There’s a bizarre duality in the current reporting regarding college sports. Some articles focus on the supposed crisis! that the NCAA and its schools are experiencing. Other articles document the financial success of the college sports industry. Few articles ever point out the inherent contradiction.
The muckety-mucks hope to leverage their sky-is-falling talking points into a gift from Congress, in the form of an antitrust exemption that will allow the schools to restrict the earning potential and mobility of players. (The players have no meaningful representation in this process.) Still, it can’t be argued that big-time college sports aren’t making big-time money.
Via Sports Business Journal, the Big Ten distributed a record $1.37 billion to its 18 members for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025. That’s a $490 million increase over the distribution from the prior fiscal year. It comes on the heels of the SEC distributing $1.03 billion in February.
So, yes, there’s plenty of money in college sports. Like all businesses, however, the NCAA member institutions want to maximize profit. The expense side has been undermined by player freedom — and the revenue side has been reduced by the flow of a finite amount of booster money to player NIL payments.
The right solution is simple. Form a multi-employer bargaining unit and embrace a union. Collectively bargain with the players on a full set of rules regarding money, eligibility, and transfer rules.
The schools don’t want to do that, because collective bargaining will lead to other rules. Rules regarding access to players in the offseason for “voluntary” conditioning sessions. Rules regarding the intensity of practices. Rules that give players more rights than the right to finally get paid.
So the schools want Uncle Sam to give them a golden ticket, under the guise of preserving competitive balance. Which incorrectly assumes there was competitive balance before the NIL era began. (There was not.)
At its core, this is about the basic fact that the schools that had figured out a way to rig the old system for their own benefit have yielded to the schools that have figured out a way to crack the new code. More broadly, it’s about the fact that the players finally have real power — to get paid as much as the market will bear, and to change schools whenever they choose.
The coaches have had this kind of power for years. But no one ever tried to concoct a phony crisis over that. And the current effort to change things with legislation is focused not on limiting the power of the coaches. Just the players.
College football isn’t in crisis. The schools are simply faced with the reality that the players who were exploited by decades of antitrust violations have turned the tables. The schools would like to unturn the tables, shifting the balance of power back to the schools.
Without, of course, touching in any way the power the coaches have always possessed.
The noise will continue until the schools get what they want. Through it all, the billions will continue to flow into the coffers.
If the schools don’t like the fact that the players are not getting some of it (as opposed to the days when they got none of it), the NCAA should drop the tattered facade of “student-athletes,” regard them as employees, and meet them at the bargaining table.
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