Could a union have prevented Andrew Wiggins from playing college ball?

Something that may have been lost in the talk surrounding Northwestern football players’ efforts to unionize is what “college athletes as employees” legislation could do to the status of international players. Well, until now.

Michael McCann at Sports Law Blog published an email exchange he had with Theodore Chadwick, a Wisconsin based immigration attorney. Chadwick discusses the implications that college athletes being recognized as employees could have on F-1 Visas in the United States.

I've been following the potential unionization and “employee” designation of student athletes, and given my occupation, I thought of another wrinkle that I haven’t seen addressed in any news articles or opinions.

Students from foreign countries are in the United States pursuant to F-1 status, which generally allows for studies, but not work. Only under limited situations are foreign students allowed to be employed while enrolled: either for on-campus employment of 20 or less hours, or based on financial need. Student athletes practice far more than 20 hours per week and must travel for games.

Thus, it appears that if student athletes are deemed employees, foreign students would be ineligible to play (work) based on current immigration laws.

What Chadwick ostensibly says here, if we can play revisionist historians on a hypothetical scenario, is that college basketball players like Andrew Wiggins (Canada), Joel Embiid (Cameroon), Nik Stauskas (Canada), and Tyler Ennis (Canada) would have to go the way of playing abroad or the NBDL rather than the NCAA. Likewise, former college football players like Ezekial “Ziggy” Anash (Ghana), Margus Hunt (Estonia), and Sebastian Vollmer (Germany) would have to explore alternate routes to the NFL, if they even managed to play American football at all.

McCann notes the route Brandon Jennings took to reach the NBA, forgoing college for a more lucrative experience as a professional with Lottomatica Roma in Italy’s Lega Basket A, where he was also free to collect further income via endorsement deals. It’s a path that could have served Wiggins et al very well, but what about college football players who arrive in America with relatively little experience in the game?

Anash went to BYU in search of a spot on the basketball team. He ended up on the track team, where coaches convinced him to give football a shot. The defensive end totalled 32 tackles, eight sacks, and two forced fumbles in his rookie season and was eventually selected fifth overall by the Detroit Lions in the 2013 NFL draft.

And what of Union College’s 2014 Frozen Four hockey championship? Nine roster players hailed from Canada. 32% of all NCAA hockey players hail from Canada, to say nothing of Northern Europeans.  Would the existence of a players’ union have prevented this all from happening?

According to Chadwick, it certainly could have gone that way.

It’s something to keep an eye on as Kain Colter and co. continue to push for college athletes to be recognized as employees. Losing out on talents like Wiggins, Embiid, and Akash doesn’t sound like something that the NCAA would want to risk. Whether you’re on the for or against side of the pay-for-play argument, fans of collegiate sports simply want to see the best players.