Jonathan Mahler, Columnist

NCAA Should Be Begging for a Union

The NCAA doesn't want Northwestern football players to unionize. It should.

January 29, 2014 at 8:36 PM UTC

Jonathan Mahler is a sports columnist for Bloomberg View. He is the author of the best-selling "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning," the basis for the eight-part ESPN mini-series. He also wrote "The Challenge," the winner of the 2009 Scribes Book Award, and "Death Comes to Happy Valley." A longtime contributor to the New York Times Magazine and the Times Book Review, Mahler has written for numerous other publications including the Washington Post, Slate, the New Republic and New York magazine. He lives in New York.

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Hours after the story broke yesterday that Northwestern University's football team had filed paperwork to form a union, the NCAA made its position clear: Student-athletes cannot also be employees, or at least not without defeating "the purpose of college: an education." (Better quit that work-study job at the library, kid; it's making you dumb.)

The response was not a surprise. It was also extremely short-sighted. The NCAA should be begging college athletes to form a union.