grievances

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball,” second baseman Rogers Hornsby once said. “I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” For a while, it was looking like the start of spring would come and go without any baseball on the horizon. But just when fan morale was at its nadir, Major League Baseball announced a five-year agreement with its players, ending the second-longest labor interruption in MLB history. Now, April 7, 2022, will serve as most teams’ opening day. Sports economists like me have long studied labor disruptions in sports. In this dispute – the first major one in baseball since the mid-1990s – player grievances largely centered on two issues: the length of time it takes them to reach free agency and the lack of a payroll floor...

When Northwestern University created its 2013 football team handbook, the guide included a list of 50 “Twitter tips” for the athletes. Tip #10 told the players not to use Twitter as “an outlet to complain about how rough your life is.” “You are getting a college education, traveling to interesting places, getting free athletic shoes and apparel and more,” the handbook stated. “Thousands of people would crawl over glass for the chance to enjoy the opportunities you have.” This censoring of college athletes is not unique. Again and again, coaches, university administrators, other college students, fans and even athletes themselves have essentially told elite college athletes the same thing: You’re lucky, so don’t complain. And when athletes do complain – or, more accurately, when they d...

Tag: grievances

Players Biggest Grievances – What MLB’s New Collective Bargaining Agreement Fails To Address

Colleges expect athletes to work but not to air any grievances – here’s why that’s wrong