Portside

It takes an enormous amount of chutzpah for Fitzgerald to so strenuously oppose the efforts of his players to have a seat at the table when he is making $2.2 million per year and received a $2.5 million loan from the school upon signing his most recent contract. Yet Fitzgerald's stance is not only distasteful. It may be illegal.

The broader point of Ohr’s ruling is that Northwestern’s scholarship football players really do work for pay. They are recruited largely for their football abilities; they spend an inordinate amount of time on their sport; they’re rewarded with valuable scholarships, which can be canceled; they’re subject to special rules other students aren’t; and their labor is clearly valuable to the school, which brings in millions of dollars in football-related profits.

The Northwestern University football team’s struggle to form a union raises the question of what it means to be a worker.

For all the gay players that have played in the NFL, Michael Sam is the first to "live his truth" openly.

Claims by anonymous officials that Sam will bring negative PR to the NFL are functionally and morally indistinguishable from simple bigotry.

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What the reaction to Richard Sherman showed me is that rooting is a fan’s privilege. And it’s a benefit players will never get to see.

The fact that the principals involved in this saga are all elite male athletes engaged in blood sport should not blind us to the fact that everyone, regardless of salient identities, is deserving of safe workspaces.