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com . Want to purchase today’s print edition? Here’s a map of single-copy locations. Sign up for our daily newsletter here Academic events with large gatherings in State Farm Center and Memorial Stadium — freshman convocation and graduation — open with this statement: “As a land-grant institution, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has a responsibility to acknowledge the historical context in which it exists.
In order to remind ourselves and our community, we will begin this event with the following statement. We are currently on the lands of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankashaw, Wea, Miami, Mascoutin, Odawa, Sauk, Mesquaki, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Chickasaw Nations.” This reflects a deep commitment that the University of Illinois shares with Big Ten schools in offering an inclusive environment for students, faculty and staff.
It would be accurate — though cringeworthy — for Big Ten schools to open athletic events by stating “the historical context” in which they denied Blacks from being on their athletic teams, from 1869 — when Rutgers played Princeton in the first college football game — through the 1940s; and denied women athletic participation until the 1970s. Such are the two worlds that occupy the same space on Big Ten universities — one with inclusive sensibilities, norms and policies, the other built on a different cultural, policy and public relations model. Donald Trump’s second presidency will likely test how Big Ten schools approach the longstanding divide between their academic and athletic spheres.
In fact, the first test already occurred. When Big Ten schools canceled the first football season with COVID-19, then-President Trump’s tweets stirred a backlash from football fans. Nebraska considered leaving the Big Ten.
The schools — which were treating academic and athletic spaces under similar social distancing and testing policies — quickly caved to this pressure. No one experienced this more directly than athletes, who played against other teams under normal conditions for contact and proximity to each other, while attending Zoom classes with other students. What challenges loom for Big Ten schools during a second Trump presidency? His campaign attacked Kamala Harris’s support of transgender rights.
The NCAA — and its Big Ten members — have a policy that is closer to the Harris position than his: “At its January 19, 2022, meeting, the NCAA Board of Governors updated the transgender student-athlete participation policy governing college sports. The new policy aligns transgender student-athlete participation with the Olympic movement.” If President Trump doesn’t tweet-challenge the NCAA policy, his Department of Education will nevertheless end its Title IX policy that extends to transgender athletes.
But that’s just the start. Following President Joe Biden’s precedent of firing his predecessor’s general counsel to the National Labor Relations Board, President Trump will likely fire Biden’s NLRB general counsel. This would likely end the NLRB’s current case against the University of Southern California, Pac-12 and the NCAA.
It would also likely end the NLRB’s processing of a representation case involving Dartmouth basketball players who voted for a union. The NCAA’s biggest priority includes H.R.
8534, which would provide that “a student athlete (or former student athlete) may not be considered an employee of an institution, a conference, or an association under any Federal or State law or regulation based on participation of the student athlete (or former student athlete) in a varsity intercollegiate athletics program or a varsity intercollegiate athletics competition,.” Notice the past tense passage here, which refers to a “former student athlete.” That language takes direct aim at Johnson v.
NCAA, the case in which a federal appeals court allowed a lawsuit under the Fair Labor Standards Act to go forward. It’s the first court opinion to allow a trial court to rule that college athletes must be paid a minimum wage and overtime. Trump’s NCAA agenda would give Big Ten athletic programs more freedom to grow their massive revenues while avoiding the legal responsibilities and high costs of employing their front-line workers, the athletes.
But the academic side of Big Ten schools might face a different future. Trump’s promise to eliminate the Department of Education would raise questions about the future of Pell grants, which provide federal financial aid to students in need. To understand the importance of Pell grants, look at tiny Carroll College, a Catholic school in rural Montana.
In September, the school announced that the “the launch of the Pell Promise for Montana Students” initiative is a “a decisive step in its commitment to supporting underserved communities.” The school adds: “The Pell Promise is a testament to Carroll College’s dedication to Catholic social justice principles and its role in improving lives through education.” Next, consider Trump’s campaign promise to put Robert F.
Kennedy, Jr. in charge of health policy, allowing him to “go wild on health.” In October, RFK revealed: “The key that I think I’m — you know, that President Trump has promised me is — is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH and a few others, and then also the USDA, which is — which, you know, is key to making America healthy.
” Some of these agencies fund research grants for Big Ten schools. For example, Indiana University School of Medicine investigators received over $243 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding in 2023. The financial impact of withdrawn federal funding across scores of grant-funded labs, faculty positions and Ph.
D. internships, and support for campus facilities, is unknown. But the trend line is worrisome.
How would Big Ten schools deal with the financial fallout of terminated grants, or funding agencies, if this materialized? Forecasting the future is hazardous but this much can safely be said. Big Ten schools have lived a charmed double life since the conference was formed in a Chicago hotel in 1896 — living from Monday through Friday as academic institutions guided by scholarly ideals while living as semipro football operations on Saturdays. So far, Big Ten schools have been able to have it both ways, as academic and athletic enterprises.
But the time may be approaching when they will be forced to prioritize one enterprise directly at the other’s expense..
