Tramel's ScissorTales: How Alston vs. NCAA ruling affects college football players in potential union talks
Jason Stahl wants to unionize college football players. It’s not a new topic.
But Stahl has gone so far as to meet with Penn State players about getting a seat at the Big Ten table to talk about issues like revenue sharing and enhanced medical insurance.
Money flowing freely in the name of name, image and likeness. The transfer portal a revolving door. The coaches don’t bring up issues like conference realignment and they themselves jumping jobs for big wads of cash, but that’s typical.
The sport is a mess.
And college football players have their sport in a headlock.
They would be nuts to unionize. Players suddenly have all the power.
Tramel's ScissorTales: A 16-team College Football Playoff might be just what Big 12 needs
The Thursday ScissorTales rank Big Ten football’s non-conference schedules and look at the life the late Leon Cross. But we start with the crazy world of college football and the attempts to unionize the players.
In the parlance of professional sports, players suddenly have unfettered free agency and no salary or payroll cap.
The grownups in baseball, basketball and football must be awfully jealous.
A union would be the best thing to ever happen to the universities. If a union forms, the schools and conferences could collectively bargain and maybe get back a chunk of territory they’ve lost in the last couple of years.
Maybe some caps on NIL money. Maybe some strings attached to the transfer portal. Sure, the players would want the aforementioned revenue sharing and insurance boost. But the universities could give a little and demand a lot, while holding most of the cards.
Unions are great for workers who have little power. That does not describe college football players. Not anymore.
For a century, college football players mostly had to do what they were told, until a variety of recent court rulings, notably Alston vs. the NCAA. The Supreme Court upheld a ruling that struck down NCAA caps on student-athlete benefits on anti-trust grounds.
Suddenly, it’s Dodge City on Saturday night.
When the professional sports unions went to battle against franchise owners, the athletes did not have much leverage in the courts. That’s why baseball and the National Football League and the NBA were able to restrict player movement and contracts.
The unions needed collective bargaining to get free agency and a more open marketplace.
College football players already have free agency and a wide-open marketplace. Heck, college football doesn’t even have a draft. Players can sign with any school they want, then transfer unencumbered anywhere they want, and get paid anything they want.
Collective bargaining can only mess that up.
Tramel: BYU joining the Big 12 Conference the hard way, through independence
Stahl who resigned as a professor at the University of Minnesota in summer 2020, wants to unionize players and shoot the moon. Revenue sharing is the big carrot; give players a cut of these massive television contracts that have been signed or soon will be.
I suppose anything’s possible in sports labor wars. But a college football union would be structurally weak, for the same reason the National Football League has the weakest players union.
Circumstances.
Football players don’t have long careers. A union’s biggest weapon is a work stoppage. But a work stoppage is dicey for football players.
Their clock always is ticking. NFL careers are short. So are college football players’. Three to five years, and the five years is a worst-case scenario, since most believe they’re NFL bound.
Moreso, NFL players want to play not to be seen, but to be paid. But college players need to be on the field so they can be scouted by NFL teams and college football heavyweights, who might be willing to offer a brighter platform.
For decades, the NFL union has caved much more easily in negotiations than have baseball or NBA unions.
The same would happen in college football. Does a union really think it can keep 100 players in line from Oregon to Texas Tech to Miami to Michigan? The NFL union can’t keep its members from crossing a picket line, and there’s only 32 teams with maybe 60 union members per squad. The NFL union doesn’t even try to strike anymore.
Ask a sharp lawyer how to serve the interests of big-time college football programs, and his answer would be to get the players at the bargaining table.
Players would be best-served right now by staying away from university representatives. Sit down with the Big Ten? That’s kooky. Keep those guys scrambling. College football is running scared.
Every coach’s testimony will show you college football’s play – it wants structure on player movement and caps on NIL. Players should want none of that.
Players have the power. Use it. Don’t lose it. Don’t give universities the blessing of a bargaining table.
Tramel's ScissorTales: Which Big 12 football team has best nonconference schedule in 2022?
