<![CDATA[Perhaps Dave Chappelle said it best:
If you look at the revenues coming in to major college conferences, it appears that they are indeed very rich. It's spawned increasing talk of wanting to get paid and an entire industry of "advocacy" towards a college players union and players getting paid.
However, no one has seemingly asked the most important question of all — what will the fans do if the union movement goes through and players push for pay?
Well, one university actually thought it wise to poll the public and the results beg more questions than answers really. Cleveland.com reports that a Quinnipiac University poll released on Friday shows the union movement is opposed by 55 percent of all Ohioans and paying players is opposed by 62 percent of people in the state.
There are two demographics that support the union movement, with self-identified Democrats favoring the move by a margin of 56 percent to 37 percent and the 18-34 year-old demographic in favor of it at a clip of 62-34 percent.
However, that just goes to show how extremely unpopular the move is with the general public at large. If the split is that wide in favor of it with 18-34 year-olds then imagine how wide the margin is against it in all other demographics? After all, you are talking about a turn of 21 percent from that demographic to the general public.
Now, sure it is just one state, but given Ohio’s heavy union presence overall it is a very important revelation to say the least.
While the numbers show the movements to be unpopular, it also begs a very important question — what happens to the sport if this movement goes through and the fans revolt?
Let’s not forget that just a decade ago, college football was nowhere near as popular as it is today in the sporting world. It was a distant third behind Major League Baseball and the National Football League. Today, it ranks as the second most popular sport (and by a wide margin) and it’s national championship game garners some of the highest non-Super Bowl ratings of any sport.
It’s been a steady TV ratings winner, with the initial BCS National Championship game in 1999 drawing a 17.2 rating and dipping below 14.0 just once since it’s inception. However, will fans tune in to see players who are professionals in every way but name?
After all, they have the NFL for that, right? College football will always have a built in fan base thanks to alumni and support in states where there are no NFL teams or professional teams to speak of. However, it’s been the explosion of the interest from casual fans that has been important to the growth of college football in every sense.
What happens if those fans are the ones turned off by the union movement and the direction taken following it?
Thanks to increased fan attention, better TV deals have been possible and donations have steadily increased over the years. As a result, budgets have gone up, stadiums and facilities are now hundreds of millions of dollar projects and yet student-athletes aren’t seeing benefits of that increasing pie…or so the union advocates would have you believe.
However, the general public seems to not be buying in to the efforts put forth by the union advocates. What is perhaps most interesting from the recently released poll is that 55 percent of Ohioans feel that colleges are losing sight of their academic mission because of sports.
Put in other words, major college sports are walking a very thin line between popularity and the tipping point of a backlash.
Combine the news that people believe sports are having a negative impact on a university’s mission with a very unpopular union movement and you have the catalyst to push football and basketball right over the edge.
What it also shows is the general public isn’t stupid. It knows the value provided by an education and it knows the economics of the sport better than either side will try to wax poetic on.
The one variable in all of this is what fans will do if the union movement actually goes through and they push for payment of players? No one is suggesting that it will be an immediate and visceral reaction, but when the entire industry is built on donor dollars, TV numbers and butts in the seats it is the people that have the ultimate power in this situation.
Given the ever-increasing competition for the sporting dollar, turning off a fan base with something that is wholly unpopular may not be the wisest move. In fact, it’s the one trump card that the fans have in all of this talk. If the fans vote by taking their sporting dollars elsewhere, the economic picture of the sport changes very suddenly.
So, what happens to the players when they finally start getting paid and they realize the vast riches that the National College Players Association won’t be there? All the CAPA and Ed O’Bannon lawsuit see are the dollars available right now, but they fail to understand that those dollars are finite at best.
What happens if fans start talking with their wallets and the sport doesn’t have the revenue it currently does?
If an athletic department can’t make payment because it doesn’t have the budget to do so anymore, how does that work in the favor of college athletes at all? Don’t think it’s possible? Ask yourself where the University of Wisconsin athletic program was in 1989, having to cut sports just to make a budget work.
Heck, look where Maryland is in it’s athletic budget right now. It is annually in the red ink, and a move to the Big Ten was largely agreeable to them because of the money it would offer to fix its budget problems and hopefully bring back the sports it had to cut.
Now add on paying players a good percentage of the pie before you take anything in at all and ask yourself how that model makes sense?
The point is, a college union movement has a lot of unintended consequences and one of the biggest could be a very negative reaction by the very people they depend on to even exist.
Could it be that fan sentiment —not laws, or “advocates” or judges — that stops the unionization movement in it’s tracks?
Perhaps both sides would be wise to find out if fans’ opinions will equal speaking with their wallets too. If so, the golden egg of increasing revenue may end up a mirage in the desert instead.
Should that golden egg dry up, then what? College athletes who are hoping to eventually earn six-figure salaries may be regretting pushing their sport over the financial cliff. As the saying goes — be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.]]>
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