Players association hosts meeting with over 50 college football athletes
ATLANTA — Athletes.org hosted its first players’ only meeting on Saturday ahead of the College Football Playoff title game, bringing in more than 50 college football athletes for conversations on the impending House v. NCAA settlement, the future of college sports and players’ rights.
Held in a similar format as the NFLPA meetings, guest speakers included former Texas A&M star quarterback Johnny Manziel and Grant House, one of the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit against the NCAA.
In an over 30-minute press conference, players spoke about their want to have a voice in shaping the future of college sports.
“We talked about compensation, we had multiple questions about that,” Athletes.org founder and chairman Jim Cavale told On3. “Everything from what portion of the House revenue share they should get. We talked about incentives and if they should get rewarded if they get as far as the College Football Playoff final just like their coaches and schools do. We talked about whether there should be a players’ association — 100 percent of them believed they should.”
The transfer portal was also discussed. Earlier this week at the AFCA convention in Charlotte, FBS head coaches proposed to move to a 10-day transfer portal window in early January after bowl games which would eliminate the spring window, except for grad transfers.
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Asked if players would support this, the group of players made available to the media answered with a resounding “No.”
“The overarching problem they have is how they’re not included in any of these things and how they’re set up,” Cavale said. “To simplify it, I’m going to quote [former Notre Dame athletic director] Jack Swarbrick. He says that you can fix all the problems in college athletics by just getting the athletes to sit together with college leaders and go through each one.
“Of course, he wants that to happen outside of employment and create a collective bargaining process. I’m quoting him because he said we don’t need Congress to set all the rules, we need Congress to create a way for not to be employees to negotiate with us.”