WP Poll

In response to the National Labor Relations Board decision allowing Northwestern football players to unionize, the Washington Post asked their readers what they thought about the implications. Below are the three questions in relation to unionizing and paying college athletes:

These questions are short, succinct, and to the point; not bad. With that said, I have a few comments.

First; 44% of the people who responded are not fans of college sports. That is a lot of people commenting on something they do not like. In addition, at the Washington Post you can filter the results to see what different ‘types’ of people think of the question such as 64% of the people whose education included graduate studies support college sports versus 34% do not. I assume this tells us that if you spent 6+ years in college you are more willing to be a fan of college sports (but graduate graduates are not that numerous).

Second; the opinion on unionization was evenly split, 47% to 47%. Before I saw the results I assumed more people would oppose unionization but I was wrong. With that said when you look at the numbers divided by party affiliation 62% of democrats and 28% of republicans support unionization as expected.

Finally; according to the poll, 64% of adults oppose paying salaries to college athletes beyond scholarships. I find the wording of the question biased, “beyond any scholarships they receive” implying that college athletes are already get paid. I know that according to economists, many of the services that these athletes receive is considered ‘pay’; I discussed this in my previous article, Respectfully Disagree. So it makes sense that people oppose paying salaries to college athletes, but would they keep their position if they knew player take home pay was between $2-18k each semester even if their program raked in $109,400,688?

So is it a good poll? Sure. Is it scientific? No; polls rarely are. What did we learn from this poll besides the obvious? Well, it seems most people oppose paying college athletes and the people who do not want to change the status quo are citing this and other polls to support their position.

Supporters of the status quo always talk about college athletes as if they were all the same but they are not, there is a huge difference between how the University of Arizona's tennis and basketball teams are treated on- and off-campus. Unionization of college athletics is not about tennis, soccer, water polo, lacrosse, or the like, it is about men’s football and basketball, and women’s basketball.

Since the Washington Post poll seems to focus on dividing up data, I would like two things to happen that would make both democrats and republicans happy; (1) allow football and basketball players to unionize, and (2) allow market forces to guide big-time college sports. Do this and big-time college sports will be completely different; what you see on ESPN's game day will look almost exactly the same but what happens on and off campus during the season and how much players and coaches would be compensated would be completely different.