Northwestern Football To Unionize?

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KoreAm under CC BY-SA 3.0 License

The Northwestern Football union ruling last week could signify a monumental to the future landscape of college sports.  Either way you look at it, the issue of whether or not to unionize in college athletics is definitely not so cut and dry.

On the one hand I feel that college athletics, particularly in Division I, has a definite business aspect to even though the NCAA seems to do everything it can to dispute such a viewpoint.  Most recruits are brought into a college for what they can provide on the playing field while a proper college education is pushed to the side in most cases.  Another thing is while former Northwestern player Kain Colter has said the main desire with unionizing is due to medical concerns for players, I find it hard to believe that's the only motivating factor behind the union movement.

As the days have gone by since this news first broke, I have done a lot of thinking as to whether this would be good or bad for college athletics.  My initial reaction was that a union in college athletics would be a good thing overall but now I'm not so sure.

No matter how you or I feel about this movement, I think there will be a time when unions are a part of college athletics in the future.

Tim Musick
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