As some who deals with college athletic budgets all the time, people would be shocked to learn that colleges lose tens of millions on sports yearly.
Coaches make money on them--no one else does.
But the ruling itself was horrendously bad reasoning. I'd like to see where the labor official got his law degree. The ruling had holes I could drive a truck through.
Here's the official who made the ruling. "Athletes are not like other students performing a service for scholarships because":
1. "In finding that they [Brown graduate instructors] were “primarily students,” the Board held that “students serving as graduate student assistants spend only a limited number of hours performing their duties, and it is beyond dispute that their principal time commitment at Brown is focused on obtaining a degree and, thus, being a student.”
He claims football players spend 40 hours a week at practice. I think this is against NCAA rules. Regardless, grad instructors at many universities teach 2 classes a semester, and they are told that each class takes about 20-25 hours. I think the official is just plain wrong about time constraints. Teaching may actually require more time.
2. "(1) the graduate assistants received the same compensation as the graduate fellows for whom no teaching or research was required; and (2) the graduate assistants’ compensation was not tied to the quality of their work. Unlike the graduate assistants, the facts here show that the Employer never offer a scholarship to a prospective student unless they intend to provide an athletic service to the Employer. In fact, the players can have their scholarships immediately canceled if they voluntarily withdraw from the football team."
Scholarships are given to other non-athletes all the time. And, grad assistants' scholarships are tied to the quality of their work. Students who can't teach do not have their scholarships renewed. It happens all the time. In science heavy disciplines, I'm sure there are research TAs to whom teaching is not the service rendered, but even then, they have to perform their lab duties satisfactorily. If a TA refuses to teach (i.e. drops off the football team) his scholarship is revoked.
3. Here, the Employer’s scholarship players are in a different position than the graduate assistants since the academic faculty members do not oversee the athletic duties that the players’ perform. Instead, football coaches, who are not members of the academic faculty, are responsible for supervising the players’ athletic duties.
Unfortunately, many of us can remember the stories of Pat Dye teaching football 101 at Auburn. Many coaches actually teach classes. Ugh.
4. "Athletic Duties do not Constitute a Core Element of Their Educational Degree Requirements. The second factor that the Board considered in Brown University was the extent to which the graduate assistants’ teaching and research duties constituted a core element of their graduate degree requirements."
The official badly botched this one. In any department, there are benighted students who get a scholarship without having to teach or perform other duties, and they perfectly fulfill their academic requirements, which means teaching is service. Not part of your academic requirement. You don't have to teach or perform a service to get your degree. Many don't.
Frankly, I'm stunned that the official got so much wrong in this ruling.
