Ramogi Huma is Founder and President of the College Athletes Players Association. Huma is a former UCLA football player who initiated/led the college athletes’ rights movement for more than 15 years. After witnessing the NCAA suspend his teammate for accepting a bag of groceries when he had no food, and after being informed that the NCAA prevented UCLA from paying medical expenses from injuries that occurred during summer workouts, Huma launched an advocacy group.
Today, in Chicago Ramogi Huma took the next step forward towards progress and social justice.
“The players need more than an advocacy group, college athletes need a labor organization that can give them a seat at the table. I’m here to announce the formation of the College Athletes Players Association, a labor organization dedicated to establishing the means for college athletes to collectively bargain for basic protections. I’m honored to serve as the organization’s President,” Ramogi Huma announced.
“This ends a period of 60 years, in which the NCAA knowingly established pay-for-play system, while using terms like student athlete and amateurism to try and skirt labor laws.”
Walter Byers, first executive director of the NCAA, serving from 1951 to 1988, invented the term student-athlete simply to keep Universities protected from paying workman’s compensation benefits, or wrongful death benefits. That’s all the phrase student-athletes means.
It’s just a legal definition protecting schools from being liable, and potentially sued by players.
In one of his final public appearances, Byers had a sort of Dr. Frankenstein level remorse for what he created, referring to the system which he had so much influence in building, as having a “neo-plantation mentality.” This is why we in the media need to abolish the phrase student-athletes.
Never repeat it!
I asked Ramogi Huma today at the press conference in Chicago about what terms should replace “student-athletes” and “amateurism” moving forward? Workers? Employees? College athletes?
“College athlete is appropriate, by law under the definition we also asserting that they’re employees” Huma responded.
“They’re not mutually exclusive, if a student is working a book store, they’re still a student, and an employee of the University.”
“Walter Byers, who built the NCAA, the architect who stood at the helm for over 30 years, he reported in his book, called ‘Unsportsmanlike Conduct’ how they saw all this coming, they knew they were paying players, but they wanted to wanted to avoid paying workers compensation, so they invented the term student athlete to skirt labor laws and this is the time when it all comes full circle, and the players are saying, well we do have rights.”
In the video below you can hear more Ramogi Huma today at the presser.
Ramogi Huma also co-authored groundbreaking studies that made national headlines such as “The $6 Billion Heist: Robbing College Athletes Under the Guise of Amateurism”. The study estimates that the fair market value of FBS football and men’s basketball players is approximately $137,000 and $289,000 respectively; and that the NCAA will deny these athletes approximately $6 billion of their fair market value between 2011-15.
Learn more about CAPA here and follow them on Twitter
Paul M. Banks is the owner of The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. An MBA and Fulbright scholar in media studies, he’s also an analyst for multiple news talk radio stations across the country; with regular weekly segments on ESPN, NBC, CBS and Fox Sports Radio. A former writer for NBCChicago.com and WashingtonTimes.com, he’s also been featured on the History Channel. President Barack Obama follows him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)