College Football Doesn’t Need Another Rule. It Needs Someone With the Authority to Make the Rules Stick.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about what has happened to college football, and I keep coming back to the same conclusion.
The biggest problem isn’t NIL.
It isn’t the transfer portal.
It isn’t revenue sharing.
It isn’t even the NCAA.
The biggest problem is that nobody is really in charge anymore.
We have reached the point where the NCAA can establish an eligibility rule, enforce that rule, and then a player can walk into a courtroom, get a temporary restraining order and potentially be right back on the football field.
Now we’re seeing players who have crossed the line into professional football trying to return to college football.
That’s insane.
And more importantly, it demonstrates just how broken the system has become.
An Eligibility Rule Has to Mean Something
I’m old enough to remember when eligibility wasn’t particularly complicated.
You had a certain number of years to play college football. When those years were gone, they were gone. And once you became a professional athlete, your college playing career was finished.
There were exceptions for legitimate hardships, injuries and other unusual circumstances, and there should be.
But somewhere along the way we went from exceptions to seemingly challenging every rule we don’t like in court.
If every NCAA eligibility decision can be challenged and overturned by a judge somewhere in America, then the NCAA doesn’t really have eligibility rules anymore.
It has eligibility suggestions.
And you cannot run a national sport that way.
Congress May Be the Only Immediate Answer
I don’t particularly like the idea of Congress getting involved in college football.
But I’m beginning to believe there isn’t another realistic choice.
Congress has considered legislation that would provide some level of antitrust protection for college athletics, including the ability to establish and enforce eligibility rules.
Something along those lines has to happen.
I’m not talking about giving the NCAA unlimited power or allowing it to operate without accountability.
I’m talking about giving whoever governs college athletics enough legal authority to actually govern it.
Because right now we have dozens of courts potentially interpreting the same rules differently.
A player can be ineligible according to the NCAA but eligible according to a federal judge.
How the hell is anybody supposed to operate a national championship sport under those circumstances?
The Other Answer Is Collective Bargaining
The other possible solution is to quit fighting where this thing is headed and create some type of collective bargaining system.
If college football is going to function like professional football, then maybe eventually it has to be governed like professional football.
Negotiate the rules.
Negotiate compensation.
Negotiate roster limits.
Negotiate transfer rules.
Negotiate eligibility.
Then everybody knows what the rules are before the season starts.
The problem is that collective bargaining in college athletics would be incredibly complicated.
Who exactly is the employer?
The university?
The conference?
The NCAA?
And who exactly are the employees?
Just football players?
Football and basketball players?
Every scholarship athlete?
What happens with Division II and Division III?
What happens when public universities in different states operate under completely different labor laws?
There are a thousand questions that would have to be answered before you ever got to the bargaining table.
So while collective bargaining may ultimately be where college athletics ends up, I don’t see it as an immediate solution.
Somebody Has to Be in Charge
That’s really what all of this comes down to.
College football doesn’t need another 400-page rulebook.
It doesn’t need another committee.
It doesn’t need another task force.
It needs somebody with the authority to make a damn decision and have that decision mean something.
I’ve said before that college football desperately needs centralized leadership. Whether that’s the NCAA, a new governing body, a commissioner of college football or eventually a collectively bargained system, somebody has to have the final word.
Because right now nobody does.
And when nobody has the final word, every disagreement eventually becomes a lawsuit.
That’s not governance.
That’s chaos.
We Have to Draw a Line Somewhere
I’m all for players having rights.
I’m all for players making money.
I’m all for giving athletes reasonable freedom to transfer.
And I’m certainly in favor of protecting a kid when circumstances beyond his control cost him an opportunity to play.
But there has to be a line.
And I cannot think of a more obvious line than this:
Once you become a professional football player, your college football career is over.
That shouldn’t require a congressional hearing.
It shouldn’t require a federal judge.
It shouldn’t require a 75-page legal brief.
It ought to be common sense.
But common sense doesn’t matter very much when the organization making the rule doesn’t have enough legal authority to make the rule stick.
That’s where college football finds itself today.
So there are really only two choices.
Give college athletics enough congressional protection to establish reasonable national rules and enforce them, or eventually create a collective bargaining system where those rules are negotiated and legally protected.
But this current system cannot continue.
Because if every eligibility rule is simply an invitation to go find another judge, then we don’t have rules at all.
And sooner or later, somebody has to be in charge.
