When Even NCAA Insiders Stop Believing the Rules
OPENING STATEMENT
Pat Kelsey said the quiet part out loud.
Testifying in a Kentucky courtroom this week, the Louisville basketball coach described what happens when the NCAA announces a rule: “Every time the NCAA says something, we all shrug our shoulders and go, ‘Oh man, is that going to stand up? Is that a rule?’ We don’t think there are rules right now.”
More than frustration over two players’ eligibility, it is a striking statement about institutional failure from someone inside the system.
College athletics has always been built around pushing boundaries. Coaches tested recruiting rules. Boosters found workarounds. Schools weighed competitive advantage against the risk of investigation or punishment. Some crossed the line knowingly. Others got close enough to make the line hard to see. But there was still a line.
The rule might have been misguided, unfair or routinely violated, but the basic structure remained intact. Schools knew what the NCAA prohibited. Compliance offices advised them accordingly. If a program chose to break a rule, it understood that it was accepting an enforcement risk.
Kelsey described something different. The question is no longer whether a school is willing to violate an NCAA rule: it is whether the rule deserves to be treated as an enforceable rule in the first place. The NCAA is no longer a governing authority whose rules define boundaries. Rather, it is a litigant whose positions remain operative only until the next court decides otherwise.
Kelsey’s distinction matters. Rule-breaking can occur within a functioning legal system. Widespread disbelief in the rules cannot. The NCAA is a private membership association, not a legislature or government agency. Its power depends heavily on member institutions accepting its authority and believing that competitors will be held to the same standards. Once schools begin treating NCAA rules as preliminary positions subject to negotiation, litigation or judicial veto, that model starts to crumble.
Louisville’s conduct shows how this works in practice. Kelsey acknowledged that the school began recruiting fifth-year players after lawsuits created a possible path to eligibility. Louisville then operated as if Seth Trimble and LJ Wells would be eligible, even though the Kentucky Court of Appeals dissolved the return-to-competition order.
Given the circumstances, it may be entirely rational. But it also reveals the problem: a school that treats the NCAA’s position as final may lose access to players. A school that recruits around the rule, supports litigation and prepares for a favorable ruling preserves its options.
The system therefore rewards institutions willing and able to challenge the regulator. Courts, in turn, become de facto rulemakers. The NCAA may publish a national standard, but a judge’s temporary order can determine who plays, and the answer may differ across jurisdictions. In eligibility cases, even preliminary relief can be functionally final because the season will not wait for the litigation.
None of this was inevitable. The NCAA created much of the uncertainty through its own decision-making. It adopted a new eligibility framework after the academic year had ended, implemented it immediately, eliminated most waiver categories and excluded athletes whose eligibility had just expired. The courts did not draw that line. They were asked to review the line the NCAA chose to draw.
All of this changes compliance, too. Compliance becomes a competitive disadvantage if everyone else treats the rulebook as an opening offer. Athletic departments no longer need to interpret only the rulebook. They must forecast litigation: Will the rule survive? Has another court enjoined it? Should the school recruit around it, support a challenge or prepare for several possible outcomes? Kelsey, a basketball coach, says he has become conversant in temporary restraining orders, stays and injunctions. That alone says something about where college sports governance now resides.
Schools can manage that uncertainty. They can retain lawyers, build conditional rosters and adjust after a ruling. Athletes carry the risk. A favorable decision after the season begins cannot always restore missed competition, a lost roster spot, NIL income or professional exposure. Rights delivered too late may be rights in name only.
The NCAA’s answer is Congress. It has made passage of the Protect College Sports Act central to its push for national standards and greater legal protection. But the bill remains in limbo between the House and Senate. Polymarket places its chances of enactment this year at roughly 31%, hardly authoritative, but reflective of the uncertainty.
If Congress does not act, this is not a temporary disruption. It is the system: NCAA rules announced nationally, litigated locally and followed conditionally. Kelsey asked for rules he could follow. What his testimony exposed is an organization that still publishes them, but can no longer count on its own members to believe them.
EXHIBIT A
The NCAA says athlete health is a priority. If it retreats from the CARE Consortium without a replacement plan, that promise gets harder to credit. Created with the Defense Department in 2014, CARE has tracked thousands of college athletes and service-academy members, producing important research about concussions’ long-term physical, cognitive and mental-health effects. Its current funding expires this month, and the NCAA will not say whether it will support the next phase. A federal grant remains possible, but unsecured. The NCAA cannot call athlete well-being foundational while treating the research needed to protect athletes as someone else’s responsibility. Not when it found $292.6 million for outside lawyers over five years - some of it to defend restrictions on athletes.
EXHIBIT B
We spend plenty of time on Division I, but Matt Brown’s latest Extra Points analysis offers useful context for the broader landscape. Using records from more than 100 public schools during the 2024-25 academic year, he provides a substantive look at Division II spending. Of note, Grand Valley State reported $26 million in operating expenses - nearly 30% more than the next highest, and about 25 Division II programs operate near the lowest Division I budgets. The takeaway: divisions are regulatory categories, not clean economic tiers. Any rule built around division-wide assumptions risks ignoring enormous differences in resources and institutional capacity.
ON THE DOCKET
James Madison’s recent move from the Sun Belt to the American Conference will cost nearly $28 million, even though its new annual conference distribution may be only about $7 million per year. JMU is the 21st non-Power school to change conferences in three years - and it will not be the last. The next several years will see significant movement - or at least posturing. WIth most major conference media contracts expiring between 2030-34, schools and leagues will spend the next several years maneuvering for positioning, often with donors and sponsors financing the moves. Of course, when athletes make the same calculation - seeking better exposure, opportunity or compensation - there surely will be more lectures about loyalty.
FOOTNOTES
“So the presidents of these universities have to answer this question—should the kid on the field playing field hockey, football, women’s basketball, should that person be a part of our university community and going to classes and getting a degree the same way the students are? Or are we just renting the laundry? … That’s a question the presidents and the boards of these universities have to answer going forward.”
