S P O R T S for about 85% of this one billion. As a nonprofit organization, the NCAA purports to focus “on cultivating an environment that emphasizes academics, fairness and wellbeing across college sports.” All of that sounds lovely, but something doesn’t add up here.
CHRIS CARROLL, CHICAGO March Madness is here! For one month, college basketball treats fans to one of the most exciting tournaments in sports, full of dazzling skill and dramatic upsets. Under capitalism, however, alongside all this excitement is a dark underbelly of exploitation. This is most readily apparent in college athletics and it’s even worse for women. However, there is a growing movement being taken up by the players to change this through trying to organize a union.
Big Revenue, Small Paycheck The March Madness tournament is the “property” of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which rakes in roughly one billion dollars annually from media rights fees, ticket sales, corporate sponsorships, and television ads. March Madness accounts
All of these proceeds are amassed on the backs of athletes who are wildly shortchanged in terms of compensation. Top football and basketball coaches can make up to eight or nine million a year. The schools rake in millions from TV deals and merchandising. But, after totaling the value of an average scholarship and room and board, universities spend around only $70,000 on athletes per year, little of which actually ends up in athletes’ hands. While players make steals on the basketball court, it is their coaches, university administrations, and the NCAA who thieve billions.
Gender Imbalance Millions of people love watching women’s sports as much or more than men’s sports. The gender imbalance in sports is cultivated by the owners of professional teams, the corporate media, and groups like the NCAA. March Madness is no exception. Up until 2021, the disparities for men’s and women’s
March Madness were extreme, as vastly different resources have been made available based on gender. The NCAA sells TV rights to men’s March Madness separate from all other tournaments and uses some fuzzy math to claim that the women’s tournament is a money loser. Groups like Our Fair Shot, made up of women athletes and coaches, are calling for more transparency in the profitability of these events, and also correctly point out people’s “preferences” are shaped by the fact billions more dollars are spent on marketing and promoting men’s sports. If the profit motive was removed from sports and they were run democratically by the players themselves, these artificial imbalances and divisions would fade away.
Can’t Rely On The Courts If the players wish to combat this exploitation and sexism, they will need more than teamwork. They will need to organize unions and build solidarity across fans, college communities, and sports communities. However, relying solely on the legal system is not the way to win union recognition across college sports. Capitalist institutions like the court system and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have consistently ruled against the interests of college athletes. Even when this pattern breaks, such as the recent Johnson vs NCAA case ruling that college athletes fit the definition of an employee and therefore have a right to an hourly wage and overtime pay, there is an entire maze of appeals that cost millions of dollars to navigate. The NCAA and its affiliated universities have more than enough money to tie up the most well-meaning cases in the courts. Furthermore, in an attempt to cut across
any momentum toward the recognition of student athletes as employees, the forming of unions, and the class awareness that could form in the process of fighting against their bosses–the NCAA adopted an interim policy that allows athletes to earn money from their names, images, and likenesses (NIL). This policy feeds illusions in entrepreneurialism and self-promotion, and affects only a small subset of the best athletes who have a better chance of making a living off the sport. But the vast majority of athletes never have that option. Neither college athletes nor any working people can rely upon the legal system, they must rely upon their own independent political power. The most surefire way to ensure compensation and the rights to collectively bargain for it is to get organized on the courts rather than through the courts.
Strike For Recognition In reality, workers do not need legal permission to form a union. Historically, the first unions were illegal but workers formed them anyway to address the problems of their daily lives. College athletes can and should do the same. Advocacy groups like College Athletes Players Association and National College Players Association should take an organizing approach rather than a legal approach. They should begin a determined, multi-school organizing effort based upon a bold set of demands around which college athletes could rally. Coordination among the established pro unions and the first handful of declared college player unions would lay the basis for collective, escalatory action that builds toward a strike. Such a fighting approach would be needed not only for union recognition, but also to force the exploiters to the bargaining table for a first contract. The NCAA, the universities, and the overpaid coaches aren’t playing games when it comes to ensuring their interests–neither should we! J
30% of LGBTQ People Live In A State With A Trans Sports Ban GREYSON VAN ARSDALE, CHICAGO In 2020, the Republican Party took an absurdly specific issue and started to run with it – thus began the crusade to ban transgender student athletes from participating in sports teams that correspond to their gender identity, under the guise of “protecting womens’ sports.” Idaho became the first state to ban transgender girls from participating in girls sports in March of that year, alongside other legislation preventing transgender people from legally changing their birth certificates. Since then, Republican-controlled states across the U.S. have eagerly taken up similar legislation. In 2020 and 2021, 83 such bills were introduced into legislatures. While many of the bills have failed, 18 states now ban trans athletes from participating in sports teams
10
corresponding to their gender identity, meaning that an estimated 30% of LGBTQ people now live in a state with a ban. The bans overwhelmingly target miniscule numbers of transgender student athletes. In Utah, the state’s ban – which has been amended by a court to allow trans athletes after approval by a panel – would only apply to one known trans athlete, according to the state’s school athletic association. Current proposed legislation in Ohio would similarly target six athletes. While there is little evidence that working-class people broadly desire these policies (just 8% say they’ve been following the news about it), the continued push by the GOP to scapegoat transgender people has had a measurable effect on public opinion. In 2017, 44% of Pew Research poll respondents believed that someone’s gender could be different
from the sex they were assigned at birth – by 2021 that shrank to 41%, and dropped even more sharply to 38% just a year later. Still, 64% of Americans favor protecting transgender people from discrimination, even as right-wing fervor whips support behind discriminatory policies like trans sports bans. Now, a growing number of trans sports bans are going beyond K-12 athletes and aim to exclude collegiate-level trans athletes as well. Texas Governor Greg Abbott vowed at a young conservatives conference in Dallas to ban trans women from women’s teams at the college level, after already passing a K-12 ban in 2021. Ohio’s revised version of a trans sports ban that failed last year includes a collegiate ban and was re-introduced to the legislature in February. Participating in high school team sports is linked to higher
self-esteem, better social skills, and fewer depressive symptoms. Students who participate in team sports also tend to perform better academically, and are more likely to develop lifelong fitness habits. Systematically excluding transgender student athletes from the teams that correspond to their gender identity not only compounds the bullying and harassment that many already face in their schools, but strips them of opportunities for development and growth. Increasingly, transgender students find themselves marginalized in their schools. Many of them are now banned from participating in sports, and other Republican legislative pushes aim to force teachers to “out” trans kids to their parents without their consent. Some states, including Florida and Texas, have already limited schools from teaching students about gender and sexuality,
further ostracizing transgender students. Despite this, there has not been any attempt by Democrats to implement legislation protecting the rights of transgender people. The reality, despite Republicans and major media outlets spreading misinformation about transgender people, is that the majority of Americans support protecting transgender people from discrimination. Teachers’ and nurses’ unions, parents’ associations, athletic associations, and student groups should publicly oppose trans sports bans and all other forms of transgender marginalization. Student activist groups in states like Florida have admirably mobilized to out-of-the-way legislative meetings to pack public comment, but this is needed on a much bigger scale to stop the right wing’s advance on trangender people. J S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G
