<\/p>\n
Ray Dennison was playing right guard for the Fort Lewis A&M Aggies when they faced off against Trinidad Junior College on Sept. 24, 1955.<\/p>\n
Dennison had grown up in Cortez, the son of a logger, before joining the Army. He attended Fort Lewis on the GI Bill. The football coach persuaded Dennison to join the team after providing for an on-campus job to replace his work at a gas station.<\/p>\n
A married father of three, Dennison was defending the opening kickoff return as Fort Lewis commenced Empire Junior Conference play. As Dennison went for the tackle, the ball carrier\u2019s knee slammed into Dennison\u2019s helmet.<\/p>\n
The impact fractured the top of Dennison\u2019s skull and shattered the base of his skull against the top of his spine. Dennison was taken by ambulance to the Trinidad hospital, but he soon slipped into a coma from which he would not recover.<\/p>\n
His wife was rushed from the old Fort Lewis campus to be at his bedside in Trinidad. Dennison died early on the morning of Sept. 26, 30 hours after the on-field collision.<\/p>\n
\u201cAggie football player dies of game injuries,\u201d the headline blared in the Sept. 26 Durango Herald-News.<\/p>\n
Dennison, 26, left behind a son, Mike, age 4, and two daughters, Cindy, age 3, and Dianna, 18 months. His widow, Billie Dennison, would soon launch a lawsuit that helped define the NCAA\u2019s relationship with its athletes.<\/p>\n
That relationship is under fire as never before. In courtrooms and the media, the NCAA faces sharp questions about why players who form the basis of a multibillion-dollar industry are not paid. At the same time, safety issues \u2013 particularly mounting evidence that on-field collisions often lead to irreversible, long-term brain damage \u2013 are plaguing the game.<\/p>\n
As Fort Lewis lined up Saturday at Ray Dennison Memorial Field for the Skyhawks\u2019 home opener against New Mexico Highlands, Dennison\u2019s legacy plays an important and largely unacknowledged role in the national debate, 59 years after his death.<\/p>\n
Dennison a \u2018student-athlete\u2019<\/p>\n
After Dennison died, his widow, Billie, filed a claim for benefits with the Colorado Industrial Commission under the Workmen\u2019s Compensation Act. The commission approved the claim, and on appeal, a district court affirmed the decision.<\/p>\n
But Fort Lewis, along with the State Compensation Insurance Fund, fought the case to the Colorado Supreme Court. The court ruled in 1957 that Billie wasn\u2019t entitled to death benefits. The reasoning: Football players are \u201cstudent athletes,\u201d not college employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince the evidence does not disclose any contractual obligation to play football, then the employer-employee relationship does not exist,\u201d the court said.<\/p>\n
The court explained that Fort Lewis \u201cwas not in the football business.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, the state-conducted institution, supported by taxpayers, could not as a matter of business enter into the maintenance of a football team for the purpose of making a profit directly or indirectly out of the taxpayers\u2019 money,\u201d the court said.<\/p>\n
That passage seems quaint in light of modern college football. Top Division I football teams can make more than $100 million in annual revenue, and athletes are the face of many state educational institutions.<\/p>\n
Yet despite the growth of the college sports industry, the court\u2019s reasoning continues to guide the NCAA\u2019s relationship with its players.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a foundational case,\u201d Taylor Branch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who has written about the evolution of the NCAA, said in a telephone interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt opened up a protection for the NCAA and all of its member colleges to treat their athletes who are generating a lot of money as volunteers, and not have to worry about someone classifying them as employees.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dennison\u2019s case saw an early use of the term \u201cstudent athletes,\u201d now employed to describe everything from a cross-country runner who generates no revenue to a top quarterback like Florida State\u2019s Jameis Winston, who may be worth millions to his school.<\/p>\n
Walter Byers, the first executive director of the NCAA, crafted the term \u201cstudent-athlete\u201d in consultation with the organization\u2019s legal department, Branch said. Decades later, the term is the NCAA\u2019s first defense against suggestions athletes should be paid.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has become really almost a mantra,\u201d Branch said.<\/p>\n
The term \u201cstudent-athlete\u201d is widely used even by the NCAA\u2019s critics. In a recent case involving former college athletes\u2019 rights to revenue from video games and other licensing, San Francisco District Court Chief Judge Claudia Wilken used the term 253 times in a 99-page ruling.<\/p>\n
NCAA approach questioned<\/p>\n
The NCAA\u2019s amateurism model is facing its most serious set of challenges in the organization\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
A prominent antitrust lawyer named Jeffrey Kessler has filed a lawsuit that constitutes a frontal assault on the NCAA. In a National Labor Relations Board case that is now on appeal, Northwestern football players won the right to form a union.<\/p>\n
Branch argues NCAA sports teams meet any common-sense definition of an employer \u2013 they set times and places where attendance is required, provide transportation to the job site and equipment to perform the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can\u2019t have their cake and eat it, too, by saying we\u2019re going to commercialize sports and run a multibillion-dollar industry on the backs of our volunteer athletes and claim it\u2019s for their own good,\u201d Branch said.<\/p>\n
Fort Lewis in 1960 dedicated its new football field to Dennison after moving from the college\u2019s original campus in Hesperus to the current location in east Durango.<\/p>\n
Earlier last week, the football team practiced ahead of the home opener. Dozens of golden helmets reflected the brilliant sunshine on the Skyhawks\u2019 north practice fields on the campus ringed by brawny mountain peaks. It was the sort of day that makes for recruiting pamphlets.<\/p>\n
Wide receiver Andrew Johnson, a senior, said the \u201cstudent-athlete\u201d label doesn\u2019t bother him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice to have your tuition paid for,\u201d he said. \u201cIt sets you up for your future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson said being paid for football may not be realistic at FLC. \u201cI don\u2019t know if we\u2019re at a big enough school to worry about not getting paid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Branch argues that even Division II athletes should have the right to organize for better working conditions.<\/p>\n
He believes the college sports industry will look back on amateurism as a decades-long collusion, asking, \u201cHow did we get away with it for so long?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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