Ranking the Big Ten non-conference schedules
Big Ten football’s non-conference schedules are quite uniform. No team is playing more than one difficult non-conference game, few teams are playing a marquee non-conference games and the schedules are dotted heavily with Mid-American Conference and Division I-AA opponents.
With that lack of nuance, the schedules are easy to rank, as we continue our series of Power Five non-conference slates:
1. Ohio State: Notre Dame, Arkansas State, Toledo. Notre Dame at Ohio State is the season’s best non-conference matchup.
2. Penn State: Ohio, at Auburn, Central Michigan.The Nittany Lions playing in the Deep South is quite a culture clash.
3. Nebraska: North Dakota, Georgia Southern, Oklahoma.The Sooners’ first trip to Lincoln since 2009 is worth something.
4. Michigan State: Western Michigan, Akron, at Washington.UW should be a good matchup.
5. Indiana: Idaho, Western Kentucky, at Cincinnati. UC counts as a marquee game.
6. Iowa: South Dakota State, Iowa State, Nevada. The ISU-Iowa game usually is competitive, but the Hawkeyes have been dominating.
7. Illinois: Wyoming, Virginia, Chattanooga. Virginia-Illinois is a matchup of similar colors.
8. Wisconsin: Illinois State, Washington State, New Mexico State.Washington State has its moments; can the Cougars be competitive at Camp Randall?
9. Rutgers: at Boston College, Wagner, at Temple.The Scarlet Knights are playing teams from Boston, New York and Philly. That’s no way to have a good schedule.
10. Purdue: Indiana State, at Syracuse, Florida Atlantic.This isn’t the Syracuse of a quarter century ago.
11. Maryland: Buffalo, at Charlotte, Southern Methodist.When SMU is your marquee opponent, it’s a bad schedule. When SMU is your marquee opponent, and it’s not the worst schedule in the league, your conference has scheduling issues.
12. Michigan: Colorado State, Hawaii, Connecticut. Hey, Wolverines. You’re Michigan.What are you doing playing a schedule like this?
13. Minnesota: New Mexico State, Western Illinois, Colorado. Ugh.
14. Northwestern: Duke, Southern Illinois, Miami-Ohio. Double ugh.
Games against Power Five opponents: 11 of 42 (26.2 percent; 28.6 percent if you count Cincinnati, which enters the Big 12 in 2023).
Big 12 in 2023).
Home games: 35 of 42 (83.3 percent).
Games against Division I-AA opponents: nine of 42 (21.4 percent).
Percentage of guarantee games (no home-and-home): 29 of 42 (69.0 percent).
Tramel: BYU hopes it's more alike than different from new Big 12 schoolmates
Leon Cross loved OU
People around OU called him “Old Rugged Cross,” but few believed that Leon Cross was rugged.
Cross, who died Monday in his Norman home at age 83, came to OU in 1957 on a football scholarship and, outside of three years in the military as an assistant coach at Army, spent the rest of his life in Norman.
“I always kidded him about not getting married,” said Chuck Bowman, a half-century friend and the retired director of the state Fellowship of Christian Athletes. “He was married to the University of Oklahoma. That was his first love.”
Cross was an assistant coach under Bud Wilkinson, Jim Mackenzie and Chuck Fairbanks, then went into athletic administration. He was an associate athletic director from 1972-91 before retiring.
But Cross remained a huge supporter of the athletic department, particularly the men’s and women’s gymnastics programs.
“Leon Cross was a Sooner through and through,” OU athletic director Joe Castiglione said. “It goes without saying how much he meant to the University of Oklahoma. But it’s also clear how much our university meant to him, and we are so appreciative of his lengthy, dedicated service.”
Cross was credited with recruiting Tinker Owens to OU. Fairbanks considered the slight freshman from Miami, Oklahoma, the brother of 1969 Heisman Trophy winner Steve Owens, too small and slow for the Sooners.
But Cross persuaded Fairbanks that Tinker Owens was worth the risk. Owens recalled getting into a fight at the old Wagon Wheel bar in Norman, as a 1972 freshman.
Cross called in Owens and said, “I put my career on the line recruiting you,” Owens recalled. “I didn’t have any more fights. Just a super human being.”
