Stripping Football Scholarships for Striking? The Complexities

A Missouri lawmaker, Rep. Rick Brattin, proposed a bill last week in the Missouri House that would to strip scholarships from any athlete who "calls, incites, supports or participates in any strike." Colleges and universities would be required to fine coaching staff who encourage or enable such student protests. Early thoughts: Why refer to a team walkout as a strike when the law does not recognize that football players are employees? Isn’t this conceding that they are employees? Second, players at public universities have First Amendment rights. The part of the bill that refers to support and incitement is overbroad on constitutional grounds. Third, if the NFL put out a bad football product in the 1987 strike, how does Mizzou plan to carry on a ready-for-TV football program with walk-ons? Fourth, why not work with the NCAA in thinking through a better response?

Now for what’s worthwhile in this bill: First, it deals with the troubling implications that a handful of key football players can grind a major financial enterprise to a halt. If actual unions cannot, for example, bring airlines, automakers, Hollywood productions and public schools to halt with strikes that are called without a bargaining process (and to be clear, they cannot), why should college players have this unfettered ability? Second, the Mizzou players went on strike over racial justice issues. This may be worthy in its own right, but unions in the U.S. can only strike over “mandatory subjects of bargaining.” These are defined as wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment—but not political issues.