At a time when there are far more important issues to address (one in particular), President Trump devoted time on Friday afternoon to a “Saving College Sports” roundtable.
Via Heather Dinich of ESPN, Trump said he plans to provide the universities with the silver bullet they crave.
“I will have an executive order within one week, and it will be very all-encompassing,” Trump said. “And we’re going to put it forward, and we’re going to get sued, and we’re going to see how it plays, OK, but I’ll have an executive order which will solve every problem in this room, every conceivable problem, within one week, and we’ll put it forward. We will get sued. That’s the only thing I know for sure.”
The notion that college sports need to be saved is dubious to say the least. But that’s how things currently work. Concoct a crisis, and then try to fix it in a way that undercuts one of the key constituencies.
The truth (a slippery concept in the modern age, I know) continues to be simple and undeniable. For decades, big-time college sports blatantly violated federal antitrust laws by banding together under the umbrella of the NCAA. They fixed labor costs by creating phony rules that prevented them from giving players true value for their skills, abilities, and sacrifices. They twisted the concept of free labor into a free education, which created a gross imbalance between what the schools earn and what they pay to those who generate the revenue.
With the entire NCAA system now exposed for the inherently corrupt operation that it is, a perception of chaos has emerged. It could be fixed quickly with a nationwide union and a multi-employer bargaining unit that all NCAA members accept.
But the powers-that-be don’t want collective bargaining, because collective bargaining creates a two-way street. The schools want a unilateral solution, one that allows them to impose rules regarding payment and transfers without the annoying realities of the players having a real voice.
The companies that call themselves schools have failed to get what they want from Congress or the courts. So now they’ve made an end run to the nation’s College-Football-Fan-In-Chief, hopeful that he’ll solve the trumped-up calamity by giving the schools the benefits of collective bargaining without exposing them to the responsibilities of sitting across from a union and hammering out fair workplace rules in return.
Through it all, the athletes have no voice. No representation. And no one seems to care.
Is this what we’ve become? A nation full of rich and powerful interests that can escape the traditional methods of dealing with employees by appealing to a chief executive who believes that, with the EKG-style stroke of his pen, he can let them reclaim control over the workforce while leaving the workers with diminished rights, revenues, and freedoms?
Maybe it is. Either way, the efforts of the executive branch would seem to be better devoted at the present time to ensuring that a war of choice doesn’t spiral into a World War of consequence.
