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Athletic faculty reps board endorses CAPA planks, calls for reduced time demands on athletes [Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Texas :: ](Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (TX) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) April 23--The Division IA Faculty Athletic Representatives Board of Directors, of which Texas Tech's Brian Shannon is president, on Wednesday endorsed many of the proposals made by the College Athletes Players Union (CAPA) in the high-profile case involving Northwestern athletes. Further, the organization that represents schools in all 125 Football Bowl Subdivision programs, called for athletes to get more time away from their sports, a re-examination of the NCAA's 20-hour rule and for one-semester seasons. "Indeed, why not May Madness rather than March Madness?," the board asked. The faculty reps' support for an increase in student-athlete benefits represents another step in the emphasis on expanded rights for college athletes. "We are largely supportive of the goals articulated by the Northwestern football students at the forefront of the union movement," the board said in a statement. "We just don't support utilizing labor unions and collective bargaining as the way to get there." Last month, a Chicago regional director of the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Northwestern University athletes are "not primarily" students and fall under the definition of employees. He determined, for example, that Northwestern football players spent 50 to 60 hours a week on their sport during August preseason practice and 40 to 50 hours a week on football in season. Kain Colter, a senior quarterback on the Northwestern football team, co-founded the CAPA. CAPA's website lists five goals: -- Guaranteed coverage for sports-related medical expenses for current and former players; -- Minimizing concussion risk, reducing contact in practices, placing independent concussion experts on sidelines and standardizing return-to-play protocol; -- Improving graduation rates; -- Increasing athletic scholarships to meet full cost of attendance and allowing players to be compensated for commercial sponsorships; -- Securing due process rights. CAPA says, "Players should not be punished simply because they are accused of a rule violation, and any punishments levied should be consistent across campuses." The faculty reps' board of directors endorsed many of those planks. "The athletes want both a voice at the table when decisions affecting them are made and enhanced scholarships to cover full cost of attendance. So do we," the statement read. "We also want more postgraduate scholarship aid and assuring that medical professionals have the unquestioned authority to make return-to-play decisions based solely on the best medical information. "The athletes want guarantees of scholarship aid to permit them to return to school to complete a degree. Right now schools have the discretion to make that happen. We support the idea that this should be guaranteed. "And certainly we agree that money must be devoted to more concussion research, as well as to develop data-driven protocols both to identify concussions and other brain traumas and to determine postconcussion responses. The NCAA and several athletic conferences are currently engaged in such research. "Other concerns of the athletes focus on transfer restrictions and the ban on their ability to exploit their name and likeness value. Although there are substantial, legitimate issues attendant to any such changes, they clearly are topics for serious discussion, where, we think, substantial movement may well be possible." The faculty reps' statement makes some of its strongest suggestions in regard to how many hours college athletes spend on their sports, saying it is "increasingly concerned with athletic time demands on student-athletes." "We recognize that we live in a zero-sum world, where choices must be made that forestall other opportunities," the statement said. "But we also believe that the pendulum needs to swing back to provide studentathletes more time away from athletics. "We support a moratorium for at least part of the summer from any athletically related activities on campus. We support limiting the number of games. We support a re-examination of the 20-hour rule and its many exceptions. We support one semester sports. Indeed, why not May Madness rather than March Madness?" NCAA rules limit athletes to 20 "countable" hours per week devoted to their sport. However, NLRB regional director Peter Sung Ohr, in his March 26 opinion, noted that all manner of football-related time is excluded such as team travel, meetings, film study, voluntary strength and conditioning, medical check-ins and required "training table" attendance. For example, Ohr determined that for a road game at Michigan, Northwestern players spent 24 hours on Friday and Saturday in travel and football-related activities, but only 4.8 hours counted toward the 20-hour rule -- including only 3 hours on game day. Shannon, a Texas Tech law professor, was not immediately available for comment after the statement was released. The board did express concerns, however, over the landscape if Northwestern athletes ultimately go forward with reconstituting their relationship as university employees rather than students. "If so, then they want a major paradigm shift that may dismantle the collegiate model, threaten the collegiate mark, and decrease substantially the athletic opportunities available to athletes in nonrevenue sports," the board said. "And, if so, that's where we would come to a parting of the ways. "But that's not what they are saying now. From most published reports, one would think that the Northwestern football players' union effort signals an all-out war between athletes (or some of them) on the one side and campuses and the NCAA on the other. Not so, or at least not yet. And, certainly not with (faculty athletic representatives." [email protected] --766-8734 Follow Don on Twitter @AJ_DonWilliams ___ (c)2014 the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (Lubbock, Texas) Visit the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (Lubbock, Texas) at www.lubbockonline.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |