In One of Higher Ed’s Hottest Fights, These Documents Have Become Exhibit A

If you were on the University of Colorado at Boulder men’s golf team last year, you were told you “must do something nice for someone EVERY DAY.” If you played baseball for the University of Texas at Austin in 2022, you could only wear one chain during practice or games. And if you were on the Texas A&M University at College Station volleyball team recently, you were expected to sit in the first three rows of every class.

Those rules are spelled out in athletes’ handbooks, documents that many teams and colleges ask their players to sign and adhere to. The handbooks have been featured as high-profile evidence in two recent cases before the National Labor Relations Board challenging colleges’ classification of athletes as amateurs, rather than employees. In a case that is still ongoing, the NLRB heavily quoted from the University of Southern California’s handbook for athletes in a complaint alleging that such players should be reclassified as employees. A February decision in a similar NLRB case cited Dartmouth College’s handbook as part of the rationale for granting the men’s basketball team the right to unionize.

“The student-athlete handbook in many ways functions as an employee handbook,” a regional NLRB director wrote in the Dartmouth decision, “detailing the tasks athletes must complete and the regulations they may not break.”

All students must follow campus rules. But college athletes have an additional set of rules that govern how they spend much of their time, what they say publicly, and how they should look and act. Southern California has said its handbook constitutes a set of “recommendations” for players and should not be considered rules. In a statement, Dartmouth said its handbook provides “guidelines” for athletes and is not an employee handbook.

“The handbook states clearly and unequivocally that conflicts between academic and athletic obligations will be resolved in favor of academics,” the statement said. “Thus, the handbook reinforces that they are students first and athletes second, and that the primary objective for students at Dartmouth is learning.”

But that argument has, so far, not persuaded the NLRB.

“A key element in determining whether or not these athletes are employees is the degree of control that the university has over their lives as athletes,” said Mark Gaston Pearce, a visiting faculty member at Georgetown Law Center and former chairman of the NLRB under the Obama Administration. “The handbook is evidence of the requirements and protocols that these athletes are bound to follow.”

‘Tools of Control’

These handbooks work as “tools of control” at the colleges in the most competitive conferences, said Richard M. Southall, a professor at the University of South Carolina and director of the College Sport Research Institute. He and Mark S. Nagel, also a professor at the university, and Christopher Corr, an assistant professor at Troy University, in Alabama, collected handbooks and team-specific rules from about 20 colleges for analysis, which they shared with The Chronicle. All the handbooks they shared are from colleges with big Division I football or basketball programs.

Colleges tend to call these documents “student-athlete handbooks.” If they are members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, their handbooks include some of the association’s most salient rules: Athletes cannot gamble, break laws, or accept payment from boosters, for example. The handbooks also include parts of the regular student handbooks, such as anti-sexual-harassment policies, as well as information about how to access health, training, and counseling resources, among other things. Many teams also have their own set of rules for players, in addition to the institutionwide handbook.

Some of the handbooks the researchers collected include reminders that the athletes are lucky to be where they are.

“Participation in intercollegiate athletics is a privilege, not a right,” says the University of Oregon’s 2022-23 handbook, for example. The handbooks instruct athletes to consider themselves representatives of their institutions and teams at all times.

They spell out rules for how many credit hours athletes must take, as well as the GPA they must maintain. Some colleges require athletes to meet with athletics advisers about their course loads. They can only change classes with approval from an adviser. And almost every handbook said that academics should come first.

Those rules ensure that athletes are fulfilling their obligations as students and meeting the NCAA requirements for remaining eligible to participate in sports. Many also seem intended to keep athletes safe — more than one handbook included rules about how and whether athletes should ride mopeds.

But every rule also serves to further restrict players, making their relationships to their colleges more like that of an employee and employer, the NLRB has argued.

In the handbooks the college-athletics scholars collected, The Chronicle found examples of rules that show just how constrained college athletes’ lives can be. For example, Caitlin Clark and her teammates on the University of Iowa women’s basketball team had a curfew during the basketball season.

U. of Iowa women's basketballDuring the basketball season, “No team members may be downtown after 10 p.m.”Click to view document

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Like many teams, the Michigan State University women’s golf team is restricted in what they can post on social media. (Some athletes may be advised to be careful about what they post about their conditions heading into competitions because gamblers may use that information when placing bets.)

Michigan State U. women's golf“Avoid personal emotions and comments that share your state of mind. No matter what your emotional state is, share it in face to face conversations — not via social media.”Click to view document

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The University of Minnesota’s 2022-23 baseball team handbook included a page-and-a-half-long section on what players should wear and when. There were different dress codes for practices, games, and travel. Players with too many infractions risked losing their spot on the team. The University of Texas’ baseball team also had a dress code in 2022.

U. of Minnesota baseball“All players will come to practice presentable (hair and facial hair), you will wear your jersey/top tucked in. Everyday you are to look presentable and professional.” Click to view document

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U. of Texas at Austin baseball“No more than one tucked‐in chain when in practice gear or uniforms.”Click to view document

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Some teams instructed players where to sit when they’re in the classroom, such as Rutgers University’s men’s basketball team, in 2022-23, and Texas A&M’s volleyball team.

Rutgers U. men's basketball“You must be early for each class and, for in person classes, make every attempt to sit in the front 1⁄2 of the classroom.”Click to view document

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Texas A&M U. volleyball“Sit in the first three rows of every class.”Click to view document

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Very few teams’ communications representatives responded to The Chronicle’s requests for comment, but the University of Colorado’s men’s golf coach elaborated on the team’s rule about doing something nice for someone every day.

“We simply have that as a guideline/area of focus for all members of our team — coaches and players,” said Roy Edwards. “We all have an opportunity to impact others positively, and we want to make sure we understand the impact that responsibility can have as we move forward in life to be good people and lift other people up. If we want other people to be nice or positive to us, let’s start by doing that ourselves to others around us.”

Many of the handbooks’ rules are unremarkable: Don’t drink and drive; don’t stay out too late. But Molly Harry, an assistant professor of recreation and sport management at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said that how they are enforced matters.

“They are enforced in ways with physical and emotional penalties,” she said. When violations are met with punishments such as a lost scholarship or being forced to workout at 4 a.m., that starts to look different from the relationship other types of students have with their college. Many of the handbooks listed possible sanctions, which can include being suspended from the team or kicked off entirely.

The degree to which these rules govern students’ lives also matters and, in some cases, may set them apart from other students.

“The argument is the handbooks are much more detailed and maybe controlling than regulations are for nonathlete students,” said Joshua Lens, an assistant professor of recreation and sport management at Arkansas. “You’d be hard-pressed to find some university policy that says you can’t talk to the media if you’re a freshman, or you have to smile and act positively or refer all media inquiries to the sports-information director.”

There are other considerations that the NLRB looks at in determining whether a person is an employee, besides the level of control, said Pearce, the visiting professor at Georgetown. One is whether they provide a benefit to the potential employer, and the other is whether they are compensated in some way.

Pearce, who is also executive director of the Workers’ Rights Institute at Georgetown Law, said that when it comes to college athletes, the benefit that the college sees is external goodwill and, in some cases, revenue. He added that college athletes do get compensated — in the form of scholarships, early admission, tickets to games, flights and lodging at competitions.

“Because the athlete is getting remunerations for a service,” Pearce said, “and that service is being regulated by the employer by rules, that sets them apart from rules a student has to abide by.”