Earlier this week a group a players from the Pac-12 put out a letter for The Player’s Tribune threatening to opt-out of Pac-12 fall camp and game participation unless their demands are guaranteed in writing to protect and benefit both scholarship athletes and walk ons.
These demands include health protections, preserving all sports for each college, ending racial injustice and inequality in collegiate sports and economic freedom.
They listed out their reasoning behind this letter and ended each reason with some sort of variation of the hashtag #WeAreUnited. I will expound on each demand they included.
For the health protections they want to be able sit out due to health risks without having to worry about losing their scholarship. Also they want to do away with waivers of liability.
They want all sports protected financially. I think this is the one that will ruffle the most feathers. The players want administrators and coaches to voluntarily and drastically reduce excessive pay. I don’t see many coaches that will be in a rush to give money back.
Another way they insist on protecting all sports is to reduce excessive spending on lavish facilities and end performance based bonuses. More into this, they would rather the money be used to make sure no sports teams are dropped by the school.
Next on the list is the fight against racial inequality.
The players would like to form a civic-engagement task force to address racial injustice in collegiate sports and society
They want to partner with the conference to allocate 2% of conference revenue to support financial aid for low-income Black students, community initiatives, and development programs for college athletes at each school.
Their economic freedom initiative includes guaranteed medical expense coverage, likeness rights and fair market rights.
The medical coverage would last for six years after said student’s last year of eligibility.
Likeness rights would allow that player to have representation, the right to get necessities from a third party and earn money from their brand.
Now the last demand is where I see most discussions coming to an impasse. Fair market rights include pay and certain freedoms.
They want six year scholarships to help obtain undergrad and graduate degrees. The ability to come back to school after draft if they go undrafted and the ability to transfer once with no repercussions. Due process is on the list. Lastly they want to distribute 50% of each sports total conference revenue evenly among all athletes in their respective sports.
From the sound of all these demands and lists, it seems these players want to unionize. There is nothing wrong with that but let’s see how far they are willing to take this. Im interested to see what happens once the fall schedule is approved. I hold they stick to their guns as long as they can.
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