III. The “Student-Athlete”
The term “student-athlete” was invented in the 1950s to counter legal claims that injured athletes were entitled to workers’ compensation benefits. Workers’ compensation benefits are available only to employees.
Byers and NCAA lawyers used the term “student-athlete” to emphasize that athletes are primarily or exclusively “students” and not athlete-employees.
The term “student-athlete” suggests the importance of education in college sports. It attempts to wed the values of athletics to the values of higher education, which leads to the assumption that athletes cannot, by definition, be employees of their university.
In Unsportsmanlike Conduct, Byers explained the purpose of the term “student-athlete”:
“That threat [full athletics scholarship as “pay for play” which implies employee status] was the dreaded notion that NCAA athletes could be identified as employees by state industrial commissions and the courts.
We crafted the term student-athlete, and soon it was embedded in all NCAA rules and interpretations as a mandated substitute for such words as players and athletes. We told college publicists to speak of “college teams,” not football or basketball “clubs,” a word common to the pros.
I suppose none of us wanted to accept what was really happening. That was apparent in behind-the-scenes agonizing over the issue of workmen’s compensation for players. I had reluctantly accepted the professed purpose of the full-ride grant-in-aid as a device to clean up sports. I was shocked that outsiders could believe that young men on grants-in-aid playing college sports should be classified as workers.
The argument, however, was compelling. In a nutshell: the performance of football and basketball players frequently paid the salaries and workmen’s compensation expenses of stadium employees, field house ticket takers, and restroom attendants, but the players themselves were not covered. Even today, the university’s player insurance covers medical expenses for athletes, but its workmen’s compensation plan provides no coverage for disabling injuries they may suffer. There is limited disability insurance available through the NCAA.”
(Byers, Unsportsmanlike Conduct, Chapter 5: “Full Rides in the Name of Amateurism,” pp. 67-70)
The term “student-athlete” has become so deeply entrenched in American discourse that stakeholders and decision-makers presume that college athletes cannot be employees.
Judges, legislators, policymakers, broadcast media commentators, journalists, and consumers alike blindly accept and use the phrase as the only way to describe the relationship between athletes and institutions. “Student-athlete” appears over 3,500 times in the NCAA Division I Manual.
One critical consequence of accepting the “student-athlete” is that college athletes have been conditioned to believe they have no protectable labor rights.
On September 29, 2021, National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a policy interpretation alleging the NCAA’s use of “student-athlete” to describe certain athlete-laborers was a violation of the National Labor Relations Act:
“While Players at Academic Institutions are commonly referred to as “student-athletes,” I have chosen not to use that term in this memorandum because the term was created to deprive those individuals of workplace protections.”
“…because those Players at Academic Institutions are employees under the [National Labor Relations Act], misclassifying them as “student-athletes”, and leading them to believe that they are not entitled to the Act’s protection, has a chilling effect…Therefore, in appropriate cases, I will pursue an independent violation of…the Act where an employer misclassifies Players at Academic Institutions as student-athletes.”
Despite this and other attempts to dislodge the term “student-athlete” from the business model, it still has breathtaking cultural value as the only way to describe athlete-laborers. It remains a sacred principle of college sports. The beloved “student-athlete” myth will not die quietly.