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Subject: NAACP Urging Black Athletes to Boycott Southern Universities Author: An Observer [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 15:05:08 05/19/26 Tue In reply to: Greenhorn 's message, "Five-for-Five Impact?" on 10:53:57 04/24/26 Fri The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the most historic and credible civil rights organizations, just dropped a press release urging African-American athletes to boycott universities in eight Southern states, from Texas right across the former Confederacy to Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. The goal is to protest last month's Supreme Court decision which has prompted a wave of gerrymandering across the South since then. The boycott will be centerpiece of a larger campaign called, "Out of Bounds." https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/48817262/naacp-calls-boycott-southern-states-voting-rights In this case, the NAACP is essentially acting in the role of a labor union, encouraging its affiliated "employees" to start a labor action against their employers. This is where I see college sports heading. Athletes eventually will organize into unions and negotiate collective bargaining agreements with their university employers. These CBAs will give the employees lots of rights that we could have never imagined before. A coach wants to kick a player off the team for missing too many practices? Hold on a minute, now you're preventing a union member from earning their weekly paycheck. The union is not going to stand for that. The union will step into the situation, just as the PBA does when a police officer shoots someone on the street. Once we broke the old model where student-athletes were not employees (as courts ruled against the Dartmouth basketball players who said that they WERE employees), we entered a middle ground where jocks were not pure students, but rather quasi-employees. Many "quasi" middle grounds are unsustainable. Market forces will push any intermediate status toward its most sustainable, defendable position. In this case, college athletes as students is not defendable. There's way way too much money involved. Therefore, college athletes will move toward a status which is sustainable, which is a full-on employee. College sports will soon have absolutely nothing to do with college. These will be full entertainment businesses, partially owned by private equity and other investors, which just rent stadia and on-campus arenas from their university owners and wear a uniform that says Duke or Vanderbilt on it. Say goodbye to college sports with real students learning real academic subjects. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[> [> Subject: Women's groups tried the same thing after Dobbs Author: Go Green [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 16:55:04 05/19/26 Tue If their efforts had any impact, I didn't notice it.... [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> Subject: Re: Women's groups tried the same thing after Dobbs Author: Go Green [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 06:36:29 05/20/26 Wed Then again, maybe it did have an effect? https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/09/18/womens-basketball-recruiting-state-abortion-laws/ [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> Subject: Re: NAACP Urging Black Athletes to Boycott Southern Universities Author: The Mountain Lion [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 09:42:52 05/20/26 Wed The NAACP's proposal for outstanding Black Athletes to boycot Southern Schools like Florida, South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia appears to be very well thought out and will assist greatly major football schools elsewhere in the country such as Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Syracuse and Boston College, who the NAACP seriously contends have been victimized by the overpayments by Southern Schoools to Blacj Athletes. I cannot see this having much impact on the Ivy League. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> Subject: Not sure about Ohio Author: Go Green [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 09:53:50 05/20/26 Wed More like California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, etc... But like the women basketball players, we probably won't be able to tell if the boycott calls are having any impact until a few years from now... [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Not sure about Ohio Author: An Observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 12:35:42 05/20/26 Wed The winner of the FBS national championship is a narrow, small sample size dollop of data, but it does feel as if the tide has already turned in favor of the Big Ten, away from the SEC. Let's wait for a few more data points, but this bears watching. Many of us simply assumed that the SEC's prior dominance was structural, because geographically they sat on top of where the great African-American athletes were found. Now NIL is shaking up the snow globe and the NAACP wants to further the shift. The NAACP does not need to maintain this so-called boycott for many years. Simply putting their thumb on the scale at this time of tremendous change might still have a long-term effect. We'll see but, as GG says, it may be hard to determine the impact of the NAACP because there are so many moving parts already. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> [> [> Subject: Going to be tough... Author: Go Green [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 16:49:02 05/20/26 Wed It's not easy to get young people engaged in politics, no matter how much it may affect them down the line.... It's even harder when they have an offer to play football for Alabama or Texas... [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Going to be tough... Author: An Observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 17:59:17 05/20/26 Wed It's not easy to get any people, regardless of age, engaged in politics, no matter what serious constitutional and democratic threats are involved. If there's one thing we seen over the last decade, it's that the average American cannot see past his or her immediate future. If eggs cost $5 a dozen instead of $3, that's an issue, regardless of any bigger and more important issues hanging over the nation's future. We'll see if the same nearsightedness applies when it's gas that cost $5 a gallon, instead of $3. Remember when Americans were outraged and demanded that the President resign because he lied to them? Nixon seems like a happy memory now. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> Subject: Re: NAACP Urging Black Athletes to Boycott Southern Universities Author: Bengal [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 22:55:41 05/20/26 Wed Whatever impact, if any, on African Americans’ college decisions, this will have virtually no impact on what those state legislatures do regarding redistricting. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> Subject: Re: NAACP Urging Black Athletes to Boycott Southern Universities Author: sparman [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 08:06:32 05/21/26 Thu Probably. But drubbings in football by integrated colleges helped to remove barriers in team rosters in the football-mad south. https://bit.ly/ann-news [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: NAACP Urging Black Athletes to Boycott Southern Universities Author: An Observer [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 17:45:10 05/21/26 Thu Bear Bryant intentionally scheduled a 1970 *HOME* game against a powerful integrated USC team featuring an all-black backfield including Sam "Bam" Cunningham, knowing that a probable loss at Legion Field would serve as a conspicuous signal to the Alabama faithful that staying an all-white program would necessarily mean decline and eventual irrelevance in college football. Cunningham and USC ran all over Alabama, so Bryant had his desired signature loss. He soon got his desired integrated team. I often think about what race relations in this nation would be like if African Americans were not great athletes. Imagine what this country would look like if our history and everything else were the same, but black athletes ran no faster or jumped no higher than their white counterparts. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: NAACP Urging Black Athletes to Boycott Southern Universities Author: Bengal [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 07:27:38 05/22/26 Fri Agreed. [ Post a Reply to This Message ]