College football players group presentation at Penn State included unionization option, document shows

Jason Stahl was “smuggled” into the Penn State football team meeting room the morning of July 14. The 44-year-old executive director of the College Football Players Association has pictures to prove it.

About 100 Nittany Lions were there awaiting his presentation in a meeting called by quarterback Sean Clifford. They discussed joining Stahl’s nascent CFBPA, a labor group that (through Stahl) eventually presented a list of demands to the Big Ten that included sharing revenue from the conference’s media rights contract with its workforce.

However, the CFBPA’s eventual plan — as first reported by CBS Sports — is indeed to unionize if Big Ten officials refuse to voluntarily meet at the bargaining table.

A slideshow presentation from the meeting — obtained by CBS Sports — details a “long win” strategy that includes “official unionization.” By spring 2023, the CFBPA anticipates “negotiating CBA” (collective bargaining agreement).

That timeline was derailed when a Penn State assistant coach entered during the final five minutes of the meeting, Stahl said.

“We hid it. We hid it all,” Stahl told CBS Sports. “[The players] literally smuggled me into this facility at 7:30 in the morning to do an all-day presentation when there were no coaches around. The only reason this leaked out, the last five minutes of the presentation, the strength and training coach walked in the room.”

A budding labor movement may have been slowed that day. Clifford on Friday released a statement distancing himself from involvement with the CFBPA; however, that doesn’t mean the players’ rights movement over at Penn State or anywhere else.

Contained on that list of demands was not only revenue sharing but enhanced health care.

CFBPA unionization was not mentioned Friday when Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren reacted to the demands with a statement. In fact, Stahl went out of his way to tell CBS Sports, “We are not a union.”

However, when reached on Monday, Stahl further crystallized his organization’s demands.

“There’s basically two possible threats. One is the most incendiary and [another is] one level below that,” Stahl said he told the players. “That is, not report to fall camp. Nobody was on board with that. The…