Can Conferences Replace the NCAA Without Repeating Its Mistakes?
OPENING STATEMENT
Last week, I wrote that the NCAA appeared to be waiting for Congress to solve problems it has been unable to solve itself: athlete compensation, transfer mobility, eligibility, and the growing disconnect between the business of college sports and the rules that govern it.
Since then, the NCAA may have been thrown something of an inadvertent lifeline due to the furor over former NFL players seeking to return to college. A Louisiana court’s temporary order opened a path for certain athletes who began college in 2022 to seek another season of eligibility, including athletes who signed NFL contracts. The SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, and ACC have adopted policies preventing former professional athletes from returning to play within their conferences, and the NFL created a parallel policy.
The result is more than a dispute over whether former professional athletes should play college football or basketball. It is a test of whether conference-level governance can replace an NCAA model repeatedly weakened by litigation, market forces, and institutional inaction.
The Governance Paradox
Conference governance is possible. Conferences already regulate scheduling, championships, internal transfers, revenue distribution, and member-school conduct. The NCAA’s 2014 autonomy structure also gave the then-Power Five greater authority to develop athlete-benefit policies independent of the rest of Division I. The Supreme Court’s NCAA v. Alston decision further recognized that individual conferences could choose to impose rules more restrictive than NCAA-wide standards.
But Alston did not give conferences a free pass to coordinate limits on athletes’ opportunities. It confirmed that NCAA compensation rules are subject to ordinary antitrust scrutiny. A conference is still an association of competing schools recruiting from the same athlete market. Calling a restriction a “conference rule” rather than an “NCAA rule” does not eliminate the central question: are institutions collectively restricting an athlete’s ability to earn, transfer, or compete without a sufficiently strong justification?
That is the paradox. The conferences may be able to act more quickly than the NCAA, particularly when a court ruling produces an outcome presidents, athletic directors, and coaches view as untenable. But speed does not make a rule legally durable. Or fair.
A fragmented system also creates its own problems:
Regulatory arbitrage: Athletes will gravitate toward conferences with more permissive eligibility rules.
Unequal rights: An athlete could be eligible in one conference and barred in another.
Interconference conflict: Transfers, court orders, and NCAA championship eligibility may produce overlapping rules.
Repeated antitrust exposure: Conference-by-conference restrictions may invite conference-by-conference litigation.
Greater institutional control: Decision-making shifts closer to commissioners and athletic departments, not athletes.
The transfer portal may offer the clearest point. The Justice Department and state attorneys general challenged the NCAA’s multiple-transfer restrictions as an unlawful restraint on athlete mobility and bargaining power. The case ended in a proposed consent decree that prohibited the NCAA from enforcing that restriction.
The lesson is not that no eligibility or transfer rule can survive. It is that conference leaders should not assume that replacing NCAA rulemaking with conference rulemaking changes the legal analysis.
What A Workable Model Requires
A durable conference-governance model must be more than a faster mechanism for schools to coordinate restrictions. It needs clear authority, evidence, due process, and meaningful athlete participation, including the following:
Narrow authority: Conference rules should focus on genuine competition-administration needs, including roster-certification dates, eligibility definitions, and professional-participation standards. Broad compensation caps or transfer restraints carry greater antitrust risk.
A national floor: College sports needs baseline rules that apply across conferences. Otherwise, eligibility and athlete rights become dependent on geography and conference affiliation. Conferences can build on that floor, but they should not create entirely separate systems.
Athlete representation: Athletes need a genuine role in rulemaking, including voting representation or an independent structure with power to influence policy. Advisory committees alone are inadequate when rules determine access to NIL, revenue sharing, roster spots, and eligibility.
Independent appeals: Athletes should not need emergency litigation to resolve eligibility disputes before a season begins. A neutral, expedited appeals process with published standards and written decisions would make the system more credible and reduce the likelihood that courts become the default eligibility office.
Evidence and review: Before adopting a restriction, conferences should explain the problem being addressed, publish the basis for the rule, and assess less restrictive alternatives. The legal question increasingly will be whether a restriction is necessary, not whether it is familiar.
A bargaining framework: The long-term answer may require collective bargaining or federal legislation that protects athletes while defining what rules colleges may adopt. Congress may still fail to act. But without athlete representation or statutory clarity, each new restriction becomes another invitation to litigate.
The SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 may be right that signing a professional contract should carry eligibility consequences. But the real question is bigger than former NFL players returning to campus.
A step toward conference-level governance is happening because the NCAA’s national model is no longer delivering stable answers. The danger is that the conferences recreate the NCAA’s old mistake: treating athletes as the subject of the rules rather than participants in making them.
EXHIBIT A
Next up in the amazing trajectory of women’s college athletics? Last night’s extravaganza at AT&T Stadium in Dallas, when Florida, Penn State, SMU and No. 1 Nebraska became the first women’s college volleyball teams to compete on an NFL field. This is more than a one-off, however. Women’s volleyball tournament viewership rose 13% year over year in 2025, including 1.4 million for the national title game, while regular-season audiences increased 36%. Networks are building more broadcast windows around that demand - including a 1v2 matchup Sunday on Fox, and ESPN carrying more than 2,400 matches this season. As Fox ratings insider Mike Mulvihill posted to X: “I think when you look across women’s sports, to me, volleyball is the next basketball”
EXHIBIT B
On the unionization front, Oregon State this week formally opposed its women’s basketball players’ effort to unionize, arguing the athletes are not university employees. The case now moves to an Oregon Employment Relations Board hearing, where an administrative law judge will recommend whether the players qualify for collective bargaining rights. The full board will then decide—a ruling that could be challenged in state or federal court. Ten of 13 current players support the petition, and the United College Athletes Association says it plans to organize additional teams and eventually seek conference-wide units. The outcome could establish Oregon as an early test case for college-athlete labor rights.
ON THE DOCKET
While my work centers on college athletics, I love golf. And the Callaway/Good Good controversy is a textbook case of poor brand governance, inadequate judgement and the risks of blurred accountability. Never mind tone deafness to the increasing power of women in sports. The co-branded campaign was bad enough, centering on an ad depicting Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark shoving a female former Division I golfer. That it necessitated two rounds of apologies could bring consequences extending well beyond one deleted ad. Golfers in my feed are already talking about taking Callaway clubs out of their bags. With July equipment sales softening in most categories and the PGA Tour reportedly evaluating its relationship with Good Good, this has become a brand-trust issue, not just a creator-content problem. That is a much harder issue to repair, particularly for a company whose success depends on consumer confidence, retailer support, and credibility across the game.
FOOTNOTES
“Awash in capitalism, college sports are screaming for socialism. Remember: Nobody in charge had a problem with any of this when the players weren’t allowed a piece of the pie.”
-Jason Gay, in a column for the Wall Street Journal titled: College Football vs. the NFL—Is it Really Just Capitalism vs. Socialism?
