The College Football Players Association, or CFBPA, made a ripple today for what appears to be the second time in its three-year history. What happened? Founder (former University of Minnesota professor) Jason Stahl shared on his Substack that he’s in favor of Congress creating a new class of employee covering college athletes—something which allows for collective bargaining without treating athletes as full employees. The idea isn’t new. The CFBPA’s support of it is. The question, of course, is whether it matters at all what the CFBPA supports.
The other time the CFBPA seems to have made any headlines came three years ago, when it was founded. The only other reference to it we could find quickly on ESPN came last weekend, when UAB’s football team signed with a different organizing effort—Athletes.org, or AO. Articles also come up referencing the National College Players Association, the NCPA, as well as the College Basketball Players Association, or CBPA. But there was nothing else about the CFBPA. Maybe Jason Stahl’s opinion matters. Maybe it doesn’t. It’s odd, though, that his adoption of the hybrid–employment–by–act–of–Congress strategy made the ripples that it did.
Between the CFBPA, AO, the NCPA, and the CBPA, there are at least a handful of entities striving to organize college athletes right now. None appear to be making exceptional progress. Still, they’re presented now and then as part of the future of the industry, and they’re presented as being in temporary competition with one another. A common framing of their efforts reads like this, from one of ESPN’s stories:
“Reaching a bargaining agreement would be simpler and more efficient if players were represented by a single organization like the players’ associations that exist in professional sports, says Athletes.org (AO) founder Jim Cavale. His company is one of several entities competing to serve that role if bargaining occurs.”
In other words, a prevailing thought is that there will be one union for college football, or one union for all college sports, in total. Is this correct? Is this what’s going to happen? I’m not sure. But it shouldn’t be what happens. It would be very bad for college athletes if only one labor organization existed in a given sport. It would be even worse if only one labor organization existed for college sports in total.
The comparison between college sports and professional sports is natural. This is part of what makes it so dangerous. The NFLPA negotiates between roughly 2,500 NFL players and 32 NFL owners. There are roughly 70,000 college football players across roughly 700 programs in the NCAA alone. There’s a big difference between the Dallas Cowboys and the Arizona Cardinals. The difference between the University of Alabama and Huntingdon College is magnitudes larger. Asking one organization to handle the affairs of both those programs’ athletes is how we got our current mess: A large reason the NCAA has struggled to get a handle on the college sports industry is its mandate to rule on everything from football in the SEC football to golf in Division III’s USA South Athletic Conference. It’s hard for one organization to navigate such entirely different situations. It naturally leads to bureaucracy, inefficiency, and incompetence.
When AO and organizations like it say there should only be one players association for the sake of simplicity and efficiency, they’re either wrong or insincere. Most likely, it’s the latter. Most likely, they don’t care about simplicity or efficiency. They just don’t want to compete with other labor organizers. They want the biggest cut for themselves.
Are we suggesting there needs to be competition between labor unions within the same industry? Not necessarily. That’s a separate conversation, and one better left to labor market economists. What we’re saying is that the differences in revenue are so vast across different sports and different conferences that college sports is not one industry. It’s one hundred industries. Even with the House v. NCAA settlement proposal, we’re seeing ACC schools struggle to accept a revenue-sharing cap that would work for the Big Ten and SEC. That’s within one sport, and within the Power Four. AO thinks it’d be simpler for one players association to represent all of college football?
One of the worst potential outcomes of this push for greater athlete rights in college sports is that after all these sweeping changes, after thousands of thinkpieces and dozens of rounds of lobbying Congress, the end result is one in which athletes’ rights are left in the hands of one specific profiteering labor organizer. This is unlikely to actually happen, for a huge host of reasons ranging from Congressional dysfunction to the pace at which the college athletics workforce recycles. But it’s the future that gets presented every time one of these aspiring labor organizers manages to get their name in the news, and it’s often presented as an afterthought, even by some of the most knowledgeable reporters in the space. So, we’re pushing back on it here. AO wants to speak for all college football players. It would be best for players if they didn’t.
The Rest
No second block today, in the interests of time.
MLB:
- The big baseball news over the weekend was the Marlins trading Luis Arraez to the Padres in exchange for four prospects. It’s a surprising move—this is early in the season for such a trade to occur—but it’s smart. The Marlins, 16 games under .500 and playing in the same division as the Braves and the Phillies, don’t like their playoff chances. Trading Arraez now meant trading five or six months of him, not two or three months. It also avoided any potential injury complications. The return has been criticized as insignificant for such an unorthodox decision, especially since the Marlins ate Arraez’s remaining salary, but using FanGraphs’s Future Values and projections for Arraez, the deal lines up as perfectly reasonable at an $8M/WAR valuation. The Marlins probably got twice as much as they would have at the deadline.
