I dribbled the ball slowly, with fierce determination. Standing in the mid-court circle, I heard the seconds count down in my head: five, four, three, two….I faked right, turned left and flung the ball toward the basket, a glorious Big Ten Championship to be won with my heroic shot.
The ball flew under the backboard and into the bushes behind the playground’s blacktop court. But it all being the fantasy of a 10-year-old, there was no limit to how many times I could repeat the process. And sometime over the next half hour the ball would tumble through the net and my future hoops stardom was assured.
Like many boys growing up in Ohio in the early 1960s, playing college basketball was the ultimate dream. And like most, the dream fell victim to the reality of limited athletic ability by the end of high school.
Those dreams crept back from the mists of my mind last week when the regional folks from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that Northwestern University football players were employees of the school who could be represented by a union. What unfair, exploitive, abusive suffering could have been visited upon the athletes at one of the nation’s most prestigious (and expensive) universities? Too many wind sprints? Food bad in the cafeteria? Beds lumpy in the dorm?
Please. I’m sure some athletes have bad experiences. But my observation of college athletes is that they have a pretty good deal. First, they get to play a sport. (They don’t “work” a sport.) They get special rooms, special food, special help with classes and homework. They don’t pay for anything. And, not to be discounted, other students think they are cool.
Rather than forming a union, the athletes should be on their knees in the chapel, thanking God for the talents he gave them and the opportunity to exhibit them while getting a free education. Even under typical union rules, it is permissible to be grateful.
We seem to have a culture where gratitude, sacrifice and loyalty are considered silly or old-fashioned. (Egads, I’m starting to sound like my father – or grandfather.) But really…if a coach had offered me a college athletic scholarship I would have followed him through fire and flood to help the team.
But at Northwestern, the boys are forming a labor union.
In light of this, I did some research to determine why Northwestern football players want to be represented by a union. My conclusion isn’t the same as the NLRB. I think the Northwestern players realize their “jobs” might be on the line and are looking for a little security.
DISCLOSURE: I am a graduate of the University of Illinois, which is a major athletic rival of Northwestern. We’ve not been so hot of late, but over our history we have five national football championships and 15 Big Ten football championships.
But I digress; Northwestern has a miserable excuse for a football program. The record speaks for itself.
The Wildcats (which are more like tabby cats) starting playing football in 1892. Most of their games have been played in the Big Ten Conference, traditionally one of the better leagues in the country.
In 117 seasons in the Big Ten, Northwestern won 259 games and lost 458. The Tabbies have a losing record versus every other Big Ten team except Indiana, which has not yet tried to unionize.
Northwestern played in its first bowl game (Rose) in 1948 and won. They didn’t play in another bowl game until the 1995 Rose Bowl, which they lost. They lost their next eight bowl appearances, but won the Gator Bowl in 2012.
It seems to me that if anyone ought to be forming a union, it is the rest of the students, who pay tuition and have to “win” on their exams to stay in school. They could demand to be paid to watch football.
No, I never amounted to much in the world of athletics. But for whatever little talent God gave me, I’m grateful. And I pray that unionizing football players develop some gratitude for what God gave them.
