Football players at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. filed a notion Tuesday to create a union for college football players. This movement is lead by the team's quarterback, Kain Colter. The players are looking to be recognized as employees of the university and receive appropriate benefits for their labor.
This is the first time in college sports history that players are seeking to be represented by a union. It has been debated whether or not college athletes should receive certain benefits like health protection and compensation but the NCAA refuses to give players these benefits. Now, players are speaking out and taking action to get the compensation and protection that they feel they deserve.
The group of players has a list of specific goals that they want to achieve by forming this union. Some of these goals include : preventing players from paying for sports-related injuries, raising the amount of their scholarship, create guidelines to prevent serious injuries in all sports, give players the ability to directly benefit from commercial opportunities and allow students to transfer to another school once without punishment, according to CBS Sports.
Colter describes the NCAA as a dictatorship and states that no one represents the players in negotiations and that the only way things are going to change is if the players have a union to represent them, according to ESPN.
The NCAA has responded by saying that college athletes are not employees of their schools and that they feel the National Labor Relations Board will rule in their favor, according to ESPN.
The group of Northwestern football players hope this movement will help protect current and future college athletes across the country and give athletes in all sports the benefits that they feel they deserve.
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