- The Braves were swept by the Dodgers in Los Angeles, and while I personally feel a little foolish for making such a stink last week about how the Braves are the better team between the two, this isn’t a disaster for Atlanta. They don’t have some long-term tendency to lose to good teams (they went 4–3 against Los Angeles last year, and 8–5 against the Phillies in the regular season). It makes us question just how good they are, but only a little. It’s a small sample. With Trea Turner out for possibly two months with a hamstring injury, the Braves remain comfortable NL East favorites.
- In other hamstring news, Steven Kwan—who’s been having a monster year—is out for the Guardians. The Twins haven’t quite caught Cleveland (the win streak was great for Minnesota, but the first few weeks of the season dug quite the hole), but they’re close. It’s really early in the season. It was even earlier when Guards optimism was at its peak.
College basketball:
- I think the biggest recent transfer portal news is that Norchad Omier committed to Baylor. Very good player, should help Baylor out a lot. But. I’m not sure this guy would be known to national college basketball fans had Miami not made that fluky Final Four run two years ago.
The NBA:
- Aside from Naz Reid banking in that three, there was little about the Timberwolves’ Game 1 victory over the Nuggets that seemed unsustainable. They had a very good game, but it wasn’t like they shot 65% from three. The wrinkle, for those who haven’t heard, is that Rudy Gobert is newly a father and therefore might miss tonight’s game. That might turn out to be quite the break for the Nuggets, whose depth gets more and more concerning the more they struggle to look sharp.
The NHL:
- The David Pastrňák goal was an electric moment, as was the Bruins/Leafs Game 7 in general. Can the Bruins score enough to keep up with the Panthers, though? Will the Panthers have cooled off thanks to the layoff?
- Our NHL model, Gelo, viewed the Knights as highly overvalued by betting markets entering the playoffs. There was a good explanation—Gelo doesn’t consider player availability and Vegas was getting Mark Stone back—and we believe Gelo was undervaluing the Knights as a result. But. Was Gelo undervaluing them by *that* much? Our guess was and continues to be no. Gelo may have undervalued the Knights, but betting markets likely overvalued them. Why does that matter, with the Knights eliminated? Well, because the Stars just played seven games against Vegas and have a rating very much tied to those games, whatever under and overvaluing was going on has now been at least partly passed from Vegas to Dallas heading into the second round.
Chicago:
- It didn’t look like this would be what we’d say, but great weekend for the Cubs agains the Brewers. Dansby Swanson had a big game yesterday, showing signs of life at what’s hopefully the tail end of a slump. Hayden Wesneski was sensational on Friday, looking once again like the invigorating prospect the Cubs debuted in 2022. Javier Assad and Jameson Taillon continue to deal. Very good weekend for the Cubs.
- The downside, of course, is that the Cubs’ bullpen had two more meltdowns. The bright side here is that the Cubs will probably address it through trade, with more urgency than there would be if the same group of pitchers was merely mediocre instead of what they are, but trading is a scary way to build a bullpen. Relievers are inconsistent beasts. They exist in a low-value but high-leverage role. You should overpay for them, relative to WAR, but it’s easier to stomach that when the cost is money and not prospects or MLB talent. Anyway, if the Cubs do try a trade soon, I’d be curious about a strength-for-strength deal, specifically with the Astros. If Seiya Suzuki and Cody Bellinger do come back soon, Patrick Wisdom’s at-bats are going to be squeezed. He’s hardly played at all so far this year, only recently coming back from injury, but he’s proven he can hit, and Houston could use more corner infield production. Wisdom and a prospect for Ryan Pressly?
- Justin Steele returns tonight, pitching against old friend Yu Darvish at Wrigley. Keegan Thompson has been sent down in the corresponding move. Matt Mervis was also sent down this weekend, with Miles Mastrobuoni taking back over the position of 26th man he occupies so well.
- Lonzo Ball opted into the next year of his contract, which is not news at all. But it does remind us of the Bulls’ situation where they might get $21M in cap space halfway through next season. Maybe that could be used to eat someone else’s salary dump in a deadline deal next winter? Maybe I’m thinking too wishfully.
- The Bulls, Blackhawks, and White Sox reportedly have a new broadcaster, with The Athletic identifying Standard Media Group as the company in question. The Athletic also reports the plan is to air at least some games on a local network in addition to cable and streaming options. We’ll see what exactly happens, given the Bulls and White Sox especially aren’t beacons of organizational competence, but these are the reports.
- Finally, the Rockford IceHogs have been eliminated from the Calder Cup Playoffs, ending all Blackhawk hockey for the season. With the Stanley Cup Playoffs’ first round ending, the Blackhawks’ acquired Tampa Bay draft pick is locked into place: 20th overall. The Blackhawks’ own first-rounder’s position will be determined by tomorrow night’s lottery.
