America’s Favorite Sport: Gridlock

OPENING STATEMENTS

America loves college sports more than ever. Football ratings continue their meteoric rise. Women’s volleyball is on national TV. Softball, lacrosse and basketball had their moments earlier this year. Fans are falling in love with their teams, their players, the pageantry and rivalries that make college sports uniquely compelling.

But beneath this surge in authentic passion lies a system paralyzed by its own administrators: a leadership vacuum where everyone is looking to others for answers while pointing fingers at each other.

The real threat to college athletics isn’t happening on the field or in the courts. It’s happening in the boardrooms.

This is America’s favorite sport: gridlock.

The symptoms are everywhere. The SCORE Act, backed by the NCAA and power conferences to provide antitrust exemptions, is immediately countered by the SAFE Act from Senate Democrats. The Big Ten explores a $2 billion private equity deal, only to face the PROTECT Act aimed at banning such investments entirely. The College Sports Commission’s NIL Go clearinghouse is bogged down, and collectives are bypassing it, so the commission sets up an anonymous tip line. One decision begets an opposing decision.

Even the decisions that have been made – the approval of the House settlement and the formation of the CSC – are now being questioned by those who made them. Three of the P4 conferences have yet to sign the “participation agreement” that would actually bind them to the CSC’s new rules and penalties (again, leaving more uncertainty than not). Meanwhile, 88% of D1 presidents and chancellors say the House settlement will have a negative impact on college athletics, despite having supported it.

Put those threads together and you see the pattern. Every move spawns an opposite move. Every decision is second-guessed and left unresolved. Conferences chase capital. Congress chases control. Enforcement bodies try to corral deals they never planned to handle. That creates confusion for athletes, collectives, schools, and media partners. It also wastes political capital that could be used to fix real problems like rising tuition and campus costs that affect millions. 

Why this leads to gridlock: incentives don’t line up. Conferences want stability and new revenue. Universities want predictability and protection of institutional prerogatives. Media and private capital want rights and returns. Lawmakers want headlines and political wins. Athletes want safety, fairness, and a real say. No single group can impose a durable solution because each action threatens someone else’s business model. And from a legal standpoint, no one has both the authority and the willingness to set durable rules that protect athlete rights. The NCAA is losing in court. Congress is divided. Conferences are protecting their own interests. There’s no governing entity capable of making legally binding, athlete-centered decisions at scale. So the response is to block, limit, or bypass — not to lead.

That leaves us with two clear risks. First, short-term fixes will lock in winners who aren’t the athletes. Big grant-of-rights deals or rushed federal rules could hand control to institutions and investors for decades. Second, half-baked enforcement (like NIL Go’s approval choke points and tip lines) will encourage gaming and erosion of trust. Both outcomes hurt non-revenue sports and women’s programs that rely on steady institutional support.

The legal danger is that once these structures harden — through contracts, settlements, or legislation — they’re difficult to unwind. A poorly written federal law or one-sided private equity deal could cement power imbalances that take decades of litigation to undo.

But perhaps the biggest risk of all is that no one is actually leading college athletics. The NCAA has long been described as operating with a “leadership vacuum,” with conferences stepping into governance roles the association has abdicated. Meanwhile, the Power Four conferences have consolidated control, gaining 65% weighted voting power in the new NCAA governance structure. College presidents, supposedly the ultimate authority, seem overwhelmed and unprepared for the transformation reshaping college sports.

This isn’t sustainable. Popularity can only mask administrative dysfunction for so long. Without real leadership — a governance willing to prioritize the student-athlete over revenue — college athletics risks squandering the greatest sports experience. The question isn’t whether change is coming. It’s whether that change will preserve what fans love and athletes work so hard for, or sacrifice it for what administrators want.

Right now, the administrators are winning at everyone else’s expense.

EXHIBIT A

The NCAA moved this week to tighten its grip on player mobility in Division I football. The transfer portal will now be open for just 15 days (Jan. 2–16), and the “coaching change” window is shrinking from 30 to 15 days, opening only five days after a new coach is hired. It’s a sharp reversal from recent strides toward greater athlete freedom.

These limits are designed to help schools manage rosters, not to help players manage their futures. And in the current legal climate, that’s a risky bet. Courts have shown little patience for NCAA rules that restrict athlete opportunity, and both changes could face antitrust scrutiny. There’s a strong case to be made that they unreasonably restrict competition. The coaching change rule, in particular, seems ripe for schools to game the timing to their advantage. For athletes, it leaves them stuck with coaches they didn’t choose. 

The move may bring short-term order, but it’s built on the same old logic: control first, justify later. Expect it to face legal fire quickly.

EXHIBIT B

Ben Portnoy had a really interesting conversation this week with Dr. Jim Borchers, Big Ten Chief Medical Officer and President/CEO of the U.S. Council for Athletes’ Health. It touched on a critical, and somewhat overlooked, area of the new frontier: the legal challenges that team physicians and trainers face in the NIL era. The professionalization of college sports isn’t just reshaping athlete contracts; it’s complicating the legal landscape for the medical professionals and trainers who serve them. Questions of liability, disclosure, and contractual duty now sit in a gray area between education and employment. When an athlete with a six-figure NIL deal fails to disclose a medical condition, who bears responsibility – the athlete, the athletic department, or the physician who cleared them? And as Dr. Borchers notes, not every program benefits from uniform malpractice protection or standardized medical protocols, leaving independent trainers and smaller schools particularly vulnerable. Without clear national standards defining medical authority and athlete disclosure in NIL-related agreements, we’re heading toward inevitable disputes that will test where athlete autonomy ends and institutional liability begins.

ON THE DOCKET

The NCAA’s move to allow college athletes to bet on professional sports is a big shift — and on the surface, it’s a win for athlete autonomy. But with this new freedom comes real legal, ethical, and mental health risks that can’t be ignored: financial stress, mental health struggles, even exploitation by people looking to take advantage of someone with inside access to the sports world. Strict prohibitions on betting college sports or any leagues athletes participate in must stay firmly in place. Athletes absolutely cannot bet on their own sport or any league they might eventually compete in. Just as important, schools and governing bodies need to provide robust education on responsible gambling and confidential mental health support. Athletes deserve clear rules, not vague warnings — and access to resources that protect their well-being and their careers. This isn’t about rolling back their rights; it’s about building a framework where autonomy and integrity can coexist. The NCAA, regulators, and institutions have to work together to make sure athletes can navigate this new era of legalized sports betting safely and responsibly.

FOOTNOTES

“The problem right now is there’s no governing body that has any ability or authority to enforce rules at all. No effective governance. The other problem is that the vast majority of athletic departments are running massive deficits. What’s happening is they have to maintain competitiveness in football and basketball because that’s where they make their money, so in order to do that, they’re being forced to cut women’s and Olympic sports…..We have a professionalized system on one side where we are now paying our student-athletes, but then on the revenue side we have this amateur joke of a system…..I think it’s some combination of the SAFE Act and the SCORE Act is what it needs to be, and I think that’s where it’s probably going to end up.” 

- Cody Campbell via Front Office Sports Today.