If the circus surrounding LSU, the SEC and these temporary restraining orders has taught us anything, it is that college football can no longer operate under its current system.
We have judges in different states making decisions about eligibility. We have conferences creating rules that may not survive a legal challenge. We have schools fighting their own conferences, players shopping for favorable courtrooms and the NCAA trying to enforce a rulebook that seems to change every time another lawsuit is filed.
This is no longer sustainable.
The NCAA could have avoided some of this particular mess by grandfathering the 2022 class into its new five-years-to-play-five model. It didn’t. As usual, the NCAA took something that could have been resolved with a little common sense and turned it into a damn circus.
But the problem is much bigger than one eligibility decision. The LSU situation is merely the latest warning that college football needs a collective bargaining agreement.
That raises two important questions: Who represents college football, and who represents the players?
College Football Needs Its Own Governing Body
The first step is separating major college football from the traditional NCAA structure.
I am not suggesting that every college sport be placed under one commissioner. Football is its own animal. It generates billions of dollars, supports many other athletic programs and now compensates players directly. Trying to govern major college football under the same structure used for non-revenue sports no longer makes sense.
The Power Four conferences, along with other schools competing at the highest level, should create a football-only governing organization. Each participating school would grant that organization authority to negotiate and enforce national football rules.
That organization would hire a commissioner.
The commissioner would oversee scheduling standards, roster regulations, eligibility, transfers, revenue sharing, health and safety requirements, discipline and enforcement.
But the commissioner could not be allowed to operate as judge, jury and executioner. Any punishment or eligibility ruling would have to be appealable to an independent arbitrator.
That is one of the biggest differences between a legitimate professional structure and what we have now. The commissioner administers the agreement. An independent arbitrator settles disputes over what that agreement means.
A Commissioner Alone Will Not Fix It
Simply naming a commissioner will not protect college football from lawsuits.
The NCAA has spent years passing rules and calling them necessary for amateur athletics. Players challenge those rules as restrictions on their ability to earn money, transfer or compete. Judges then decide whether the rules can be enforced.
A commissioner issuing the same rules from a different office would face the same problem.
The missing piece is collective bargaining.
Professional leagues can maintain salary caps, drafts, free-agency rules and other restrictions because those provisions are negotiated with recognized players’ unions. Labor law gives collectively bargained agreements protections that rules unilaterally imposed by management do not receive.
College football needs the same basic structure.
The Players Must Have a Real Organization
Right now, college football does not have the equivalent of the NFL Players Association.
That doesn’t mean one cannot be created.
Every participating football program should elect player representatives. Those representatives would form conference councils, and the conference councils would choose members of a national players’ board.
The players would hire their own executive director, attorneys, financial experts and medical advisers. The schools and conferences would not select those people. If this is going to be legitimate, the players must choose their own representatives.
The College Football Players Association may provide the starting point. Stanford players have already created the first active campus chapter of that organization. More programs could establish local chapters, elect representatives and gradually build conference-wide representation.
The players could ultimately choose the CFBPA, create another organization or select a completely different structure. That decision must belong to them.
Former players and the NFL Players Association could provide guidance, but current players must control the organization because they are the people who will live under the agreement.
Congress Has to Provide the Legal Framework
Here is where this becomes complicated.
Most major college football programs are public universities. The National Labor Relations Board generally does not have jurisdiction over state-operated schools. Public employees are governed by different labor laws from state to state.
That makes it almost impossible to create one national bargaining system under current law.
A players’ union at a private school such as Stanford or Notre Dame would not automatically represent players at South Carolina, Clemson, Georgia, Alabama or other public universities.
Congress will have to act.
I am not talking about Congress writing the college football rulebook. The last thing we need is 535 politicians deciding how many times a linebacker can transfer.
Congress should pass narrow legislation that accomplishes four things:
- Creates a federal right for major college football players to organize and bargain collectively.
- Allows schools and conferences to form a multi-employer bargaining organization.
- Establishes one national legal standard that takes precedence over conflicting state laws.
- Provides limited antitrust protection for rules that are actually negotiated with the players.
That protection must be limited. College football should not receive a blank check to do whatever it wants. If the schools want protection for eligibility restrictions, roster limits, compensation rules or transfer regulations, they should have to negotiate those provisions with the players.
That is the tradeoff.
The schools receive stability and protection from endless antitrust lawsuits. The players receive a legitimate voice in determining the conditions under which they compete.
What Must Be Included in the CBA?
The first college football collective bargaining agreement would have to address practically every major issue currently creating chaos:
- Player compensation and revenue sharing
- Legitimate NIL opportunities
- Salary or revenue-sharing limits
- Roster sizes
- Scholarship guarantees
- Transfer windows
- Eligibility requirements
- Medical coverage
- Long-term care for football-related injuries
- Concussion and player-safety standards
- Practice-hour limitations
- Agent regulation
- Discipline and appeals
- Academic requirements
- Postseason participation
- Enforcement and arbitration
It must also clearly define what happens when a player declares for a professional draft, signs a professional contract or participates in an NFL training camp.
That is the exact type of question causing the LSU controversy.
Does signing an NFL contract permanently end college eligibility? Does merely attending a rookie camp count? Can a player return after being waived? Must he repay professional earnings? How many seasons of college competition are permitted?
Whatever the answers are, they need to be written clearly and negotiated in advance.
Once those terms are included in a CBA, an eligibility dispute would go before an independent arbitrator instead of a judge selected because someone believed that courtroom offered the best chance of receiving a TRO.
Players would still retain their legal rights, but the normal disagreement over interpreting a rule would be settled through the grievance and arbitration system.
Start Nationally, Then Allow Conference Agreements
The best structure would be a national agreement establishing minimum rules across major college football.
That agreement would cover eligibility, transfers, roster limits, health and safety, basic compensation protections and dispute resolution.
Individual conferences could then negotiate supplemental agreements covering additional revenue sharing, scheduling requirements, travel, championship games and other conference-specific issues.
That would provide national consistency without pretending that every conference generates the same revenue or operates under identical circumstances.
This Is Professional Football Whether We Admit It or Not
College administrators continue searching for creative language to avoid calling players employees.
I understand why. Employee status creates difficult questions involving taxes, workers’ compensation, Title IX, scholarships and other sports.
But let’s stop playing word games.
When universities pay athletes millions of dollars to play football, those athletes are professional players. Calling the money “revenue sharing” or “NIL compensation” does not change what is happening.
Paid to play is paid to play.
The sport cannot enjoy the financial benefits of professional football while continuing to govern players through an outdated amateur model.
The Path Is Clear
College football needs a football-only governing organization led by a commissioner. The players need an independently selected national association. Congress needs to create the legal framework allowing public and private universities to participate in the same bargaining system.
Then the two sides need to sit down and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement.
It will not be simple. The first agreement will probably be ugly, contentious and difficult to complete. But it would be better than continuing to let individual judges, state legislatures, conferences, schools and the NCAA create conflicting rules.
The LSU situation is not the disease. It is another symptom.
Until college football recognizes what it has become and creates a structure that gives both the schools and the players a seat at the table, this chaos will continue.
We can keep pretending amateurism still controls major college football, or we can build a system designed for the reality already standing in front of us.
It is time to build the system.
