Student Athletes: A Case Study

College athletes are considered by many other students to be very fortunate. With college tuition increasing year after year students are finding themselves strapped with an overwhelming amount of loan debt. Student athletes who receive the benefit of having their tuition covered by the university are considered, by some, to be employees. It’s important to identify what an actual employee is and what that employee does. An employee works for an employer based on an initial contract where the employee is entitled to do as the employer instructs. Within the signing of the contract the employer is in charge of the performance of the employee. In most cases, recruited (scholarship receiving) student athletes choose their university primarily based on the athletic program rather than academics. Since the university greatly benefits from the athletic services provided, student athletes consider themselves to be employees of their university. March 31st, 1906 was the day the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was founded. When the founders discussed the role of the NCAA, they were particularly concerned with the violence in football, but they intended for the organization to set national standards for all sports. The founders planned for the organization to promote education as the highest goal, in conjunction with regulating sports. Consequently, the NCAA provided a means for colleges around the country to discuss current issues and to create a uniform set of rules to govern all intercollegiate athletics. The NCAA is a nonprofit organization that currently consists of over 1,200 different universities. The NCAA organization started out with an emphasis on student athletes. The mission of the NCAA is to have an emphasis primarily on sports, but also having certain rules and requirements for their students to follow in the classroom. In August 1973, the idea of different divisions was implemented within NCAA universities. The NCAA was split into three major divisions classified between Division I, Division II, and Division III. This idea was created because of intense increase in the size of some of the major universities. Later on in 1973, the current president and his colleagues decided it was only fair for Division II, III athletes to receive scholarships for academics and or athletics. Within the last decade, many Division I student athletes have contended that their scholarships qualify them as employees of their universities. The universities and the NCAA have argued that the student athletes do not qualify as employees because they are in the school for a limited period of time with a primary focus on academics. With the NCAA having a primary focus on academics the NCAA is still heavily involved in the athletic piece of a young students career. Brown University states that student athletes are not employees of the university, but rather only student athletes trying to achieve success, 342 NLRB 483 (2004). When trying to have a healthy balance between academics and athletics, the NCAA works day in and day out to try to achieve this balance but often times is weighted towards athletics. With the balance of the two being sometimes difficult to achieve, a collegiate model was created to help not only the NCAA but the students as well. This collegiate model was created to show what the life in a sense of a student athlete should include. This was very useful to the university itself, because they were interested in the student athletes and how they could have an unforgettable experience while being enrolled. On the other hand, student athletes contend that they do qualify as employees due to the immense amount of time they commit during the school year. In a recent case analytics were unable to identify weather more scholarships were given …show more content…
Courts are starting to show a increase in involvement in professional sports. Many college universities, such as North Western, are asking for the same amount of participation from the courts in college sports. In 2014, a Northwestern University student ignored a clause in his football scholarship agreement, and signed a union-authorization card. This is where the differences come into play, and the NCAA enforces their mission. College athletics are known to primarily set focuses on athletics with having high standards in the classroom; hence the name student