Oh look, here comes Simple Solutions Guy again.
The most erratic president in American history—the guy who was going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it (didn’t happen), has mused about taking over Greenland (what?), and wants to reopen Alcatraz as a federal prison (again, what?)—has a new flight of fancy. He wants to fix college athletics. That should be easy, because goodness knows we haven’t had an army of bureaucrats already working on it for years.
Now it will be different, apparently. Now we will have only the best people on the case, to use Donald Trump’s favorite phrasing about those he hires. Presumably, the Trump-appointed Saviors of College Sports won’t be handling any information so sensitive that, say, a Signal leak jeopardizes the mission. (Just don’t accidentally include Connor Stalions on the group text.)
How did we get here? Trump had a meeting with former Alabama Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban in Tuscaloosa, Ala., last week before speaking at the University of Alabama’s commencement proceedings. Tommy Tuberville, former coach of the Auburn Tigers and now both a U.S. Senator and a card-carrying member of the Simple Solutions Brigade, reportedly also bent Trump’s ear on the trip. They presumably told Trump that everything is terrible, even though it isn’t. Someone please show me the dramatic downturn in the popularity of college athletics that is threatening the entire enterprise.
Nevertheless, according to Yahoo Sports, Trump’s Alabama trip has “now transformed into plans for this executive group to be formed.” This may be putting too fine a point on it, but it appears that Nico Iamaleava’s ill-fated Rocky Top money grab has launched everyone into overreaction orbit.
But this is what college sports gets after years of floundering toward a new model. Instead of being the physicians that heal thyselves, conference commissioners reached for a bottle of Ivermectin. They threw up their hands and sought Beltway intervention, and eventually that has led to Trump His Own Self.
Doing the work yourself might be hard. Asking the government to do it could end up worse.
Leaders from the NCAA and the most prominent conferences have been begging for Congress to fix their messes. Their goal is to thread a tricky legal needle, by which “guardrails” are placed on athlete compensation and mobility without collective bargaining and employee status. The goal is a system that pays the athletes, does not violate Title IX and maintains an antitrust exemption. It’s a pretty big ask.
This has led to umpteen Congressional hearings that illustrate a lack of understanding of college sports esoterica and a lack of unity on how to proceed. That’s not a criticism of the politicians, mind you; they’ve got more important things to do than becoming instant experts on roster limits and collectives.
Meanwhile, a leviathan effort via the courts has arrived at the cusp of a $2.8 billion settlement in the House v. NCAA case (and associated cases) that sets the table for the future. Revisions to the settlement are expected to be filed Wednesday, with a final approval potentially coming in the near future. Everyone in college sports has been working toward a new reality poised to begin July 1—and at the last minute, Simple Solutions Guy would like a word.
College athletics has been paralyzed by committees for decades. Adding another committee over the top of those committees seems like a brilliant plan. Bureaucrats Gone Wild is not the answer.
“Coach Saban and Trump’s eleventh-hour talks of executive orders and other meddling are just more unneeded self-involvement,” said one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case, Steve Berman, in a statement. “College athletes are spearheading historic changes and benefitting massively from NIL deals. They don’t need this unmerited interference from a coach [Saban] only seeking to protect the system that made him tens of millions.”
Who knows how far such unmerited interference might set everything back. (And by everything, I also include the massive lawyer fees for plaintiff attorneys Berman and Jeffrey Kessler. They’re not without self-interest here.) Ripping everything up on the very cusp of a settlement everyone has worked toward would be peak college sports.
Player salaries that have gone from nonexistent a few years ago to reports of $40 million payrolls for football programs alone this year are freaking people out. So is the annual transfer migration of players across the landscape, from one school to the next to the next to the next. But sending in an executive committee is both a premature overreaction and a misallocation of resources and brain power.
The current spending spree is in part an attempt to beat the House settlement clock. Let’s check back a year or two from now and see if salaries have settled. And even if they haven’t, does it really matter? As long as overpaying a mediocre quarterback or point guard doesn’t lead to schools whacking Olympic sports, let the market regulate itself.
The transfer issue is more troubling, in my view. Complete roster overhaul every year stands a greater chance of alienating fans, while also scuttling the academic success of athletes. Multiyear NIL contracts with enforceable buyouts that schools are willing to pursue could help lessen the constant migration. If anyone in Congress—or the Oval Office—wants to tackle that, go for it.
Otherwise, the best anyone in Washington can do is to point the easily distracted President of the United States toward a different shiny object. Because trying to “fix” college sports isn’t going to be the thing that lands him on Mount Rushmore.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Fixing College Sports Is Not an Issue President Trump Can Solve.
