“Having a season also encourages players to be safe and take all proper precautions to try to contract covid, because the safety of the season / teammates is on the line,” he wrote. “Without the season, as we have already seen, people will not wear social distances or masks and take the appropriate precautions.”
Some health experts and sports managers are deeply skeptical about those arguments, and some players have been too. Last week, Connecticut, an independent in football, canceled their season, and their players said in a statement then that they “had a lot of health concerns and not enough is known about the potential long-term effects of contracting Covid-19. . ” On Monday, the Mountain West Conference announced “the indefinite postponement” of fall sports.
And some schools are struggling to keep their athletes in line with public health guidelines. Last week, Louisville suspended training for four of its teams after 29 players tested positive for the virus, with many of the cases linked to an off-campus party.
Despite the outcome of the debate over the football season, Monday’s burst of activism was sure to intensify the integral debate on players’ rights, an issue that has been the subject of lawsuits, legislation and congressional hearings.
The players did not immediately work out how they would try to organize, and eventually said they were ultimately an ‘association’ of college footballers’.
Unionization could have substantial barriers. In the absence of a recognized union with the power to seek a collective bargaining agreement, players could turn to, or create, a group of lawyers with the aim of shaping public opinion and policy.
“Ultimately, university athletes do not need a union to lead change,” said Gabe Feldman, director of the Tulane Sports Law Program. “It may be more effective in a union, but a union is not necessary for university athletes to leverage over schools, conferences and the NCAA”
