Arthur Berman wrote:
 
>at many schools athletes in the major sports
>(which hockey may or may not be, but clearly is at schools such as BU or
>Minnesota) are poorly paid employees whose payment (education) is
>compromised by the terms of employment (a demanding practice and game
>schedule.)
 
This brings us to possibly the darkest travesty involved in college
athletics: legally, the athletes are not employees.  In every way that I
can figure, they behave just like employees, but that is not their status.
This means that they are not covered by any number of basic guarantees that
the rest of us take for granted on our jobs.  Scholarships can be revoked
pretty much arbitrarily without recourse.  I'm not familiar enough with the
Travis Roy situation to know how BU handled it, but there have been other
cases where a school denies responsibility for covering medical expenses
incurred in the course of athletic events.  Morally, I think this system is
indefensible; legally, I suspect that it's on shaky ground.  I'm waiting
for someone to challenge this set-up in court.  (Of course, one should note
that I can't figure out how amateur drafts pass anti-trust muster either.)
This is part of the cause of resistence to paying athletes any cash
stipend, since that would work to strip the veneer away.
  If such a development does occur, it will turn the world of college
athletics upside down.  It might very well lead to a few schools
essentially converting their programs into actual professional operations
and the rest would move back closer to club sports.  Less entertaining,
perhaps, but less hypocritical, too.
 
J. Michael Jackson
 
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