the University’s abuse of its college athletes by severely restricting their sources of possible income, while making loads of money off of them is more than a little hypocritical.

What a moronic statement. The Air Jordan’s have great family value to him… I suppose you (AJM) don’t have anything like that in your life and is why you can’t understand.. apparently.

I thought I would write to disabuse some of you of several common fallacies regarding the status of the “student-athlete” at major colleges and universities. For purposes of this argument, I limit the scope of “student-athlete” to that subset of “grant-in-aid” athletes who play one of the big two sports—football and basketball—at the D1 level.

The idea of the "student-athlete" is a pernicious fiction propagated by the NCAA and its member institutions so that they, unlike any other association of institutions or businesses in this country, can employ one type of labor without paying a competitive market wage for it. Collegiate athletics is a 60 billion dollar industry. The NCAA itself is funded principally through the revenues generated by the sports activities of its member institutions. Coaches are paid lavish salaries. Media corporations generate huge revenues from televising collegiate sporting events. Corporate sponsors (such as the shoe companies at issue in the original story) gain unparalleled exposure for their products and services.

The only actors in this bountiful enterprise the NCAA has constructed who do not receive the full financial fruits of their labor are the "student-athletes" themselves. Instead, what little (and arbitrarily devised) compensation these "student-athletes" do receive must be spent at the "company store"—the member institutions themselves. That is, these de facto employees (indeed, the most valuable employees the institutions employ) must spend their limited "wages" on books, tuition, and other institutionally-related expenses.

Student athletes are employees of the member institutions for whom they toil. Student athletes meet both components of the two-part test for employees in the university setting set forth in the NLRA. The common-law component of the NLRA test, for example, looks to the "right of control" the putative employer exercises over the putative employee (as distinguished from an independent contractor). Under this test, an employee is defined by the degree of control the putative employer exercises over the end result of the employee’s labor and the manner of achieving it. In plain terms, whether a student-athlete is, in fact, an employee-athlete, depends in large part on the amount of control that athlete’s coaches, advisors, professors, etc. exercise over the end results of his labor (i.e. athletic performance) and the means of achieving it (i.e. the rules governing the athlete’s attendance at practice, class, study halls, and the like).

The statutory test for the status of putative employee-students in the university setting is a bit more complicated. Full Disclosure: I participated in the drafting of an amicus brief in support of non-medical NYU graduate students seeking to establish employee status under the NLRA (and therefore obtain all of the attendant rights and protections conferred by that Act). The current rule is this: when a student who works for his university performs services that are not primarily educational or academic and his relationship to the university with respect to those services is an economic one, then the student may be an employee under the Act, provided that he also meets the common-law test for the term (as set forth above).

The truth is that student-athletes in the two major sports at the D1 level obviously meet the common-law and statutory tests for employees in the university setting, as established by the NLRB. They perform services for the benefit of their universities under agreements setting forth their responsibilities and "grant-in-aid" compensation; are economically dependent upon their universities; and are subject to the omnivorous control of their daily activities by their universities’ athletic departments and coaches. Moreover, the services these "student-athletes" perform are not primarily educational or academic. These folks are "students" in name only. The onerous time commitment imposed upon them by athletic departments and coaches clearly demonstrates that the primary role of the "student-athlete" in the big two sports at D1 colleges and universities is to play basketball and football, not study for their degrees.

That’s the point of my post. And many of them live at or beneath the poverty line. Their “wages” are captive to the “company”—in this case, the member institution from which they’ve received their grant in aid. The notion that these employee-athletes should be expected to take on a traditional job in order to make ends meet for themselves and their families is patently absurd, especially given the tremendous obligations they already undertake as both “student” and athlete.

As for the responsive posts noting the difference between graduate students and employee athletes, that, too, is my point. While the current NLRB standards for establishing employee status for traditional graduate students are regretfully stringent, even under those standards the typical “student-athlete” playing basketball or football at a D1 university should qualify as an employee, and thus enjoy the rights and protections conferred upon such employees under the NLRA.

The fact that “student-athletes” in the subset I’ve identified may be foreclosed from obtaining competitive market wages for their skills by the rules of the NCAA cartel (rules that are formed in conjunction with the professional sports leagues that would otherwise employ these athletes) is but one more example of the injustice of the current arrangement. It is not, however, a necessary condition to establishing the employee status of the student-athletes at issue.