Athlete NIL Litigation, Ohio v. NCAA, Tennessee &amp, Virginia, Carter, and Hubbard against the NCAA are all issues that the organization is currently facing. A case centered on penalizing a college for giving young people the minimum wage does n’t seem to be winning in terms of public relations either.
Unfortunately, college performer work and unionization are likely the NCAA’s future paths. Rules that are then free from competitive scrutiny may be negotiated by the NCAA, conferences, and colleges as a whole. For paid salaries, unshared TV income, lost NIL and video game options, and other business activities prohibited by sportsmanship, the NCAA may still owe money to current and former players. However, college activities had restart. We’ll have to wait and see if that change can be pushed by a judge or an astute university president.