Could the NCAA be done away with in the short term future? It’s a distinct possibility. With both Northwestern winning the right to unionize and the Ed O’Bannon trail against the NCAA getting underway June 9th, you have two landmark cases that will no doubt see their way up to the highest court in the land.
The loser of each, hopefully the NCAA each time, will appeal it to the Supreme Court.
I talked about all this at length and in detail on Sharp and Benning in the Morning 1620 The Zone, KOZN Omaha, LISTEN HERE
No one can say for sure where this is all headed. Let’s just hope we don’t hear any more ridiculous arguments like…”Dan Persa is a unionization expert, labor law authority because he’s from Bethelem, Pennsylvania and his parents worked in the steel mills.” Good god, I forgot where I read that crapola.
By this logic, the main character in “Flashdance” is a collective bargaining agreement specialist…”just a steel town girl on a Saturday night.”
The United Steel Workers…..PAID CAPA’S LEGAL FEES AND STAND BY THE ASSOCIATION AT EVERY TURN.
The NCAA could suffer heavy losses from both the NU case and the O’Bannon case, and the two rulings happening in the same era could be enough to cripple the NCAA cartel and it’s sinister sham of romanticized amateurism. The sinister lie of “student-athlete” went from bullshit euphemism to obsolete former buzzword yesterday.
The NCAA structure itself could be next, Here’s how:
The Northwestern ruling opened the door for private schools to unionize. Let’s state schools want to do the same. They would have to petition the state labor relations board. Let’s say they win. Now playing college football at a union-shop or at least union-friendly college football program becomes trendy, and the best recruits seek that out.
The Deep South and it’s arch-conservative politics have produced strong anti-union laws. How will that sit with the SEC? How will Southern lawmakers reconcile their conflicts? What if they can’t, and SEC football falters? That’s the NCAA’s biggest cash cow. If that suffers then the NCAA crumbling might be inevitable.
Of course, this is a slippery slope, the phrase that pays right now. Because no one knows what to make of this. Neither do I. It’s all unprecedented. However, the NCAA is in real trouble here and the NCAA knows that it’s days could be numbered.