How Tennessee Men’s Basketball Constructed The First College Sports CBA

Checking in from sunny Los Angeles today as I’m out on the West Coast for a couple days swinging by the Big Ten schools here in town (yes, that is still weird to write). Last weekend’s loaded college football slate lived up to every bit of the billing, while the off-the-field storylines are picking up once more. Let’s get into the news of the week when it comes to college sports. This time, men’s hoops. The Main Event: Why Tennessee Is A College Sports Labor Proving Ground Danny White hasn’t exactly minced words. In a world where most administrators would rather play coy or whisper into their local columnist’s ears, White has been adamant that college sports’ future is simple: Collective bargaining. Tennessee is doing just that. The school, in conjunction with players organization Athletes.org (AO), released a proposed model collective bargain agreement (CBA) term sheet that was developed through conversations between Tennessee men’s basketball player representatives, AO and university leadership. The men’s basketball team elected graduate student guard Tyler Lundblade, junior guard Campbell Duncan and sophomore forward DeWayne Brown II as player representatives in the discussions. To be clear, the term sheet is not signed or ratified, but was created to offer proof of concept for those within the college athletics industry who have downplayed the possibility of collectively bargaining with athletes. “I told [the team], ‘Guys, this won’t apply to your time as an athlete. It could be a good learning experience for you to understand how all this works, trying to get to the NBA or the NFL, and that’s how those leagues are structured,’” White told me. “It’s a way to pay it forward to future generations of college athletes to have a structure that is more transparent and everyone understands the rules of engagement.” The agreement released on Tuesday includes a slew of measures that a CBA at the professional level might address. Those high-level features include: “The purpose of this was to prove all the people who say that that’s impossible in college sports and the college athletes don’t care, they’re not mature enough, etc., that they’re wrong,” AO Executive Director Brandon Copeland told me. “When people see it and look at it, they’ll also recognize the amount of work and detail that went into it. “This is a much better foundation for college sports going forward, and not a patchwork or band-aid. … There is a way for the athletes to actually negotiate the terms in a way that everybody can feel like they won.” A similar agreement is in the works with the Volunteers football program, while the sentiment is that the document released on Tuesday wouldn’t immediately go into effect or be signed given it could potentially create recruiting disadvantages if other schools operated under different rules. That said, it does mark a notable shift and symbolic effort as college sports grapple with the crossroads between classifying athletes as employees or finding a different kind of designation to account for the millions of dollars flowing into the industry. Administrators and leagues have long opposed the designation of athletes as employees given the varying complications doing so might have from a university infrastructure perspective, among other fears from administrators. The Protect College Sports Act has been the single most crucial piece of legislation designed to help curb the lack of broader rules and regulations in the industry. The bill has already passed the Senate but faces long odds of passage in the House given the Democratic control that is coming in January. The PCSA is also notably neutral on the subject of employment — a stance reiterated in an interview I conducted with bill author Maria Cantwell in June. “It’s probably a myriad of things, but we have built flexibility by putting rules and tools in place to help get more revenue and guarantee athletes their due,” Cantwell said at the time. “We’re also saying, ‘This helps stabilize the system for now, while you consider these questions for the future.’” Tennessee’s efforts with its men’s basketball program certainly doesn’t change the fact that widespread college sports bargaining is an enormous task, while the actual bargaining unit isn’t totally clear. However, it at least provides some level of a road map for how schools might approach creating a more lasting structure for their relationships with athletes moving forward. “There’s really only two options: it’s a CBA or it’s federal legislation that gives us a blanket antitrust exemption,” White said. “… The PCSA is the closest we have gotten, but it does not solve all the issues of college sports. I think everyone knows that. All along there’s been a path for us to solve it ourselves. ” … Contrary to what some have said — that it’s impossible — it’s not impossible. It’s just hard and complex. But we haven’t even started working on it as an industry yet. We really need to do that.” Best Quote I Saw This Week Kyle Whittingham is really just having a bad time, isn’t he? Speaking with reporters after the latest debacle of his first season in Ann Arbor — a loss to downtrodden Michigan State — Whittingham rhetorically asked a question that will surely send the message boards in town into a tizzy: “I don’t know, are there any more trophies in these last three games? I don’t think there’s any more…” Just about nothing outside of the defense has gone right for Whittingham this year. Seemingly forgetting that Michigan and Ohio State, err, well, play for something in the final game isn’t a great look and is sure to stoke the flames around the program further than they already have been. Best Deal I Saw This Week College football sponsorships, they’re in the game — finally. EA Sports announced on Thursday that it would begin integrating the sponsorships schools have signed into the latest version of its college football video game, beginning with Arkansas and SMU. Arkansas (Tyson Foods) and SMU (Texas Capital) will now have their respective jersey patches featured in the game, while other schools are sure to be added soon. The program is being headed up by CLC — the licensing arm of Learfield that has been intimately involved in onboarding athletes into the new wave of EA college football games in recent years.