Do you like a good underdog story? David slaying Goliath? The Sox taking down the Yanks? Mercer stunning Duke?
If you do, then you must know who to root for in one of the most lopsided battles in sports history: Northwestern football vs. the NCAA.
Since I last wrote on this topic two months ago, the Wildcats pulled off a truly remarkable upset: The National Labor Relations Board determined that the Northwestern football players are workers.
Not that they can apply to be workers. Not that they can pretend to be workers. That they are workers.
Don't pop the champagne just yet. Yes, this is a major victory for college athletes, and yes, it's a massive plot twist in the "student-athlete" fairytale that fuels the NCAA. But if you think the NCAA won't fight this tooth and nail - if you think Mark Emmert won't breathe fire and destroy the Earth if that's what it takes to maintain his athletes' amateur status - then you just don't know the NCAA.
While there is a thorny road ahead for KainColter and his teammates as they attempt to form the first union for college athletes, the arguments against unionization are unconvincing. Here's what they boil down to: "Change scary. Unions bad."
"Nobody disputes college football players deserve scholarship guarantees, more flexibility to transfer, lifetime medical coverage for injuries suffered on scholarship and, yes, stipends to supplement college's hidden costs," writes David Haugh of the Chicago Tribune. "Nobody disagrees that the NCAA needs to be less tone deaf, more inclusive and respond immediately to the unrest reflected by the commotion Colter caused."
I'll tell you who disagrees: the NCAA. That's exactly why we're here in the first place. Labor movements arise when workers are being treated unfairly and employers refuse to make concessions. Don't try to tell me that, if only the athletes would quit causing such a hullabaloo and simply ask nicely for, oh, you know, some basic freedoms, this whole thing would be resolved. That's not how change happens. Not in a David vs. Goliath battle.
This is about much more than a few angry football players. It's about workers' rights, for one. Northwestern University is currently leading the appeals process against the players because, as Edge of Sports' Dave Zirin points out, "They are afraid that if the football players can unionize, then the graduate teachers, the custodial staff, the work-study students and the cafeteria workers will all say, 'If they can be a recognized union, then why not us?'"
It's also about racial justice. Over half of Div. I football and men's basketball players are black, and it's no coincidence that the athletes in those two sports are most heavily exploited. As Taylor Branch explains in his groundbreaking piece for The Atlantic: "To survey the scene - corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as 'student-athletes' deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution - is to catch the unmistakable whiff of the plantation."
I'm not naive enough to think the NLRB ruling will lead in a straight line to better conditions for big-time college athletes. Inevitably, unionization will create dozens of tough questions. But there is no viable alternative.
When questions arise, the two sides can battle it out. At least in that scenario, the athletes have a seat at the table. They might even get a slice of the pie.
So you know what? Take out the champagne. Sip to celebrate Northwestern football's inspiring achievements so far. Save the rest for when Goliath is finally slain.
Aaron Leibowitz is a senior who is majoring in American studies. He can be reached at Aaron.Leibowitz@tufts.edu.
