The U.S. Congress will vote on the Protect College Sports Act in the coming weeks, setting athletes back once again after a decade of significant strides toward being treated as revenue-generating workers in college football.
As the bill has taken shape, ESPN has been unusually assertive in its support. Not only is College GameDay panelist and recent ESPN documentary subject Nick Saban a spokesperson for the PCSA, but GameDay hosted Sen. Ted Cruz, one of the bill’s architects, for an interview last month. During Saban’s promotional tour for the documentary, he had a fairly unrestrained platform to hype the bill as it passed the Senate.
According to Sporticothe bill would grant the NCAA an antitrust exemption that would prohibit lawsuits over athlete compensation and labor practices. Prominent lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have joined with civil rights groups like the NAACP and labor organizations like the AFL-CIO in opposing the bill.
The stakes of the PCSA are much larger than addressing the current state of college football. Seen one way, the bill could use the pretext of athletes’ recent freedoms around compensation and transfers to institute permanent restrictions on athletes’ rights as workers.
Those who view it this way understandably see it as an NFL issue, too. One is Dan Le Batard, the longtime Miami-based host. Recently, Le Batard has called the NFL union “yellow,” or controlled by management. He has also directly called out Kansas City Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes, the league’s most prominent quarterback and a co-alternate union rep for his team.
“What’s happening in Major League Baseball and football? You’ve got yellow unions,” Le Batard said. “This is not leadership that is the past leadership of (Domonique) Foxworth and (Jeff) Saturday and (Drew) Brees and (Tom Brady). It’s very quiet in football. What’s being supported publicly by the TV arms is, can football keep the minor leagues free? Can the NFL, through an antitrust extended to its minor league outfit, can we keep it free, with Saban’s help on television?”
“Patrick Mahomes, get your helmet out of your a**. Do some leading here, as Brees and Brady did and Jeff Saturday did. You’ve got a lot of power. You made the commissioner of the league stand down on Kaepernick and racism the moment that you said anything. Do you want to participate in the adult games, or do you just want to play football?”
In 2020, Mahomes was part of a group that recorded and published a video calling on the NFL to acknowledge wrongdoing in its treatment of Black players like Colin Kaepernick, who protested against police brutality. The video drew a public response from commissioner Roger Goodell and is seen as setting the stage for the NFL’s philanthropic work and anti-racist messaging in 2020.
Le Batard was building on a recent argument by Foxworth, a frequent guest and collaborator and the former president of the NFL players’ association. After being sidelined during Saban’s appearance on Get UpFoxworth spoke on his podcast about how college athletes’ rights were being clawed back through the PCSA.
“They’re looking to get antitrust exemption, the same exemption that professional sports leagues have, because they’re professional sports,” Foxworth argued. “But they’re looking to get those exemptions without doing what professional sports teams have to do to maintain those exemptions. That’s acknowledge that your players are employees and collectively bargain the agreement that you’re going to play under.”
In his own commentary, Le Batard has called the PCSA the biggest potential inflection point in athletes’ labor struggle since Curt Flood sued the baseball commissioner and created free agency.
Last week, Le Batard said Mahomes was “not as strong as Brees and Brady,” noting that the two legendary quarterbacks were active public advocates for improved working conditions and standards of living for athletes.
“They were writing Op-Eds about workers’ comp. They were supporting the Affordable Care Act. The players today aren’t doing that,” Le Batard said.
“The NFL players today don’t know what good union leadership looks like or how they’re supposed to behave here. The fact that you have not heard from any of the NFL players on what might be the most important sports labor issue of our time, and that it’s been muted in ways that you don’t hear from the Cory Bookers of the world? This stuff can’t happen quietly. It shouldn’t happen quietly.”
Le Batard is right that the PCSA fight has gone under the radar. Whether because the word “protect” elicits positive feelings or because fans tune out meaty issues like labor in sports, the powers that be prefer to let this pass quietly. Not so long ago, the biggest stars in the NFL made it their business to campaign on behalf of their fellow players. Mahomes is just one player who could make a difference if he spoke up, and Le Batard is taking it upon himself to demand action.
Source: awfulannouncing.com
