STRIKE OR STUDY

His ruling may not stand, but the National Labor Relations Board Chicago director’s decision that Northwestern University football players can unionize could change college sports for a long time to come.

Say that the NLRB preliminary stand prevails, someday every college athlete, regardless of sport or sex, or attendance at a private or a public school would be a professional. Higher education institutions would become the minors for the NFL, MLB, NHL and so on and so on. There would be students and athletic employees on each campus. Maybe the union members would be required to attend class only because tuition was part of their pay. Would they even have to study and earn degrees?

Would Siwash U still live in the memories of old grads and their estate plans? Would alumni gather on Friday nights for pep rallies? Would famous All-Americans playing for the Packers or the Giants or whomever stand on the sidelines Saturday afternoons cheering on paid performers rather than undergrads?

Of course, everybody from local brew swillers to vintage connoisseurs will still go nuts when their squad wins the Lombardi trophy. Some will still go to the AAA ball yards to watch future big leaguers. And high school football in Texas will bring out rabid fans on Friday nights. Indiana high schools will still see their gym’s stands rocking on game nights.

But will college students, who have to pay extra student fees for game tickets, attach themselves to fellow “students” that draw paychecks for the supposed glory of Old Siwash? Would not the tuition-payers wonder whether or not the employee representing their would-be alma mater might jump ship for a pay hike? And parents --- those with kids making money while enrolled in college would be more grateful than present parents of sport-scholarship holders; those just paying tuition for a kid hoping to get a good job after graduation might feel different about laying out all that money.

So what? College sports, particularly big time football and Sweet Sixteen basketball contenders, already have national stars with followings not unlike those of National Football League luminaries and National Basketball League bling bearers.

Three questions:

·        Will fans dig deeper for higher college sports tickets?

·        Will alumni and alumnae still generate the same nostalgia for their schools?

·        Will paid athletes that don’t win jobs with professional teams after four years be left in the lurch?

Paying so-called students who perform in the athletic arenas – ones who probably will strike if their playing conditions and paychecks are not improved frequently – will drastically alter the way Americans have looked at college sports for more than a century now.

Professionalism will also turn athletic directors into a new form of entrepreneur. Head coaches, already making far more than their university-president bosses, probably won’t change as much, other than their attitude toward their charges, who will become more like chattel than future societal leaders.

Or – maybe, just maybe – universities that have actually paid off the mortgages on those giant stadia and field houses would revert to true amateurism in sports. That would prove refreshing. Young athletes could gain admission and then try to “walk on” to the pigskin squad and relish representing Siwash against State and the other teams in a regional conference whose name did not stretch geographic definitions.

Top players could still graduate into the pros.

That would refresh academe.