Cross was at the center of a major controversy in the 1980s. Barry Switzer accused Cross of orchestrating a letter-writing campaign to get Switzer and athletic director Wade Walker fired. In 1986, when Walker resigned as AD, a group of OU football alumni backed Cross for the job, but Switzer backed Donnie Duncan.
Duncan won the job after a very public and heated campaign with the regents. The vote was announced as 7-0 but actually was 4-3, according to Switzer’s autobiography, Bootlegger’s Boy.
Cross came to OU from Hobbs, New Mexico, and spent six years on scholarship, getting extended eligibility due to severe injuries.
“Super guy,” said Dale Perini, Cross’ OU teammate. “We had one argument, and it was my fault.”
For a Duck Pond picnic date, Perini borrowed a quilt from Cross’ closet, not knowing it was handmade by Cross’ mother.
Cross got over it. Perini said Cross was a person the players all went to when they needed help.
“Everybody respected Leon,” Perini said. “Someone once said, ‘You know, Leon can be at home no matter what the environment is. He could be with the president of the University of Oklahoma and be perfectly at ease, and he could be at some old dirt farmer’s house and be perfectly at ease.’ He had that knack.”
Bowman credits Cross and former OU coach/administrator Don Jimerson with opening FCA doors when that organization was building in Oklahoma.
“At our summer conferences at Estes Park (in Colorado),” Bowman said. Cross “would bring some of his older friends. Guys that had lost their wives. Guys in their 80s. He just wanted to share that with them. He was the most thoughtful guy toward older guys that didn’t have much time left. I could see that sincerity.”
No memorial service is planned, but Bowman said he and Sooners Helping Sooners are hosting a luncheon in Cross’ honor at 11:30 a.m. August 31, in the Jim Thorpe Building at 4040 N Lincoln Avenue. Cost is $25. Memorial contributions in Cross’ honor are welcome to the OU Foundation scholarship #40870 for men's and women’s gymnastics, OU’s FCA or Christ’s Church of Norman.
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The List: NBA victory projections
In Oklahoma, optimism reigns around the Thunder rebuilding, courtesy of the last two NBA Drafts, which brought Josh Giddey and Chet Holmgren.
But sportsbetting.ag last week released its over/under numbers for the 2022-23 NBA season, and the Thunder isn’t projected to rise out of deep lottery contention. In fact, OKC is tied for the fourth-lowest victory total in the over/under numbers.
Here’s the entire NBA list, except for the Lakers, Netropolitans, Jazz and Knickerbockers, all of whom are off the board due to ongoing trade speculation surrounding Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and Donovan Mitchell.
1. Celtics 53½: Sounds about right, though if Durant goes to the Celtics, this number will rise.
2. Clippers 52½: Seems low to me, though the Clips could go into serious load management on Kawhi Leonard and Paul George.
2. Suns 52½: Phoenix won 64 games last season. Could the Suns really fall more than 11 games from that perch?
4. Warriors 51½: Golden State went 53-29 last season, so this seems about right.
4. Bucks 51½: America seems to be sleeping on Milwaukee, which at full strength likely would have repeated as NBA champ.
6. Grizzlies 51: Everyone loves Memphis, and they should.
7. 76ers 50½: Lots of veteran talent, but lots of things could go wrong.
8. Heat 50: I wouldn’t touch Miami. A Jimmy Butler-for-Durant trade seems possible, which would end up making the Heat more of a contender, but it could scorch earth to get there.
9. Nuggets 49½: Seems low. Denver could be primed for a big year.
10. Timberwolves 48: The Rudy Gobert/Karl-Anthony Towns combo is fascinating, but I have no idea how it will go.
11. Hawks 47½: Atlanta got better. The question is, how much better? The Hawks won 43 a year ago.
11. Mavericks 47½: Dallas is undervalued. I’m thinking more like 50 wins for the Mavs.
13. Raptors 45½: I do not encourage people to bet. In fact, I encourage people to not bet. With that said, always know Toronto is underrated.
14. Pelicans 45: Tons of talent, but tons of questions. New Orleans is one of the reasons the OKC win total is so low. Someone has to lose big in the Western Conference. And most teams are well ahead of the Thunder.
