Picket Line at the Study Hall Part 2

Sports business writer Kristi Dosh offers some more observations on the idea of collegiate athletes forming a player's union.

Dosh notes some other pretty high bars the initiative would have to clear in order to become reality. One is the complexity of the situation, as well as the politics. First, the National Labor Relations Board would need to demonstrate political independence to approve the union -- and given that universities are fertile fund-raising grounds for political candidates and the universities don't want their athletes in a union, that seems unlikely. Even if they did, Dosh points out that later editions of the NLRB have been known to overturn what their predecessors did, so today's union could be tomorrow's memory.

Plus, any NLRB ruling would be limited to private universities. Athletes at public, state-run universities would have to navigate the regulations and filing process for their own state, or be involved in a case taken to the United States Supreme Court that would override all state legislation if decided in their favor.

But one of the major reasons schools will probably fight the idea, Dosh notes, is that accepting "student-athletes" as actual employees of the university will imperil the athletic department's non-profit exemption status with the Internal Revenue Service. All of those generous donors who help fund university athletics might re-think their generosity if their generous donations were no longer a generous tax deduction as well: "Sorry, coach. A million to the library is a million off my taxable income, but a million to you is just season tickets and a set of barbells with my name on them."

Dosh notes that Congress has traditionally bid the IRS and NLRB to keep their hands off collegiate athletics and the money involved (there's that donor thing again) and its members are unlikely to change now. My only caveat to her idea is that the unwillingness to change will last just as long as the revenue produced by siding with universities and their supporters outweighs the potential revenue from putting collegiate athletics on the tax rolls. Uncle Sam's pretty good at keeping an eye on that particular balance and knowing when it tips his way.