Not just tailgate talk anymore

It will be a while before we know the outcome of the union vote by football players at Northwestern University. But in one sense, the athletes who pushed the union issue already have won a significant victory.

Union or no union, they've turned up the volume considerably on a long-simmering national debate over athletes' role in the multibillion- dollar world of big-time college sports. While universities, coaches, television networks, merchandisers and others cash in on college sports, especially football and men's basketball, should the student-athletes at the center of that entertainment empire get a slice of the pie? Where does the education end and exploitation begin?

These are tough questions, and their answers spawn a load of even tougher issues. Issues aimed squarely at the heart of long-held traditions, the ideals of amateur athletics and the wildly popular, highly lucrative system that stands today.

And in the wake of the Northwestern saga, those issues are no longer interesting hypotheticals to debate around the tailgate. They're real issues now reaching top decision-makers.

That includes university presidents, such as University of Iowa President Sally Mason. She addressed the issue on Iowa Public Television last weekend.

'I think this is where the NCAA either has to step up and help or we have to find a way to do this ourselves,” Mason said, 'and that is to make it so that the kinds of things that the athletes at Northwestern were asking for, whether it's better health care of them, whether it's the full cost of education, the kinds of benefits - these are the kinds of things we've been wanting to do, and certainly programs like Iowa and all of those in the Big Ten, we're resourced well enough that we can do these things and we should be allowed to do these things.”

Mason also said the future of college athletics is at stake in this debate. She's right. And If Mason is serious, we hope she pushes her colleagues to join the UI in advocating for change.

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