15. Bulls 44.5: This must discourage Billy Donovan. Well, not the over/under number, but the realization that Chicago is only seventh in the East, according to these rankings, and that’s not counting Brooklyn.
16. Cavaliers 43½: Cleveland got ahead of itself last year with a playoff race. Can it stay there?
17. Trail Blazers 40½: Seems like the most inflated number on this list. Mid-30s is more like it.
18. Hornets 36½: Not a bad team but could be derailed by Miles Bridges’ legal issues.
19. Wizards 36: Back in the old days, I called perpetual mediocrity the “Milwaukee treadmill.” But Washington has secured the naming rights for said status.
20. Kings 33½: It should be fine by the Thunder if Sacramento wins more than 33 games. Better lottery odds for OKC.
21. Pistons 27½: Detroit is getting better. The question is, how fast?
22. Magic 26½: Paolo Banchero figures to help Orlando more immediately than Holmgren helps the Thunder.
22. Thunder 26½: OKC won 24 games last season and won at a 25-win pace (pro-rating to 82 games) two years ago. Sure seems like the Thunder ought to get north of 25 wins this season.
24. Rockets 25½: Same question in Houston as in OKC. When (if?) will all the young talent click?
24. Pacers 25½: Welcome to the lottery race, Indiana. It’s just as bad as it seems.
26. Spurs 24½: This is going to be very strange for San Antonio and very strange for the rest of us.
Off board: Lakers, Nets, Jazz, Knicks.
Carlson: Like the Thunder, the Sixers are planning a new arena. Here's why OKC will do it differently
Mailbag: Paycom Center vs. Reunion Arena
The discussion of a new arena for Oklahoma City has generated a ton of reader interest. Including some very insightful thoughts.
Terry: “I saw your July 17 column about replacing the OKC arena. I would suggest that a better analogy from this area would have been Reunion Arena and American Airlines Center. Like Paycom Center for the Thunder, Reunion Arena was the Mavericks’ starter home – built cheap ($28 million) and quick. It served the Mavs and Stars for 21 years until the AAC opened in 2001. Paycom will hit its 21st birthday in 2023, I think. Lot of similarities. The Ballpark in Arlington was supposed to be DFW baseball’s American Airlines Center – the top-notch replacement for Arlington Stadium. And it was a great stadium for baseball, except for the fact that it was outdoors and a killer from mid-May through mid-September. I remember sitting in the outfield in full sun on the Sunday before the All-Star game, on a day when the temperature hit 108. I about died. Most of our party left by the fifth inning. I stayed and lived to tell about it. The Ballpark in Arlington is a good illustration of what happens when the Powers That Be say we can't afford that, so let's save money. The Ballpark should have had a roof, but the Powers That Be decided, ‘Let's build the best stadium we can without a roof.’ Either do it right, or don't do it. That's a lesson OKC should heed.”
Tramel: I have nothing of substance to add. Great points by Terry. I well-remember Reunion Arena. It opened in 1980 at a reported cost of $27 million, which is $88 million in 2021 dollars.
Reunion served Dallas well. It was home to the NBA Mavericks and the National Hockey League Stars, seating 18,190 for basketball and 17,000 for hockey.
Reunion, which sat on the southwest edge of downtown Dallas, hosted the biggest of music acts. Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Van Halen, Frank Sinatra(!), Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie, Madonna, Gloria Estefan, Motley Crue, Pink Floyd, Queen, Journey, U2 and R.E.M.
Reunion hosted the Southwest Conference basketball tournament, some NCAA regionals and the 1986 Final Four.
Reunion Arena was a success by any measure. But its time had come.
American Airlines Center opened in 2001, and Reunion became a secondary arena. It housed the Arena League Dallas Desperadoes in 2003 and the indoor Dallas Sidekicks until 2004. Its last major concert was the Black Eyed Peas and Gwen Stefani in 2005.
The Big 12 staged its women’s basketball tournament at Reunion in 2003, 2004 and 2006. The arena hosted a 2007 women’s basketball NCAA regional.
But Reunion closed in 2008 and was demolished in 2009.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: College football players union could hurt Supreme Court-ruled freedoms
