The Real Crisis in College Sports Isn’t NIL. It’s Coaching Buyouts.
OPENING STATEMENTS
Another week, another college football coach fired, and another massive buyout check written. Last week, it was James Franklin’s $49 million. This week, Billy Napier’s $21 million at Florida. That brings the total to a staggering $116 million in buyouts this fall alone. And it’s not even Halloween. Scary.
It’s hard not to compare that with the stories we’ve been covering on the other side of college sports: Title IX noncompliance, Olympic sports being cut, and athletic departments claiming budget strain.
It raises an uncomfortable question: What if the real threat to equity in college sports isn’t athlete pay, NIL, or eligibility, but the grotesque spectacle of runaway coaching buyouts?
Because that money has to come from somewhere.
Those same universities cutting women’s and Olympic programs are writing multimillion-dollar checks to coaches who failed. The $116 million in buyouts could fund more than 2,500 scholarships. That’s the equivalent of adding perhaps 100 full Olympic sports programs. Yet those same institutions plead poverty when athletes ask for a fair share of the revenue they help generate.
And this may only be the beginning. With conference consolidation, not every program will keep winning at the rate it used to. Fans and boosters, who are now footing more and more of the bill, expect results. More pressure means more turnover. More turnover means more buyouts. It’s a cycle headed straight for a financial cliff.
If nothing changes, the cost of those buyouts won’t just hit balance sheets. My expectation is that it will hit athletes, especially women and Olympic-sport participants, hardest.
What can be done:
1. Federal Action. Congress has tools to rein this in.
Title IX Enforcement: Make buyout limits a condition of federal education funding. Cap severance at, say, 5% of annual athletic revenue. Schools that exceed that threshold would lose Title IX funding, treating excessive buyouts as a misuse of resources that harms women’s and Olympic sports.
Tax Code Reform: Remove tax-exempt status for schools paying buyouts larger than 50% of remaining contract value. Excess payments become taxable compensation, subject to penalties.
Interstate Commerce Regulation: Use Commerce Clause authority to cap buyouts at 10x the institutional cost of attendance, with FTC enforcement and NCAA tournament ineligibility for violators.
There may be support for this. At a recent Knight Commission meeting, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), co-sponsor of the SAFE Act, said she supports “coaching limitations.” Even the NCAA’s Tim Buckley has indicated the organization’s openness to federal action on non-athlete spending caps, including coaching salaries.
2. Institutional Reform. Universities and conferences don’t need to wait for Congress. They can act now.
Conference Action: Power conferences could set internal buyout caps as a condition of membership, just like pro leagues use salary structures. The SEC and Big Ten each generate more than $1 billion annually. They have the leverage, and the responsibility, to demand fiscal sanity.
Governance Accountability: Boards of trustees and state legislatures can require transparency and oversight. Tie public funding to open reporting of coaching contracts. Require board approval for any buyout above a set threshold. South Carolina lawmakers already pushed for this after a string of costly coaching failures.
The bottom line is this. Colleges have proven they can raise money when they want to; they’ve already found $116 million to pay for failure this year. So the problem isn’t capacity. It’s priorities.
Until schools and policymakers put meaningful limits on coaching buyouts, women’s and Olympic sports may increasingly pay a price for administrative overreach and competitive panic.
If Congress and university leaders want to protect the soul of college sports, they should start by capping what schools can spend on failure.
EXHIBIT A
The NCAA has once again unleashed chaos without consultation, this time allowing former G League professionals to suddenly claim college eligibility in what seems like institutional panic masquerading as policy. The NCAA’s logic defies comprehension: G League salaries around $40,000 somehow qualify as “actual and necessary expenses” rather than professional compensation. By that standard, why not welcome back retired NBA players still within their five-year eligibility window?
Longtime Michigan State coach Tom Izzo captured the widespread mixture of frustration and confusion in an interview earlier this week … “I am going to get myself in trouble, but I listen to people talk about how kids have changed. Kids aren’t the problem, we’re the problem. This was sprung on us again yesterday where a guy can be in the G League for two or three years and then all of a sudden, he’s eligible. Most of my people knew nothing about it. … I’m not real excited about the NCAA or whoever is making these decisions, without talking to us, just letting it go. They’re afraid they’re going to get sued.”
The NCAA has created a system where amateurism is dead but professionalism lacks structure, where eligibility rules change overnight without stakeholder input, and where coaches discover new realities through media reports rather than official communication. This isn’t progress; it’s abdication of responsibility disguised as adaptation to legal pressure.
EXHIBIT B
The Cardozo Law Review may have delivered a fatal blow to the SCORE Act’s already shaky foundation. In an analysis this week, Sam C. Ehrlich and Ryan M. Rodenberg suggest:
“But even if the SCORE Act passes the Senate – not necessarily a sure thing given growing opposition on both sides of the aisle – it will fail to live up to its promise for a simple reason: It is unconstitutional.“
Their analysis cuts through political theater to expose the bill’s core flaw — Congress cannot delegate its legislative authority to private entities like the NCAA. Even if the SCORE Act miraculously survives growing Senate opposition from both parties, it faces immediate constitutional challenge on separation of powers grounds.
ON THE DOCKET
In the same week the NBA faces a federal investigation into a gambling scheme, the NCAA approved sports betting for college athletes. Starting November 1, student-athletes across all divisions will be allowed to bet on pro sports. I’ve said it once, but I’ll say it again: it’s a move that demands serious caution. Betting at any level is a slippery slope, crossing ethical and legal lines quickly. Once again, the system isn’t setting athletes up for real success. When does it become illegal for an athlete preparing for the draft to keep betting on their future league? What protections exist if an athlete becomes the target of gamblers seeking inside information? Will retroactive audits of an athlete's betting history be required or conducted by professional leagues before or after the draft? This change necessitates comprehensive education, legal guidance, and institutional safeguards to ensure athletes can exercise their rights responsibly. Because a single misstep could cost one’s eligibility, reputation, or future career.
FOOTNOTES
“Do I think there are Title IX offenses? Yes, because I would say football coaches, men's basketball coaches and women's basketball coaches all had to parade around local senators and go to DC for a national conversation, and yet we stand here not even getting the five percent [of the $20.5 million cap allowed to compensate athletes]. I'm just talking about an average of five percent, so yes, there should have been a Title IX piece to the House settlement.”
- South Carolina women’s basketball coach, Dawn Staley, in an interview with the Cavalier Daily.
