Motion to Disrupt Vol. 11

More Questions, Few Answers, as Seasons Begin

OPENING STATEMENTS

Week 0 is here in college football. Other sports are already several games in. And the rhythm of fall college sports has taken root. But away from the field, nothing is familiar. Even worse, nothing seems settled.

The House settlement was supposed to bring structure. Clarity. A framework. A solution. Not just athlete compensation, but the beginnings of the future state of college athletics. The evidence shows otherwise. Rather than stability, it seems we have greater chaos, albeit under a different name.

This year won’t be defined by wins and losses, but by lawsuits and salary fights. Title IX challenges are already waiting in the wings. Questions of whether student-athletes are employees are coming. The system does not seem to be moving towards closure, but towards trial on so many fronts.

Eligibility is as murky as ever. Waivers, transfers, “grandfathering” into new rules; it’s all in flux. The transfer portal has turned into open season, likely with tampering strategies for next year’s rosters working alongside weekly gameplans for this year’s games. Even the so-called cap on payments looks flimsy when schools like Tennessee set a workaround precedent that others are sure to emulate and build upon.

Student-athletes - the ones that should be benefiting from evolution - must live under rules that change with each semester, each courtroom order, each state law. Without any say in how they’re developed or administered. The very people who are told to follow the rules no longer know what rules apply.

And what about the classroom? If I am paid six figures to run routes, what is the incentive to attend biology at 8 a.m.? If a coach tells me I can make more at another school, why stay loyal to this one? The lesson being taught is not discipline, not education, but market value. We are building a minor league while pretending it is still a university system. Meanwhile, universities lobby state legislatures for more money to pay players while public infrastructure collapses around them. Julian Edelman’s shot at NIL, saying it “makes campuses look like NFL parking lots,” sounds dramatic, but also seems to capture the moment.

Fellow sports attorney Darren Heitner also captured it nicely in a recent tweet: “We kept hearing about how the House settlement was supposed to bring clarity and structure to college athletics compensation. Instead, it may have simply created new avenues for creative compliance and competitive #NIL maneuvering.” 

Yes, players should be compensated. That’s not up for debate. If an athletic director can make $2.5 million a year, a quarterback should be able to cash in on the money made on his weekly appearance. But what we’ve built is not stability—it’s chaos.

And here’s the irony. After years of the NCAA hammering players with “rules are rules,” we’ve entered an era with almost no rules at all. Some money is settled. Some contracts are signed. But the ground underneath keeps shifting. Nothing about this feels stable, and for the athletes stuck in the middle, it means living in a constant state of uncertainty.

Week 0 should feel like a reset. Instead, it feels less settled than last season, and less settled than even six months ago. The case, for now, is still wide open.

EXHIBIT A

The noise around the SCORE Act hasn’t quieted, despite Congress being in summer recess. This week, Charlie Baker emailed families registered with the NCAA eligibility center, urging support and warning that athletes could face “indefinite eligibility” without it.

That framing is scare politics: the SCORE Act isn’t about eligibility, it’s about power. And Baker’s letter conveniently left out the other aspects of the SCORE Act, which seek to preserve its regime where athletes are labeled “students” rather than workers, and where the NCAA’s authority remains shielded from meaningful legal accountability.

The House is expected to take up the bill when Congress reconvenes in September, but its path is uncertain. Even if it passes on partisan lines, the Senate hurdle is steep. And if it clears that, it still faces an executive branch already charting a different course under Trump’s “Saving College Sports” order, guided by Cody Campbell, who seeks to replace the NCAA with a federally sanctioned nonprofit modeled on the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, pooling media rights for greater revenue. But in practice, it risks creating a government-backed cartel that enshrines amateurism while cutting athletes off from litigation and labor rights.

For athletes, the stakes could not be higher. Court victories and state reforms have been the primary drivers of progress in college sports. The SCORE Act and related proposals would roll that back, centralizing control, blocking lawsuits, and shutting off hard-won gains in athlete rights. It will be interesting to watch: will it side with institutions seeking legal immunity, or with the athletes whose labor sustains a multibillion-dollar industry?

EXHIBIT B

One area of Title IX law that continues to attract attention is the rights of transgender athletes. We’ve seen high-profile cases like Lia Thomas, and just last week, transgender athlete Evie Parts from Swarthmore College filed a lawsuit against her school and the NCAA. Evie is challenging their decision to ban her from competing on the women’s track team because of her gender identity, arguing that this exclusion violates Title IX. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, female athletes in Female Athletes United v. Ellison this week presented a contrasting interpretation of Title IX, arguing that allowing transgender male athletes to compete in girls' sports violates Title IX’s protections by creating unfair competition. 

At their core, these cases ask a fundamental question that needs clarification: What does Title IX really protect? Does it include transgender athletes, and what happens when schools or governing bodies try to sidestep those protections?

ON THE DOCKET

With power in college sports increasingly consolidating among the biggest players, which we are seeing through the creation of the College Sports Commission and the potential passing of the SCORE Act, small and mid-major schools are bracing for what’s ahead. I’m both interested and encouraged by the new coalition of mid-major conferences formed to lobby Capitol Hill and fight for their place in the future of college athletics. Without strong representation from non-Power Four schools, college sports risk evolving into a two-tiered system where smaller programs and their athletes are marginalized, facing diminished opportunities for fair compensation and exposure.

FOOTNOTES

“The nationwide case law reveals a clear split…In the current era of NIL compensation, eligibility rules are commercial in nature. They dictate the number of years a student-athlete can market and profit from an NCAA Division I career.…Moreover, eligibility is even more commercial now that the [NCAA vs House] settlement has been approved.” 

U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey in a ruling that cleared four WVU football players to compete this season, deciding their junior college years should not count toward the NCAA’s restrictive five-year eligibility limit (via govinfo.gov).