Will College Athletes Unionize?

More than a decade ago, football players at Northwestern University voted to unionize under the umbrella of the College Athletes Players Association (CAPA). Their efforts ran aground when, in 2015, the National Labor Relations Board ruled against them, dismissing the athletes’ petition. However, with the advent of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) policies, new compensation rules putting millions of dollars into the pockets of collegiate athletes, there have recently been new attempts to put such young men and women into the ranks of unionized employees.

Unionization moves that look promising theoretically are running into barriers that may well be insurmountable. One would think that college campuses would be ideal grounds for expanding unionization to athletes, given that most colleges and universities are left-of-center politically. Most faculty members nationwide vote for Democratic candidates, the very politicians who are most closely tied to organized labor. Nevertheless, moves that may look promising theoretically are running into barriers that may well be insurmountable.

The failure thus far to organize collegiate athletes has little to do with ideology. While the ideological climate on campuses might seemingly provide fertile ground for unionization, the failure thus far to organize collegiate athletes has little to do with ideology. Furthermore, the advent of the transfer portal and NIL rules actually work against unionization.

Not long ago, the end of a season in college football or basketball meant that a coach would have to consider who on his team was graduating, who was returning, and which of the newest recruits from high school would be joining the team. Roster turnover was relatively small (unless a coach had a senior-dominated team), and athletes generally stayed with their program for four years.

There were exceptions. Some athletes who were good enough to play professional sports such as football, basketball, or baseball might “leave early” for the pros. After the National Basketball Association decided in 2005 that no player could come directly from high school, we saw the rise of the “one and done” phenomenon, whereby a superstar freshman would play one year for a college basketball team before jumping to the NBA.

While the “one and done” player still exists in college basketball, the rest of the scene has changed dramatically thanks to the transfer portal and NIL. For example, the University of Michigan’s entire ’25-’26 starting five was made up of transfers with only a year of eligibility remaining, which means that coach Dusty May will have to construct a new team next season despite winning the NCAA basketball tournament this year.

Furthermore, because of NIL, players often now transfer multiple times during their collegiate careers in search of bigger dollars. The University of Tennessee, for example, lost in the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament, after which a number of players, including a couple of starters, transferred out in pursuit of a bigger NIL payday.

This structure of negotiated pay, in which every athlete is a free agent, is not conducive to labor organization, which needs stability and structured pay contracts. For example, typical college football and basketball teams (to which most NIL money goes) will have huge variations in “salary,” with some players earning millions and others receiving nothing at all. This would not work in a union.

Another problem with the unionization of collegiate athletes is that, unlike what we see in the major-league professional sports, college stars are tied to different universities, not an overall single league. Take the NFL Players Association, for example. The NFLPA negotiates salary caps, rookie contracts, and other rules and policies regarding players, including concussion protocols and care for athletes after retirement. If the NFLPA were to call a strike, it would not affect just one team but, rather, the entire NFL. It would make no sense at all for, say, the Pittsburgh Steelers to go on strike and refuse to play their next scheduled game if no one else in the NFL was striking. The activities of the NFLPA are NFL-wide, not just representing one team or institution.

Trying to organize athletes across all sports would be a logistical nightmare. That kind of union organizing would not be possible in the NCAA, which has more than 200,000 athletes in Division I alone (with most sports running budget deficits). Trying to organize that many athletes across all sports would be a logistical nightmare and would not be successful, given that most athletes would have no bargaining power at all.

There is no assurance that unionization would make college athletes better off. Trying to organize football players alone across the NCAA would still be difficult, given that, in any one year, more than 30,000 students are playing the sport in Division I. Given the wide disparities of talent between these teams, unionization would mean a much lower NIL payday for the best players on the marquee teams. Moreover, these athletes—were the U.S. Department of Labor to classify them as employees—would not be “employed” by the NCAA but, rather, by their individual teams. Although NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has issued guidance that scholarship college football players possess statutory employee rights, the full NLRB has not agreed to give all collegiate athletes such a classification.

These problems don’t mean that no one is still trying to find ways to unionize college athletes. Four years ago, the question of “organizational” activities sprang up at Duke University, leading to administrative concern. According to a memo recently obtained by Sportico, university leaders were worried enough to hire the Proskauer Law Firm, which does work in labor relations, to assess the situation. According to Sportico, the firm did find potential labor problems:

On March 30, 2022 … Proskauer sent Duke’s office of general counsel a confidential, 46-page memorandum, a copy of which has been viewed by Sportico. The document offered an assessment of both the broad and specific risks that Abruzzo’s articulated position could create in Durham, including which Duke programs posed “the greatest risk of a unionization attempt.” The firm also provided a number of strategic steps the school should undertake to counter union activity, which included scrubbing certain language from its code of conduct and training athletics staff to “identify red flags for organizing attempts.”

The article went on:

Duke’s teams of greatest concern, according to the memo, were football, women’s basketball and men’s lacrosse—all “popular and prestigious programs,” but each flagged for distinct reasons.

For women’s basketball, the memo pointed to head coach Kara Lawson and her outspoken advocacy for gender equity, warning: “Perceived or actual disparities between the men’s and women’s basketball team could be a trigger for unionization.”

While the memo proved to be an interesting conversation piece, no teams at Duke have tried to organize. Even if they were successful at doing so, there is no assurance that such a move would make the athletes better off. For example, if Duke’s football team were unionized and the team called a strike before an upcoming game, then Duke would simply forfeit the game and have a loss on its record.

Furthermore, NIL funds tend to come from boosters. It is doubtful that the spectacle of players organizing teams into labor unions would entice boosters to provide more money, and such a move would probably have the opposite effect, leaving those unionized collegiate athletes worse off than before. In short, the players would be damaging their own financial prospects.

Although leaders in college sports have said that they fear attempts to unionize athletes at NCAA member colleges and universities, actually putting together successful unions would be a tall order for labor activists. Contrary to some of the rhetoric one hears, collegiate athletes are not slaves, nor are they being mistreated in the sports equivalents of sweatshops.

Collegiate athletic eligibility ends at four years. Athletes are not iron-workers laboring at the same place for a long portion of their lives. Instead, they are here today and gone tomorrow. While the language of organizing collegiate athletes might be couched in romanticism, the hard fact is that the situation is not conducive to union activity, and even the influx of large paychecks for some athletes won’t change that reality.

William L. Anderson is professor emeritus of economics at Frostburg State University and a senior editor for the Mises Institute. He has published in Public Choice, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The Independent Review, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and many other journals.