Aug. 18--A week into fall camp, Northwestern already is 1-0.
The National Labor Relations Board's decision to dismiss a union election petition means NU's long, national nightmare is over. Think that's putting it in overly dramatic terms? Maybe.
But do you recall what coach Pat Fitzgerald told the Tribune in February, following his team's woeful 5-7 season?
"I don't think any team dealt with a bigger distraction than we did a year ago," he said. "We dealt with it fine, but I think it hurt our team's performance on the field. Why do I feel that way? It's a huge allocation of time. We only have so many hours to be with the guys, and we were taking the time to educate them on situations that had nothing to do with football. For me, that's the biggest tragedy for those seniors. Tragedy is a hard word, but that group will never get that time back."
The Kain Colter/College Athletes Players Association movement had and still has good intentions, namely long-term health care and an educational trust allowing players to return to campus long after their eligibility expires.
The union movement prodded the NCAA and university presidents to finally grant student-athletes stipends, unlimited meals, four-year scholarships (some schools, including Northwestern, already offered those) and representation on the NCAA's autonomy committee.
But the feeling here always has been the student-athletes are not employees.
Can they or should they be fired for poor performance? No.
Should their scholarship package be taxed? No.
Can they be traded, like professional athletes? No.
The only downside to this decision is that Fitzgerald and athletic director Jim Phillips will never know if they successfully persuaded football players to vote against unionizing. I'm 80 percent certain that the vote would have been no, but we'll never know for sure. The votes will be destroyed.
Colter, a former NU quarterback, got 30 percent to sign union cards before NU players heard the flip side of the argument. CAPA would have needed a majority to vote yes to unionize.
Leaders of the 2014 team, namely Trevor Siemian, Brandon Vitabile and Kyle Prater all spoke out against unionizing. Fitzgerald will have to settle for the knowledge that his veteran players had more faith in him than CAPA to treat student-athletes with the fairness they deserve.
tgreenstein@tribpub.com
