Last week, dozens of current women’s college basketball players came forward to say that they had formed an advocacy group—though not a union—through the United College Athletes Association. The players requested meetings with the commissioners of the SEC and Big Ten, according to The Washington Post, but the leaders of those conferences refused to meet with them.
Now, WNBA players are coming to their defense.
On Wednesday, more than 20 professional women’s basketball players signed a letter to Big Ten and SEC officials demanding that they agree to meet with women’s basketball athletes about the future of college sports.
“Last month, 120 Big Ten and SEC WBB players formally requested a partnership to build a business model that is safe, equitable, and sustainable,” the letter, obtained by Front Office Sports, reads. “These athletes are unified and organized, but you rejected their request for a meeting. … As conferences transition from amateur nonprofits to professional businesses generating billions, it’s your duty to give athletes a voice in decisions that impact their lives.”
The 22 players, all of whom played on Division I teams and almost all of whom have played or are currently playing in the WNBA, make up a UCAA women’s college basketball alumni advisory board. They include All-Stars, like former WNBA player Layshia Clarendon, and 2025 Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Sylvia Fowles. Elizabeth Williams, who plays for the Chicago Sky and serves as secretary for the WNBPA, is acting as the chair of the advisory board.
“I know it can be scary to speak up,” Mikayla Pivec, who played for Oregon State and has spent time with the Minnesota Lynx and Atlanta Dream, told FOS. “I signed on because I wanted the current athletes to know the pros are behind them as they take this next step to organize their voice.”
The pro athletes are attempting to fill a vacuum in athlete representation.
Every NCAA institution has a Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) chapter, but SAAC has been heavily criticized in recent years.
“I was a senior member of SAAC at Texas Tech,” former Atlanta Dream player Brittany Brewer told FOS. “So I’m confident arguing SAAC is not enough. Although we were all passionate athletes, the institution never actually took action on anything we said, so it felt more like a formality than a real voice.”
And while there have been other efforts to organize outside the NCAA, including a formal unionization push by Dartmouth men’s basketball players and a request for the House v. NCAA settlement to facilitate a players’ association, none have come to fruition yet.
Williams tells FOS the UCAA could be structured similarly to the WNBA’s union, complete with player representatives and an executive committee, and representatives who speak to conferences on behalf of players. “I think that format makes the most sense,” Williams says.
The UCAA is merely a nonprofit that advocates for players, not a formal union. But Clarendon tells FOS: “I hope, in the future, this leads to unionization.”
When college athletes do finally get their meeting, the pro athletes have several items they hope players get a chance to address.
Cierra Burdick, who played on multiple WNBA teams and now plays for the Valencia Basket Club in Spain, emphasized the need for transparency in how much money women’s sports teams will receive from House v. NCAA revenue-sharing dollars.
The Department of Education, under President Joe Biden, had ruled that payments needed to be “proportionate” between men’s and women’s players—but the agency reversed the policy under President Donald Trump. As a result, most schools appear to be planning to give women’s players significantly fewer dollars than their male counterparts. At Georgia, for example, the football program will receive 75% of the $20.5 million pool, the men’s basketball program will get 15%, the women’s program 5%, and all other programs will split the remaining 5%.
“I think the revenue-sharing data was really alarming to me,” Burdick says, adding a major concern around transparency. “If there’s going to be millions of dollars presented to student-athletes, universities should have to publicly share what amount of money is going to each sport, what amount of money is going to women in general,” Burdick says. “Because if that information is not transparent, then we don’t have the opportunity to hold them accountable for equitable resources.”
It’s not just about money. Multiple players emphasized the need to protect the physical and mental health of players, and specifically to address what Pivec calls “medical negligence.” Clarendon hopes to see regulations around excessive travel for cross-country to protect athletes’ well-being.
Beyond health and safety, players also hope to address issues with academics when players transfer, and advocate for more formal certification for NIL (name, image, and likeness) agents. But it all starts with a meeting with college sports’ power brokers, which they have not been able to get. The letter concludes: “We stand united with these players and are ready to help them secure their rightful voice by any means necessary.”
