"professional athletes don't get promoted to management at all"
Neither do most employees either, what does that have to do with anything? We can't organize because there's a 5% chance that we're promoted to management?
We can't organize because the people with good leadership qualities and other important organizing skills tend to get promoted to management. It's very difficult for people to spontaneously organize without a leader.
To me it seems that we can't organize because we're selfish and naive. I don't see anyone except you fretting because of our collective organization skills :)