Your Post-Thanksgiving Guide to the Chaos in College Sports

OPENING STATEMENTS

Chances are pretty good that someone is going to bring up the chaos in college sports this weekend. With rivalry weekend in football, top matchups in basketball, and playoffs elsewhere, college sports will be hard to miss. Here’s what you need to know so you can hold your own when the conversation shifts from who’s making the football playoff to what’s going on behind the scenes.

College sports is at a crossroads. After the House v. NCAA settlement approved this summer, schools can now pay athletes directly, up to about $20.5 million per year to split among their teams. The problem is nobody can agree on who makes the rules, who enforces them, or whether athletes should be considered employees. That seems to leave us with four possible paths forward, all of which are taking shape in one way or another. 

Path 1: The College Sports Commission Takes Charge

The newly created College Sports Commission was created by the Power 4 conference commissioners (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC) to serve as an independent enforcement body overseeing NIL agreements, revenue sharing, and roster limits. While it sent a participation agreement to all major conference schools last week seeking to codify rules and regulations, it’s likely going to need some significant revisions in order to advance. Public pushback has come from Texas Tech and the Texas attorney general, who wrote a letter this week to Texas universities warning them not to sign, calling it an illegitimate overreach. I agreed with that in my newsletter last week. 

The upside: If everyone signs, we finally get uniform rules and someone to enforce them.

The downside: It only works if every school is in, and that looks shaky. The CSC would also have enormous power with limited oversight.

Path 2: Congress Steps In

Two competing bills are floating around Capitol Hill. The SCORE Act, backed by Republicans, would lock in the current system, keep athletes from being employees, and give the NCAA legal protections. It may get a House vote in early December. The SAFE Act from Senate Democrats does the opposite. It leans toward athlete rights, allows more transfers, and keeps the door open for employment status.

The upside: A federal law could clean up the patchwork of 50 different state rules. 

The downside: Neither bill has bipartisan support. One Democrat said the SCORE Act "ain't going to make it through the United States Senate," and the SAFE Act faces the same problem. Congress cannot pass a budget on time, so expecting them to fix college sports may be optimistic.

Path 3: Athletes Become Employees

Athlete rights are at the center of everything. Making student athletes employees would not magically solve the mess, but it would result in a Collective Bargaining Agreement with real rules that schools, conferences and individuals must follow. Several court cases are pushing in that direction, but it is still unlikely in the near term.

The upside: Employment status provides athletes with collective bargaining rights and a seat at the table for compensation, media rights, etc.

The downside: It would reshape college sports, create tax complications, and run into heavy resistance from the NCAA and most schools.

Path 4: More Chaos

If none of the above pans out, we are back to square one. Schools and athletes stuck in lawsuits, inconsistent rules, and no real enforcement. This trend also puts women’s and Olympic sports at risk. More than 40 programs have already shut down since the settlement.

All four paths have real problems, and we will probably end up with some messy mix of them. The CSC agreement will likely get revised. Congress might eventually pass something, maybe even a blend of the two bills. And employment litigation will roll on either way.

So when your uncle asks what is happening in college sports this weekend, you can give him the honest answer. Nobody really knows, and that is exactly the issue.

EXHIBIT A

The Players Era Festival marks a new inflection point in college sports: the normalization of direct, event-driven NIL compensation. The fact that entire teams will collectively receive a million dollars signals a shift from individual brand deals to structured, quasi-salaried arrangements. This evolution opens the door for teams to negotiate appearance terms, branding rights, and even union-like protections. But it also raises critical legal questions around employment classification, collective bargaining rights, and revenue-sharing parity between men's and women's programs. If a tournament can directly pay teams, can conferences or broadcasters soon do the same? This will likely bring up regulatory scrutiny from both the NCAA and state NIL boards, alongside potential Title IX implications if similar appearance fees aren't extended equally across gendered events. 

EXHIBIT B

There’s a powerful documentary about the future of Olympic sports, highlighting the financial challenges athletes face, many of whom have to fund their own careers. I had the opportunity to share my perspective in the film, discussing how the House settlement has compounded these challenges. As universities rethink budgets and prioritize revenue sports, athletes in non-revenue Olympic programs are often left without teams, coaching, or essential training, making federal regulation crucial to protect opportunities for these athletes. Check it out here. 

ON THE DOCKET

I received a great question from the Wall Street Journal this week in response to my amicus brief: Is anyone suing under Title IX over unequal revenue sharing? The answer is not yet, but I expect that to change down the road. These lawsuits won’t emerge until the relevant data on revenue distributions is available. The EADA data for the 2025–2026 academic year, which will include the first year of payments under the House ruling, isn’t due until next October. I anticipate that once those numbers are public, Title IX lawsuits will begin to surface. 

FOOTNOTES

“The idea of the student-athlete is a myth and pretty much everyone knows it. But it’s a highly lucrative myth. Colleges and universities are all invested in the idea that the guys on the field are students because they are afraid that the bottom would drop out of all the millions they are taking in if alumni and fans had to acknowledge the reality that the athletes really aren’t students but professional athletes paid for their services.”

- Professor Richard Vedder, Ohio University, to the Wall Street Journal.