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males, females and football players. … We will need to provide opportunities and benefits to our female student-ath- letes in an equitable fashion." Imagine the chaos that would cause in athletic departments. With few excep- tions, the revenue produced by football and men's basketball – much of it from television rights – enables colleges to support a myriad of varsity and intra- mural sports for men and women. The repercussions of unionization in college athletics could be catastrophic. As many in the media assert, the col- leges and their arrogant membership or- ganization, the NCAA, may have brought this potentially calamitous dilemma upon themselves. With the money from their sports program now in the tens of millions of dollars for many colleges, and coaches' salaries now matching that of some company CEOs, it's natural for the athletes responsible for that revenue to want a share of it. Individual schools and the NCAA are al- ready facing a revenue-sharing situation with players on the 4½-year-old class action lawsuit by former UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon. The suit, which is expected to go to trial in July, seeks com- pensation for the commercial use of ath- letes' names, likenesses and images. That was enough of a headache for the NCAA, conference executives and ath- letic directors as the suit was wending its tortuous way through the legal sys- tem. The union problem now makes it a migraine. There's a political issue here, too. Unions influence local, state and na- tional elections, and nearly all unions favor Democrats. However, union power has diminished drastically in recent years. So, one needs to understand how desperate the nation's unions are to re- cruit new members and why the USW is backing the Northwestern players. Following a spike in membership after World War II, unions had more than 25 million members in the 1950s when the nation's population was much smaller than it is today. According to the latest statistics from the U.S. Labor Depart- ment, membership had fallen to 14.5 million in 2013 – or 11.3 percent of the total workforce – with about half of those unionized employees working in the public sector. As for the USW, it had plunged from 878,000 at its high in 1962 to 614,054 in 2012. I have mixed feelings about unions. My stepfather was a coal miner, and I grew up believing the historic leader of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis, was almost a god. Over the years, I have manned a picket line for my union in ra- dio and TV news and crossed picket lines as part of management. If unions and management can cooperate, it is mutually beneficial. However, I cannot see a union being in the best interests of the college athletes or the universities. I think it is reasonable for men and women athletes to be given a small stipend to help with miscellaneous ex- penses. At one point in the 1950s and '60s, the athletes received a few dollars a week for laundry and expenses. But if they are paid as employees, they are professionals. Period. I can understand athletes seeing dollar signs when they read about the revenues their sports bring into a school and the outrageous salaries being paid to some of the coaches. But if a scholarship and all it entails – tuition, housing, a train- ing table, academic assistance, etc. – is not enough, then they shouldn't be in college. No matter what they believe or are told by others, they are primarily in school to get an education. What is really needed in college athlet- ics is not a unionization movement but a series of major reforms within the NCAA. There are too many rules that re- quire changing to go into detail here, but the media has made a plethora of recom- mendations in recent years. In my mind, the players simply need to be treated fairly by the rules, something not done by the current NCAA regulations. For example, if coaches can break a contract and leave the school, then somehow it should be easier for a player to leave also. Fairness is not only what a good union wants but what we all want in life, even if it is true that life isn't always fair. You can't be fair if you don't try. ■ The Remarkable Journey of the 2012 Nittany Lions A diary by Lou Prato, author of the Penn State Football Encyclopedia and four other Nittany Lion books Personalized autographed copy available through Lou Prato and Associates Call 814-692-7577 or email louprato@comcast.net Price: $19.95 plus tax and shipping

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