By Micheal Germanese
The NCAA has shown no ability in the past few years to control, regulate and establish guidelines for college sports. It’s caused football and men’s basketball to become the 21st century version of the Wild West. Rules have gone out the window and little to nothing has been done by the NCAA. Name, Image and likeness are fans and donors paying the salary of the players instead of the universities they play for. The transfer portal has become a college athletics free agency.
There’s no other major sport where fans can influence player acquisition using financial means. Only in college sports can a fan donate to a group, which then turns around and pays a player to be on the team. Picture if the LA Dodgers put a collective together to pay Shohei Ohtani, making his contract more affordable and minimizing the luxury tax they pay. Or if Nike offered an endorsement deal to a player with the stipulation they have to pick this team in free agency. That’s what NIL is: Collectives taking donations to pay players to take the field for the university they support.
The transfer portal is free agency on steroids with every player on a one-year deal. There are players leaving teams and joining other teams while their team is still playing. NCAA has tried but failing each time they put a regulation in place to try and control it.
When the number of schools you attended and the years you have been in schools are the same number, there is a problem. And now players are using the threat of entering the portal to hold teams hostage for higher NIL deals. What would the NFL look like if every player became a free agent and could find a new team? Picture if what happened at Penn State took place in the NFL and a team lost their backup QB before a playoff game. There would be instant changes.
The NCAA has built an incredibly flawed system that is impossible to navigate for these young men. The fact that we have an open XFR Portal while the season is still happening is crazy. We have to fix this! https://t.co/899iFUZKwv
— Joel Klatt (@joelklatt) December 16, 2024
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Adding to the problem, there is no way to enforce the rules put into place. Teams give investigators the runaround, make it increasingly hard to gather information. When penalties are handed down, they get overturned in a court of law. Men’s basketball and football have taken on a win-at-all-cost model. If it takes $20, $30 or $40 million or if it’s offering a player on another team, it’s now “do whatever is needed to win” because no penalties are coming.
Despite the number of problems, it’s NIL that the power conferences have had enough of and will try and put an end to the wildness they created. Their solution is to form a clearinghouse to approve NIL deals that are defined as fair market and real. They will also create an organization to enforce the salary cap and fair market value rules. Both will be done independently of the NCAA.
The power conferences are going to attempt to do what no one has been able to do: Regulate college athletics and have members follow the regulations. Incompetence is lacking the skills or knowledge to do a job to a satisfactory standard. This idea that you can fix one without fixing all three is just that – incompetence. How can you control NIL without also controlling the portal? How do you control anything when hope is all you have that teams will go along with investigations and enforcement of the rules? Hope is not a plan or strategy that usually leads to success.
The reality is football and men’s basketball have been built on a culture of acceptable cheating. It’s a culture that you can’t just change without altering the fabric of the sport. It’s never been about fairness or parody – it’s been about the haves and have nots staying the same. The two sports have never been more divided when it comes to the haves and the have nots.
One of the huge issues surrounding the House settlement is how the system to limit deals with collectives/boosters will work.
Many are already questioning its effectiveness.
It may just drive payments back under the table.
But in an environment where booster contact is now ok. https://t.co/8pP3KI5L8r pic.twitter.com/cNrG5icbFU
— Mit Winter (@WinterSportsLaw) April 2, 2025
What’s harder to understand is how the chaos in both sports was able to get to this point considering the teams are tied to some of the greatest educational institutions in the world. How these institutions have not been able to fix this chaos is unfathomable. Now these same institutions that allowed it to go to this point are going to try and fix it with a system that is already looked at by many as flawed.
The only way this all gets fixed is if the universities themselves – not the conference commissioners or athletic departments- to step up and fix the problems. The people who run the universities need to end the chaos. They need the presidents of the universities and the board of regents to step up and be the adults in the room. They need to make the tough decisions to do what is necessary to fix what has become an unsustainable model. But if you’re being honest, why would they step in now and do what’s right when they have shown no interest in doing it to now?
The institutions are the ones that need to sit down and make the tough decisions that no one else wants to make. They need to decide if an athlete should be considered an employee or not; if what’s needed to fix the problems is a players’ union and a collective bargaining agreement. They need to figure out how they can legally power an organization to investigate and enforce rules that schools have to go along with. It’s the institutions that can put an end to a culture of cheating being acceptable.
