Year One from the Front Lines of Monumental Change in College Sports

OPENING STATEMENTS

A year ago this week, I stepped into the wildest chapter college sports has ever seen. I launched Christine Brown & Partners with the looming House settlement, at a moment when leaders were promising stability and clarity, but every instinct in my body said the real work was just beginning. I didn’t know exactly what the next 12 months would look like, but I knew two things for sure: athletes and coaches were going to need help, and I was done waiting for someone else to build and offer the kind of advocacy they deserve.

If you work in this space long enough, you learn to hold two truths at once: it can break your heart, and fill it up, on the very same day. This year, the “ups” have taken my breath away. I got to stand on the field at the Super Bowl with one of my players, watching confetti fall and thinking about every challenge, every clause, every hard conversation that cleared the way for him to be there on his terms. I watched a female athlete in the Big 10 walk back onto the court after we fought to restore her eligibility, knowing that a faceless decision on a screen almost closed that door forever. And I helped a coach who had been written off and pushed out unceremoniously find her way back to the sideline, back to the job that gives her purpose and provides for her family.

Those moments are why I believe so deeply in this work, and frankly, in betting on yourself when the safer choice is to stay quiet. A year ago, it would have been easy to keep doing this inside someone else’s structure, to keep my head down while the NCAA and conferences figured out what came next. But the more I listened to athletes and coaches, the clearer it became that they needed something different: a place that led with advocacy, that treated their problems as human problems first and legal puzzles second, and that leaned into empathy and worked as a team to continue to fight when there seemed that there was no other option. Building that from scratch has been equal parts terrifying and energizing, and every time I’ve wondered if I was crazy, a client call or a case result has reminded me exactly why we started.

Of course, the “downs” are real. I watched the NCAA fight straightforward athlete eligibility in a case that could have been a layup for basic humanity. Instead, the choice was to double down, to defend a rigid rule instead of a real person, and I felt that decision to the core of my being. I watched a celebrity media machine try to railroad a coach, exempt from real facts, knowing how quickly a narrative can harden into a career‑ending story when you don’t have institutional power behind you. Those nights are heavy; they are the ones where “advocacy” isn’t a slogan, it’s staying on the phone until all hours because someone needs to borrow a little of your belief while theirs is running low.

What this year has confirmed for me is that believing in yourself and believing in others are not separate projects. They feed each other. Every time an athlete or coach chooses to call us, they are taking a leap of faith that their story matters enough to fight for. Every time we say yes, we are recommitting to the idea that college sports can be better than the headlines suggest. That fairness, due process, and opportunity are not naïve ideals, but standards worth enforcing. When we win, it’s never just about a ruling or enforced contract terms; it is about a young woman getting one more season, a family exhaling for the first time in months, a coach walking back into a locker room with his head high.

So as year two begins, I’m choosing to see this moment not as a storm to survive, but as proof that the leap was worth it. The landscape is still chaotic. But Christine Brown & Partners is growing, significantly, to manage it. House didn’t fix college sports so much as expose its fault lines. But inside that chaos are real people finding their voice, their leverage, and their courage. My job, and our job as a firm, is to stand next to them in that arena and make sure they are not alone. If this first year has taught me anything, it’s that when you bet on advocacy, and on helping others step into their own power, the path may not get easier, but it absolutely gets clearer.

EXHIBIT A

In an example of those understanding the changing landscape, South Florida has now put in writing what many athletic departments are only whispering: USF is running its athletics program like a pro sports franchise and a major business enterprise, and it is planning for even more change ahead. The case study they wrote describes a department that has fully embraced revenue sharing, NIL, and professionalized operations, while intentionally designing its structure, staffing, and strategy around a rapidly shifting market. Just as important, USF is explicit that this isn’t a one-time pivot; it is building for constant disruption, acknowledging that the economics, athlete expectations, and legal landscape will keep evolving, and that its model has to evolve with them.

EXHIBIT B

We’ve been bullish on women’s flag football, but even we may have been underselling it. The Big South plans to become the first Division I multi-sport conference to sponsor women’s flag football, starting with the 2027-28 academic year. And the Big 12 is taking steps to become the first Power 4 conference to sponsor women’s flag football, targeting 2028 with at least six teams and direct support from the NFL. Pair that with flag’s 2028 Olympic debut, its recent addition to the NCAA’s Emerging Sports for Women program, and more than 200 college teams already competing across NCAA, NAIA and NJCAA, and this isn’t a side project anymore. It’s a blueprint for how a low-cost, high-participation sport can expand opportunities for women, if leaders actually choose to invest.

ON THE DOCKET

When the portal opens next week, the blame game will start right on cue. Fans and administrators will point fingers at disloyal players, while quietly glossing over the coaching carousels, backroom negotiations, and seven-figure buyouts that normalize everyone else’s mobility. But the portal is one of the few tools athletes have to seek something better: fairer contracts, better playing time, safer environments, or a salary that actually reflects their value. If any of us had a chance to change jobs for more opportunity and better pay, we wouldn’t think twice, and we shouldn’t ask 19-year-olds to live by a different standard - while much-higher-paid coaches and athletics directors mostly skirt the criticism. Those players had no real voice in designing the current system, but I suspect things would be quite different, if they did.

FOOTNOTES

$1,235,417.86

Amount Alabama’s athletic department spent on private jet travel during the 2025-26 football season