DeacKillsaDevil
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The NCPA has lobbied state legislatures, Congress and the NCAA on these issues over the years, and earlier this month hired airplanes to fly protest banners during the BCS title game at the Rose Bowl and at the NCAA Convention in San Diego.
Ah the old protest banner technique.
I would expect this to drive away a significant portion of the college football fan base.
Explain.
The college football fan base is anchored in the deep south:
http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/20...realignment-chaos/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
The graph here indicates that the highest demographic group who claim college football as their favorite sport is "Southerner", while the lowest is "Democrat":
http://msn.foxsports.com/college-fo...ge-football-nfl-mlb-united-states-poll-012714
I just don't see the college football fan base as one that is "union friendly".
I think the better comparison is the pros. Having unions hasn't hurt pro leagues and the product keeps getting better.
Yeah, I think your average Bama fan loves college football more than they hate unions.
The Pro football fan base and college football fan base don't look the same, IMO. Further, the college football landscape is nothing like the pro landscape. While the big college programs do make shit tons of cash, the small private schools this unionization would affect aren't raking in millions of $$. Forcing additional costs on them will just result in less football programs, especially when coupled with the potential for less fan interest in the sport.
If anything, such a movement taking hold outside of private schools would just hasten us towards college football at the BCS level becoming detached from academics and more like an actual semi-Pro league. At that point, there's just less opportunity to play football and earn an education all around. Hell, there's even less opportunity to play football and potentially make it to the NFL.
The idea just seems like shooting yourself in the foot. Northwestern already has the least amount of athletic revenue in the Big 10. Despite that, a school like Wake or Northwestern can survive increased expenses due to TV/Bowl contracts of their conference, but that's not true for most private schools. If the "standard" for what is required by unions is set at Northwestern, a school that is very well-off as far as private schools with football teams go, there's almost no way the non-BCS private programs will be able to finance keeping up with that standard.
good points, but what does this have to do with driving fans away?
So your argument is that the demographics that hate unions the most are in the best position to deal with the fallout.
This is welcome and overdue news. I've been wishing the players would unionize for a while. Don't worry, they'll figure out how to have college football without exploiting its athletes.