But “disappointing” isn’t the same as “embarrassing.” Not being very good basketball players is one
thing; being narcissistic little assholes is something else again. The reason the Big Green’s hoopsters are in
the news, alas, falls into the latter category.
The players voted today (as I write this on March 5) to unionize
(!), thanks to a heightened sense of self-importance by some rather mediocre
athletes and a remarkably inane decision by the NLRB’s Regional Director, declaring them “employees.” All 15 players signed the initial petition to join Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union, and 13 of them voted to unionize.
The Regional Director in question is Laura A. Sacks of the Boston office. (Curmie believes
people who do remarkably stupid things in their professional capacities shouldn’t
be able to hide behind an important-sounding title. Walking lawyer jokes like Jake Krupski ought
to be similarly disgraced.) The decision
itself is inane on its face, but the rationale is even worse.
Here’s the decision; let’s look
at a couple of key points. First off,
there is no argument with the college’s position that financial aid is offered
exclusively on the basis of financial need; indeed, four players on the team
receive none, whereas one gets a full ride.
Athletes don’t get special housing or other such perks. Again, no one claims otherwise. A fall term message to players “encouraged” them
not to schedule courses during potential practice times, particularly between
2:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon.
Conversely, that message told players they should “[F]eel
free to register for courses in the following time slots: 8S/8L, 9S/9L, 10,
10A, 11, 12.” Here’s where Curmie’s
experience becomes relevant, because he knows what that means. About 90% of all the courses I took as an
undergrad were in one of those time slots.
Afternoons, certainly after 2:00, were almost always free. One doubts that much has changed, even given
the considerable interim.
Remember, too, that since Dartmouth is on a quarter system,
students take only three courses at a time, so there’s less likelihood of
scheduling conflicts at all; unless a particular course necessary for a
player’s degree plan was offered only in the afternoon and only during basketball season, problems are
rare if not altogether absent. It’s also
unclear why the team couldn’t practice in the evening, as there are multiple
places on campus with basketball courts, and much of “practice” is film study
or time in the weight room.
Also worthy of notice is the fact that NCAA and Ivy League
regulations prohibit teams from requiring too much practice time: “In-season,
student-athletes may participate in a maximum of four hours of CARA [countable
athletically related activity] daily and a maximum of twenty hours of CARA
weekly…. When a sport is not in-season,
student-athletes may participate in a maximum of six hours of CARA each week.”
Yet, curiously, Sacks and her minions based part of the
decision on the bizarre belief that athletes should be treated differently
because the demands on their time exceed those required of participants in, for
example, music, theatre, or journalism.
In a word, BULLSHIT. First off, those
activities are year-round; there’s no “off season,” and certainly no time cap. Curmie was required to spend more than four hours a day and more than 20 hours a week not
infrequently (especially but not exclusively during tech weeks) when he was in school, and he's certainly expected that kind of
commitment from students throughout his career as a director and technical
director in college and university settings.
The other variation on this theme was that Curmie realized
early on that if he was going to be an active member of the debate team, he was
going to have to spend a lot more than 20 hours a week. He opted instead for doing research to help
the team when he could, administering one of the divisions of the high school
invitational tournament hosted by the Forensic Union, and occasionally brainstorming
with more active team members. But those
active debaters spent dozens of hours a week working for the team. Same with the editors (at least) of the
college newspaper, the directorate of the radio station… the list goes on and
on.
It’s also frankly nuts to claim that the Ivy League is
taking students out of classes willy-nilly.
Virtually all league games are played on Friday night or Saturday. Wanna guess, Gentle Reader, how many road games
Dartmouth will play this year on a Monday through Thursday while classes are in
session? The answer is… wait for it…
one. Yes, one. Another came between the end of classes and
the end of finals. Yet somehow, we get
an official NLRB ruling with nonsense like “if, for example, the team is
traveling on a Monday…” Is Sacks
incapable of looking at a schedule?
Furthermore, there was no rebuttal to the coach’s testimony that players
sometimes missed road trips, with his blessing, because of class
responsibilities. In the Ivy League,
education matters more than sports. It
really does.
So the whole “taking them out of classes” business is
nonsense. Moving on. OK, get this: Cade Haskins, one of the
students who keeps getting quoted, says that although the college makes it
clear that “it is understood by both the faculty and coaching staff that class
attendance takes precedence over participation in athletics,” he often
prioritized basketball. The fact that he
can’t abide by the rules is an argument in his favor?
