Paying college athletes - I want my fair share

Court to start passing out $2.8 billion to current and former players

NCAA Agrees to Pay Players - It Won't Call Them Employees," said the recent headline in America's greatest newspaper, The New York Times.

As one who has had some recent employment issues, I don't care what label you put on my job description, please just pay me.

According to the excellent Times piece by Santul Nerkar, "The immediate takeaway from the landmark $2.8 billion settlement that the NCAA and the major athletic conferences accepted was that it cut straight at the heart of the organization's cherished model of amateurism. Schools can now pay their athletes directly."

As if some of those schools in some of those major conferences weren't doing so already.

As Eric Dickerson famously noted when he left college for the National Football League, he had to take a pay cut.

"But another bedrock principle remains intact," Nerkar goes on, "and maintaining it is likely to be a priority for the NCAA: that players who are paid by the universities are not employed by them, and therefore do not have the right to collectively bargain."

Excuse me for a moment while I roll around the floor in laughter as I remember back to my playing days on the California Aggie tennis team.

Should we have collectively bargained after our meal money skyrocketed to $7.75 a day by my senior year? What were we going to bargain with, our strokes?

Buck, over there on Court 6, you can lob with the best of them. And Mike on Court 1, let's put your crisp volleys on the bargaining table. And don't forget lefthanded Brett on Court 3 with that wicked spin serve that bounces the opposite way his opponent thinks it will.

We certainly had a lot to "collectively" bargain with.

Noted Father John Jenkins, the president of the University that Knute Rockne Built, "Congress must establish that our athletes are not employees, but students seeking college degrees."

(See "rolling around the floor in laughter," above).

I played varsity tennis for UC Davis for four years, though for my first two seasons I was merely cannon fodder in practice sessions for my more talented teammates and spent much of the time riding a very warm bench in the noonday sun. I still have the blisters to prove it.

But by my senior year we had formed ourselves into a cohesive unit that claimed the first Far Western Conference tennis championship in school history and went on to finish as the ninth-ranked team in the nation.

In less than a month, UC Davis added a law school and a med school and was suddenly ranked No. 1 in the world in Veterinary Medicine, Plant Pathology, Agronomy, Beekeeping and Growing Tomatoes.

Overnight, my cherished alma mater went from being the University Farm in coveralls to what is now known worldwide as the prestigious University of California at Davis, where tenured professors now drive Teslas instead of tractors.

And all of it because of the momentum created by that first Far Western Conference tennis championship.

In short, the school owes us big time.

In those days, in addition to our $7.75 meal money, we got one pair of tennis shoes at the start of each season and two tennis rackets in case we broke one in a fit of rage while playing against Sac State.

Additionally, we received one beautiful white practice shirt emblazoned with blue letters spelling out "CALIFORNIA  AGGIES TENNIS," that we proudly wore to class every day in the false hope that our fellow students would think we were truly somebody.

If we so much as got an extra slice of onion on a burger at Foster's Freeze, the NCAA would swoop down and ban us from intercollegiate competition for life, Including the Olympics.

So today, after seeking appropriate legal counsel from several UC Davis School of Law graduates, I am formally declaring my intention to claim a piece of that $2.8 billion pie on behalf of myself and my teammates who I continue to love to this very day.

Except the guy who transferred to South Dakota.

With interest and inflation, I figure every one of us will be in the high seven figures. 

We'll let our team of well-trained attorneys decide where to put the decimal point.

Hail to California,
Alma Mater Dear,
Sing the Joyful Chorus,
Sound it Far and Near,

Rally 'Round Her Banner,
We will never fail,
California, Alma Mater,
Hail, Hail, Hail.

Go Ags

You can reach me directly at bobdunning@thewaryone.com.