Northwestern quarterback Trevor Siemian addressed his team's unionization effort in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. Siemian - Northwestern's starting QB in 2013 - said that players should have taken their concerns to coach Pat Fitzgerald and AD James Phillips before deciding to unionize.
''I'm treated far better than I deserve here,'' Siemian said. ''Introducing a third party or somebody else, especially when our main goals when this began ... there were issues with the NCAA that we thought we could address, and (unionizing) was one of the ways to do it...Myself included, nobody ever addressed Fitz or Dr. Phillips about these issues."
Siemian revealed that when the players vote on whether or not to unionize (scheduled for April 25th), he'll vote no.
''I can only speak for myself,'' he said. ''I'll say there's a significant number of guys on the team who feel the same as me.''
Coach Pat Fitzgerald has reportedly told his players to vote no, but offered no further comment Wednesday. Kain Colter, who spearheaded the unionization effort at Northwestern, served as Siemian's backup quarterback in 2013.
Despite the fact that the team petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a ruling, Siemian says that ''doesn't mean that a union is right for this university or this school.''
''I think that distinction needs to be made, too,'' he added. ''Just because you're an employee doesn't mean that a union is the right avenue, especially in a scenario at Northwestern where ... most guys on the team agree that we've been treated very, very well here. With that being said, I just don't think that's the direction we need to go in.''