The precedent for this action is a decision a few years back
when the Northwestern football team successfully convinced the NLRB that they
were employees, but because they compete in a league that includes state
universities (Dartmouth doesn’t), federal law apparently makes it impossible for
the NLRB to make a ruling against the university in this instance. Of course, unlike Dartmouth or indeed any
other Ivy League school, Northwestern does give athletic scholarships, so, arguably,
players are indeed employees, doing a job in exchange for financial
considerations. Still, it’s ironic that
it would be Northwestern, a school far more noted for its academics than its
athletics, that would be the target for such a unionization effort.
There are more ironies at play, too. It would be impossible to name an athletic
conference that cares more about the importance of education relative to sports
than the Ivy League does, and there are few teams in any sport in the Ivy League
more inept than Dartmouth men’s basketball… well, with the possible exception
of Dartmouth women’s basketball. If
these folks are “employees,” Curmie would hate to see the amateurs.
Oh, but alumni contribute to the college because of the
basketball team! (Seriously, that’s an
argument!) Luckily, Curmie had put down
his mug before reading that part, or coffee would’ve come out his nose. There’s an alumni group, you see, Gentle
Reader, that contributed over $300,000 to improve the basketball
facilities! Curmie got a missive from
the alumni fund the other day. That
$300k for basketball would amount to about 7/10 of 1% of the unrestricted
giving to the college last year (that doesn’t count the tens of millions of
dollars designated for other specific uses.)
It goes without saying that the basketball team at Dartmouth
loses a lot more money than it brings in.
Don’t expect to see games televised except on ESPN+, and whereas
Curmie’s other American school (his MA is from a British university), the
University of Kansas, has sold out 16,300 seat Allen Field House every game for
the last 22 years, Dartmouth can’t fill 2100 seat Edward Leede Arena even half full
for Senior Night.
The fact that according to the NLRB decision, “[N]o current
members of Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team participate in NIL activities”
sort of tells it all. They’re eligible
to do so, but local businesses don’t care enough to pay them as spokesmen. Why?
Because they aren’t going to attract positive attention. Curiously enough, the “whiny loser” image isn’t
one that advertisers choose to foreground.
They’ll do their own ads or hire actors who know how to read a line.
But if NIL threatens merely the idea of collegiate sports as
we know them (see Curmie’s commentary here,
here, and here,
for example), the prospect of having to remunerate student-athletes will—nay,
should—spell the end of intercollegiate sports altogether. Many colleges are considering cutbacks to
athletic programs as it is. Curmie wrote last year that another Ivy League school, Brown, “had to cut some varsity sports a couple
of years ago: losing money on athletics was one thing; losing that much
money was untenable.”
Whereas part of Curmie says “Good!”, the fact is that
cheering on the home team is, or should be, very much a part of student
life. Curmie saw dozens of athletic
events—football, baseball, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, ski jumping—as a
student and doesn’t want future generations of students to be denied that
opportunity.
But if pampering a cohort of mediocre narcissists will cost
even more time and/or money than it already does, the tipping point draws
nearer. There are some outstanding
colleges and universities that don’t have athletics teams at all, or who play
only in Division III or the NAIA: Brandeis, CalTech, MIT, NYU, and the University
of Chicago come to mind. Brooklyn’s St. Francis College recently eliminated all its Division I athletics programs, citing
finances. Indeed, only a handful of
athletic departments break even; most lose millions of dollars a year, the
shortfall made up by increased tuition and fees borne by other students, a
goodly number of whom couldn’t care less about whether the basketball team is
any good.
It's also probably worth mentioning that the two players quoted in the Politico article linked above are, predictably, not among the
best players of even the remarkably unsuccessful team on which they play. They’ve totaled 153 points and 50 rebounds in
26 games (let me save you the math, Gentle Reader: that’s less than 6 PPG and 2
RPG between them); both have more turnovers than assists. They… erm… have little hope of a career in
professional basketball. Yet they seem to
be at the center of the self-glorification.
Figures.
To be fair, there will be appeals after appeals, and it’s
unlikely that college officials will have to negotiate for the services of
hoopsters in the near future. That doesn’t
make the initial Regional NLRB ruling any less ludicrous. Ultimately, the argument comes down to this: are
athletes are treated significantly differently from participants in other extra-curricular
(or co-curricular) activities? If the
answer is no, then there’s no case. If it’s
yes, then the rationale is that because jocks have been coddled in the past,
they should be even more coddled in the future.
Color me unimpressed.
Curmie is loath to quote Donald Trump with anything even
bordering on approbation, but on this one, he’s got it right. If these guys want to be considered
employees, the correct response is “You’re fired.” Laura Sacks ought to hear those words as
well.
No comments:
Post a Comment