The Cost of Expanded Calendars
OPENING STATEMENTS
College sports keeps insisting it is not a professional system. But the calendar sure seems to say otherwise.
In the span of a few weeks, decision‑makers have backed three moves that all point in the same direction: splitting Division I men’s soccer into a two‑semester season, expanding the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, and pushing for a bigger College Football Playoff (BTW, next season’s championship game is scheduled January 25 - three weeks into the spring semester for many). Each is sold as access, opportunity, or “student‑athlete experience.” None has been or will be bargained by the people whose bodies and semesters are being carved up to make it happen.
This week’s men’s soccer proposal is the clearest example.
Starting in 2027‑28, the Division I men’s season will be split between fall and spring: up to 18 matches from late August to the Saturday before Thanksgiving, then up to 10 more from mid‑February, with the NCAA Tournament shifted into April. The committee’s talking points hit expected notes: fewer midweek games, more recovery, better alignment with academics and the global game.
On paper, that sounds like progress. In practice, it keeps soccer players in season mode across both semesters, from August through April, with only a short winter pause. That is a near year‑round competitive obligation layered on top of full‑time coursework, NIL commitments, and travel (and, whether once per week or not, travel that often extends across the country because of expanded conference makeups). Call it what you want, but that looks and feels a lot like the demands we recognize as professional.
Soccer is not moving in isolation. The men’s and women’s basketball tournaments expansion from 68 to 76 teams may drive another $100 million in additional media and sponsorship revenue, but also forces low‑major automatic qualifiers and bubble teams to absorb more travel, short‑turnaround games, and class absences. The American Football Coaches Association has recommended expansion to a 24-team playoff with a reworked calendar that would keep playoff teams in full‑contact, high‑stakes games deeper into December - and right in the middle of exams. The rationale is competitive fairness and fixing “layoffs.” The practical result is more collisions in the one college sport where every added game carries measurable long‑term health costs.
If this were the NFL, none of these expansions would be unilateral. The move from 16 to 17 regular‑season games only happened because players, through their union, traded more risk for better pay and protections. That is what collective bargaining looks like: owners get more inventory; players get a say.
College athletes get the inventory. They do not get the bargaining.
The same legislative cycle that stretches soccer across two terms and inflates March Madness also tightens transfer rights and enforces order from the top down. For soccer, there will be a single 15‑day transfer window after the new spring championship; miss it and most athletes are stuck until the following year or forced into extreme measures like unenrolling. In other sports, “ghost transfer” penalties now threaten head‑coach suspensions and major fines if a player appears before being properly in the portal.
On paper, that is about structure and integrity. In reality, it means athletes being asked to do more - more months in season, more postseason rounds, more travel - have fewer realistic options if the load or culture becomes harmful. All of this is landing on athletes who are already living in a realignment world where “conference” now means cross‑country travel as a matter of routine, not exception. Olympic and non‑revenue teams are flying multiple time zones midweek, leaving athletes juggling red‑eyes, jet lag, and makeup work while sleep debt, injury risk, and mental‑health strain quietly accumulate in the background.
From a legal standpoint, this creates risk.
Courts evaluating whether college athletes are employees look at who controls their time, how long and intense their seasons are, and how tightly their economic opportunities are constrained. A soccer model that runs August to April, a basketball tournament expanded to 76 teams, a football playoff stretching deeper into December, and transfer rules that hem in mobility all push those factors in one direction: toward employment‑like conditions without employment‑level rights.
At the same time, the NCAA has adopted mental‑health “best practices” acknowledging that college athletes face elevated stress, sleep disruption, and barriers to care, and urging schools to manage time demands and provide adequate counseling and crisis services. Extending seasons across both semesters and adding postseason inventory will predictably increase that stress and strain campus support systems, especially at non‑revenue or smaller programs least equipped to absorb the load. When foreseeable harms aren’t matched by investment in care, institutions are not just failing athletes. They are inviting negligence, disability, and Title IX claims.
None of this is to say the old soccer calendar was optimal. Coaches and players have complained for years about cramming 20‑plus matches into a 10‑ to 13‑week fall sprint. Spreading contests across two terms could reduce some acute spikes in load. But when soccer did move to the spring during COVID, it was described as a scheduling nightmare, competing with spring sports for fields and support staff, showing how thin campus support systems really are when multiple teams are in full season at once.
At some point, when the seasons stretch, the games multiply, the windows to move shrink, and the same people keep making those choices without athletes at the table, courts—and athletes—are going to stop taking “student‑athlete” on faith.
EXHIBIT A
The CSC may have “won” its first major test in this week’s arbitration ruling against Nebraska, but that victory is already under pressure on two fronts. Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen has said players will resubmit revised NIL deals, and if the CSC still refuses to clear them, the state attorney general is prepared to challenge the CSC and NCAA under a Nebraska law that bars penalizing athletes or schools for NIL compensation. At the same time, the win could be narrowed—or even undercut—later this month, when the House settlement administrator reviews how the NCAA and CSC are interpreting the settlement’s “associated entities” language in the Northern District of California on May 27.
EXHIBIT B
Florida State’s Seminole Business Network, as detailed by Front Office Sports, is a genuinely intriguing response to post‑House financial pressure: it turns routine business spending into a recurring athletic revenue stream and could help stabilize funding across all sports. We’re all for supporting ways to ensure that programs do not continue to be cut. At the same time, only a certain kind of school can really play this game. Flagship brands with deep, national alumni bases and corporate‑owner donors are far better positioned to plug into a model that relies on scale, deal flow, and existing booster wealth. So while it’s clever and potentially program‑saving, it also looks like one more mechanism that will widen the gap between resource‑rich powers and everyone else.
ON THE DOCKET
Keeping an eye on Capitol Hill, where the institution‑preserving SCORE Act appears headed for a House floor vote despite having little realistic path through the Senate. More intriguing is what Ross Dellenger detailed this week: continued, behind‑the‑scenes bipartisan negotiations on a broader college sports bill in the Senate. Whatever emerges will still face a long fight, but it may be the first real test of whether Congress can produce a framework that is more balanced than SCORE and reflects not just institutional priorities, but the realities of today’s student-athlete.
FOOTNOTES
"I think you either commit to change or you commit to irrelevance. One of those is hard, the other is catastrophic."
Jon Haarlow, Washington State AD on how he's preparing for what may happen over the next decade
