NCAA President Mark Emmert held his annual press conference at the men’s basketball tournament on Sunday, giving the NCAA’s face a chance to respond to the recent developments in the players union push. Needless to say, Emmert had nothing positive to say about the idea.
“To be perfectly frank, the notion of using a union employee model to address the challenges that do exist in intercollegiate athletics is something that strikes most people as a grossly inappropriate solution to the problems,” Emmert said, according to ESPN.com. “It would blow up everything about the collegiate model of athletics.”
The National Labor Relations Board recently ruled in favor of Northwestern football players looking to forma players union by stating they should be viewed as employees of Northwestern University. There are still some steps ahead in the drawn-out process to form a players union -- Northwestern players will hold a vote later this month to determine if a labor union will be formed to represent the players -- but the progress already made at Northwestern has grabbed the attention of players from around the country. The idea of new unions being formed may become a reality if Northwestern players do follow through with the concept.
Emmert acknowledges the NCAA has issues to address and stresses the organization is working to reform from within. In doing so, Emmert suggested a players union is not the way to go about fixing any problems.
“There’s some things that need to get fixed,” Emmert said. “They’re working very aggressively to do that. No one up here believes that the way you fix that is by converting student-athletes into unionized employees.”
The big question is whether or not Emmert is able to lead the NCAA to fix the system in place.
