Football players at Stanford have organized a chapter with the College Football Players Association, which could be a significant first step toward athletes in the NCAA’s most lucrative sport unionizing in the future.
Others have tried, of course, and the CFBPA is not attempting to form a union at Stanford at the moment. But five years after the labor group launched, this is its first chapter led by active players, and it described the infrastructure as providing the “firm foundation for unionization and collective bargaining.” The CFBPA is hopeful the announcement Monday leads to similar organizing at other Division I football programs.
That could happen in the near future, according to Jason Stahl, the CFBPA’s executive director. The broader goal here is to give football players a real say in the decisions shaping the name, image and likeness (NIL) era of college sports. And the timing is certainly interesting, too, as a handful of U.S. senators keep pushing the Protect College Sports Act, a bill supported by the NCAA and many conferences but generally loathed by labor groups.
It’s impossible to separate any athlete organizing from what’s going on on Capitol Hill, especially with how the possibility of employment and unions plays into most — if not all — of these policy discussions. Just take it from Ernest Cooper, a redshirt senior linebacker at Stanford who was elected by his teammates as one of the leaders for their chapter with the CFBPA.
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“You see what’s going on in Congress; I think it’s hard when people who can’t relate, or try to say they understand the space, are trying to govern and put rules over you when you don’t have an ambassador at that table to advocate on your behalf,” Cooper said in a phone interview. “They’re trying to determine what’s right for us without talking to us.”
Late last week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he doesn’t expect a floor vote on the Protect College Sports Act before this session ends Aug. 7. And while that doesn’t mean a vote couldn’t happen post-recess, it does raise doubts about its chances of passing through the Senate — let alone the House — despite the legislation being driven by two powerful senators on opposite sides of the aisle: Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
In June, the bill made it out of the Senate’s commerce committee with a 19-9 vote. To that point, Cruz and Cantwell had a lot of control over its fate, seeing that Cruz is the committee’s chair and Cantwell its ranking member. But now the midterms are closing in. Soon, as Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, explained recently, focus will shift to campaigning, then to budget negotiations —- at which point the PCSA could run out of time.
A major hangup has been opposition from the SEC and Big Ten — the two biggest, richest conferences in college sports — which has led to ongoing negotiations with Cruz and Cantwell, along with Schmitt and Chris Coons (D-Delaware), the last original co-sponsor. Employment is not among the issues they are going back and forth on.
But ever since the bill was introduced, including a line about how it is “neutral on, and does nothing to alter, employee or non-employee status for student athletes,” employment has been a complicating factor for Democrats and Republicans, though largely for different reasons.
Many Republicans, in the Senate and House, want any sweeping college sports bill to bar athletes from becoming employees. That includes Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), a former D-I football coach who’s been pushing against the PCSA, according to multiple people familiar with his messaging to fellow Republicans. This is also a long-running goal for the NCAA and its schools.
On the other side, many pro-labor Democrats believe the bill could stunt future attempts to organize college athletes. Their argument: By giving the NCAA and conferences the antitrust protection needed to regulate compensation, player movement and eligibility without the threat of lawsuits, the PCSA would set rules that should be subject to collective bargaining, like in the NFL, NBA and other pro leagues. Then to take that argument a step further: If the PCSA instituted those rules along with antitrust immunity, labor groups would lose key leverage points. Why would college athletes unionize if they couldn’t negotiate over these issues?
Which brings us back to Stanford’s new chapter with the CFBPA. On Capitol Hill, its existence should only strengthen those sentiments on both sides.
Again, it’s not an immediate attempt to unionize. But a number of factors will determine whether that’s eventually possible. One, of course, is what happens with the PCSA. Another is the outcome of Johnson vs. NCAA, a federal lawsuit that is seeking employment status for college athletes under the National Labor Relations Act. And another is whether a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, which would almost certainly lead to a more union-friendly National Labor Relations Board.
The Dartmouth men’s basketball team began its attempt to unionize when Joe Biden was president. It then withdrew its petition with the NLRB a few weeks before Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
“Collective is what you eventually want to get to, one hundred percent,” Cooper, the Stanford linebacker, said of the long-term plan for his team’s chapter and the CFBPA. “You see the NFL and how they have their players association. All I want is for college athletes to not just get what they deserve, but to be protected while playing, too.”
The CFBPA is one of a few prominent college athlete labor groups. Others include Athletes.org and the National College Players Association, whose executive director, Ramogi Huma, led the attempt to unionize Northwestern’s football team more than a decade ago. But the CFBPA, founded by Stahl, is the only group that is solely focused on football players.
While Stahl’s ultimate vision is to scale this across the country, a more specific goal is to leverage Stanford’s chapter to get more ACC teams on board. Down the line, he hopes, ACC football players would collectively bargain with the conference over compensation, player safety and so on. If that were to happen, chapter leaders from each program would participate in negotiations.
The ACC, meanwhile, has been lobbying hard for the PCSA. The conference’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee recently sent a letter to a handful of senators stumping for the bill. When the NCAA and conferences select athletes to testify for their interests on Capitol Hill, they are usually involved with the advisory committee, which is an NCAA-sponsored program. And this letter, a full-throated endorsement of the PCSA, further illustrates the divide between the big-money sports and everyone else.
Of the 28 athletes who signed the letter, none was a football or men’s basketball player. It’s only reason one million why it’s difficult to govern D-I sports with one set of rules — and, to that end, one federal bill.
“If there is collective bargaining down the line, it would make sense for football to be the focus,” Cooper said. “It’s just where the most money is.”
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