Pulse of the Sports World
By Daniel Bornstein | April 10, 2014Since the National Labor Relations Board’s decision that Northwestern University’s football players are employees of the college and have the right to form a labor union, advocacy for collegiate student athletes has gained momentum. Many demands that are central to this movement appear to have little relevance to the scholarship-free Ivy League: compensation for players, scholarships that cover the full cost of tuition, funding for continued education and guaranteed retention of scholarships for athletes whose careers are ended due to injury. After all, treatment of student-athletes is on the national agenda largely because of the revenue-generating capacities of certain sports; the thinking has been that institutions gaining millions of dollars in lucrative television deals are obligated to the students whose performance enables such revenue.