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If a regional National Labor Relations Board official’s ruling that Northwestern University football players can unionize stands, it will be the beginning of the end of college athletics as we know them.

It is a terrible decision that I hope will be overruled.

For the sake of full disclosure, I am very pro-union, my father having been a union organizer and labor representative for more than thirty years.

I am also a former college quarterback who attended college because of a football scholarship, so I am also pro-sports.

But unionizing college athletes is the wrong decision because it misses the real problem, something I would have thought players at a school known for academics like Northwestern would have be able to understand.

The issue in college sports today is players not getting a real education. “Player rights” is secondary to this problem.

The college I attended was not a big time football power, although we played schools like West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Boston College, Florida State. I had classes six days a week. Several times I went to class Saturday morning and then suited up for a game that afternoon. In four years I received my degree as an English major and went on to graduate school.

That was the deal the school made with me. If I would play football the school would give me a chance to get a good education. Period. “Rights” players today say they want never entered the picture.

When I played we didn’t know the effects of concussion, but I did know I ran a high risk of other serious injuries (looking back I wish I had played golf!). That risk was realized when I went down with a severe knee injury, the residual effects of which I am living with today.

It was my decision to take the risks of playing. Nothing would have changed my mind for one simple reason. I wanted to get a college education and football was my ticket.

That is the way it should be today, but it isn’t. Instead of unionizing, the real need is to bring financial and political pressure on big time schools to make sure players meet entrance standards before they are admitted, and then to give them all the support they require to get a real degree.

There are plenty of football players colleges can recruit who are also good students. The best ever to play quarterback is one of them. Peyton Manning is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Tennessee, to cite one example.

Unionizing college sports is the wrong road to go down.

When the driving force behind it is “rights” – the right to money – that drive will never lead to a good outcome.