SportsWise: A Podcast About Sports and the Law
Sep 28, 2026 · 1 hr 3 min · 12 segments
Send us Fan Mail On this episode, I'm rejoined by Jason Stahl, founder of the College Football Players Association, an organization that has emerged to attempt to represent college football players…
Jason StahlGuest
Gabe FeldmanHost
Let's assume that whether it's through federal legislation more broadly covering college sports, or if it's through a more direct amendment to the NLRA or creation of a new law, let's say it scenario one, it, declares that college football players, FBS football players, are employees and have a right to unionize.
There are some who would argue that the Danny Whites of the world and others who are on the management side who are now calling for collective bargaining as a solution, that if management wants it, then maybe labor doesn't want it.
that labor might be better off outside of the context of a union, because part of the reason that management, this happens in the sports context and not really any other industries in the country, but because it's a multi-employer bargaining unit, because these are a group of competitors that are coming together to reach agreements on the rules of the game, that a way to immunize them under antitrust law is to have a collective bargaining relationship, and then the rules they agree to with the players are immune from attack under antitrust.
it's one of the only industries in the country that I'm aware of where management has repeatedly said that the players are in a union and the players have said, no, we're not in a union.
And the reason for that in part was because the players wanted to be able to make an antitrust suit.
And if you look at the college athlete world, because they aren't, employees yet.
And they've been slow, but at least in the last few years, they've been pretty successful and have transformed that system.
So what do you say to the antitrust lawyer or the athletes who say, what would we get out of the collective bargaining agreement? We might get some minimums and some protections that would be helpful, but we're also gonna get limits on how much can be spent on us, how much we can move.
They're doing this so that they can protect these rules that restrain athlete mobility and compensation.
So why shouldn't they keep going with antitrust rather than going the union side?
And as we saw with the NFL in the past, there's been a back and forth at times, right? Where it's union, then we decertify the union, we bring this suit, then we recertify the union.
And so I'm not, I don't know that it necessarily needs to be a linear trajectory, right? Or a sort of progression from antitrust to unionization, collective bargaining, CBA, right? I think what I would say is, again, this is part of our pitch, right? We get to the end and we say, here's the 10 point platform.
And
every single one of the 10 points that is on the platform, they do not currently get.
And so, yeah, you have to very clearly articulate in a union movement, what will the union achieve that you're not already getting now? And what can you achieve as a collective that you cannot achieve as an individual,
And we think we very clearly lay that out in the platform, and that's incumbent upon us to do so, and then to clearly articulate to players how this would play out in a CBA negotiation and then the ratification of a CBA negotiation.
Let's assume that whether it's through federal legislation more broadly covering college sports, or if it's through a more direct amendment to the NLRA or creation of a new law, let's say it scenario one, it, declares that college football players, FBS football players, are employees and have a right to unionize.
There are some who would argue that the Danny Whites of the world and others who are on the management side who are now calling for collective bargaining as a solution, that if management wants it, then maybe labor doesn't want it.
that labor might be better off outside of the context of a union, because part of the reason that management, this happens in the sports context and not really any other industries in the country, but because it's a multi-employer bargaining unit, because these are a group of competitors that are coming together to reach agreements on the rules of the game, that a way to immunize them under antitrust law is to have a collective bargaining relationship, and then the rules they agree to with the players are immune from attack under antitrust.
it's one of the only industries in the country that I'm aware of where management has repeatedly said that the players are in a union and the players have said, no, we're not in a union.
And the reason for that in part was because the players wanted to be able to make an antitrust suit.
And if you look at the college athlete world, because they aren't, employees yet.
And they've been slow, but at least in the last few years, they've been pretty successful and have transformed that system.
So what do you say to the antitrust lawyer or the athletes who say, what would we get out of the collective bargaining agreement? We might get some minimums and some protections that would be helpful, but we're also gonna get limits on how much can be spent on us, how much we can move.
They're doing this so that they can protect these rules that restrain athlete mobility and compensation.
So why shouldn't they keep going with antitrust rather than going the union side?
And as we saw with the NFL in the past, there's been a back and forth at times, right? Where it's union, then we decertify the union, we bring this suit, then we recertify the union.
And so I'm not, I don't know that it necessarily needs to be a linear trajectory, right? Or a sort of progression from antitrust to unionization, collective bargaining, CBA, right? I think what I would say is, again, this is part of our pitch, right? We get to the end and we say, here's the 10 point platform.
And
every single one of the 10 points that is on the platform, they do not currently get.
And so, yeah, you have to very clearly articulate in a union movement, what will the union achieve that you're not already getting now? And what can you achieve as a collective that you cannot achieve as an individual,
And we think we very clearly lay that out in the platform, and that's incumbent upon us to do so, and then to clearly articulate to players how this would play out in a CBA negotiation and then the ratification of a CBA negotiation.
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