Closing NFL-to-NCAA football loophole is only beginning of college sports needing self-governance
· Yahoo Sports
Leaders in college sports appear to have finally been given a defensible position. It’s time to stand and try to hold it.
News rippled out Tuesday that most or all of the nation’s Power Four leagues intend to pass rules barring players already in the NFL from returning to college. This comes in the wake of attempts by a handful of players to take advantage of various legal rulings and, spurning the NFL preseason, return to college football.
Visit newsbetting.cv for more information.
Should they pass such rules, those four leagues — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC — would likely prompt their peers to follow suit. They would also almost certainly face litigation challenging their right to such self-governance.
That’s what this would be, whether they want to admit it or not: self-governance. An act leaders in college athletics have vaguely threatened for years while never showing any real appetite to follow through on.
Instead, they’ve asked everyone up to and including Congress and the president of the United States to fix their problems for them. The intervening time and inaction repeatedly suggested none of those parties possessed the will, or perhaps even the ability, to do so.
Which is why now should be the moment college sports rips this particular band-aid off. Pass the rules. Welcome those challenges. Meet them head on, and start working to fix your problems yourself.
College sports must take ownership of rules
Self-governance has long been a Sword of Damocles, dangling over college athletics.
We gave big conferences greater autonomy on the threat they would break away otherwise. We kneecapped some leagues, and killed others altogether, trying to sustain what time and stress testing both suggested was a centralized authority (the NCAA) rapidly becoming outmoded. When the pursuit of power was replaced by a panic over rising roster costs, rampant athlete and coaching churn, and eventually a frontal assault on the system itself, we turned the idea of self-governance into an empty threat while asking the federal government of all institutions to step in and quiet the chaos.
That sword turned out to be made of plastic.
Time to replace it with steel. Let this be the moment these conferences that have long operated as entities unto themselves finally started bearing some responsibility for it.
Draw the line in the sand here, and prepare for the moment it’s crossed.
Why college sports are special compared to minor leagues
The reasons why are twofold, and surprisingly straightforward.
First, one of college athletics’ most compelling legal arguments in recent years is that it must be allowed to maintain some sense of its amateur soul, lest it be forced to evolve into nothing more than glorified minor league sports. Millions of people watch college football and basketball annually. The same cannot be said of Minor League Baseball, or the NBA G League.
If there is a chance to preserve the idea of amateurism in any form whatsoever, it starts with arguing that the very mission of college sports — and the economics underpinning it — rely upon something resembling the old normal.
And, because nothing like this happens in a vacuum, the second consideration is probably more important: It’s not just the right thing to do, but also the popular one as well.
Fans don’t want to see players simply trade the pros for college the way a baseball team might bounce a player back and forth between Triple A. The tribal, communal nature of college sports is what lends them their appeal. Their consumers overwhelmingly support holding onto that.
Those fans can (and should) accept athletes being paid. They can (and should) accept many of the evolutions that have materialized around that. But any taking of the temperature of the modern college sports fan would tell you we’ve begun reaching the lines they don’t want to see crossed.
Which means it’s time to defend them.
Collective bargaining is bittersweet medicine NCAA must swallow
That will require something of leaders in college athletics too many have not yet shown: The maturity and restraint to complain about rules chaos while not also actively trying to take advantage of it. If they’re going to hold this position, everyone needs to dig in together.
No more trying to bend those rules, or find a friendly judge, or target a particular court. If leaders in college sports want certainty and calm, then that needs to start at home.
Then comes the bitterest medicine to swallow — collective bargaining.
NCAA President Charlie Baker swears it won’t work. He’s said athletes don’t even want it.
To the first suggestion, decades, if not centuries, of federal labor law say otherwise. Would it be complicated? Of course. Would it be painstaking? Certainly. Is daily life for administrators, commissioners, coaches and others already, and relentlessly, all of those things? Yes. At least if we do it the other way we’ve got past experience to guide us forward.
As for the assertion athletes don’t want it …
- a) some actively do and are pursuing it,
- b) attempts at something like collective bargaining began long before NIL payments started flowing and
- c) to be blunt, you won’t know for sure until you try. We all might be surprised to learn just how many of those athletes will actively participate in the system once they’re finally offered a more meaningful stake in it.
It's long past time for college sports to take charge
Most fundamentally, it would be a signal the adults are finally stepping into the room.
Any reading of the Protect College Sports Act’s 11th-hour failure to reach the Senate floor earlier this month suggests its prospects of becoming law before the midterm elections are not good. President Trump himself acknowledged that his college sports-focused executive order, signed in April and technically active now, will be challenged in the courts.
There are other potential hurdles, not least among them various court rulings and states’ laws that would seem to run counter to the conferences’ intentions on this particular issue. Should those rules pass — much less be extended to include athletes attempting to return from the NBA or other professional leagues — they will face a steep path forward.
They’re still the right thing to do. They would make for good policy. They would likely gather substantial support. Most importantly, they would signal that college sports are finally willing to meet their own mess head on, and try to clean it up.
It’s long past time for that.
Want more Hoosiers coverage? Sign up for IndyStar's Hoosiers newsletter. Listen to Mind Your Banners, our IU Athletics-centric podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the latest on IndyStar TV: Hoosiers.
.oembed-frame {width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;border:0;}
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Closing NFL-to-NCAA football loophole is only beginning of college sports needing self-governance