Whether or not politicians can bring sanity back to college sports was the topic Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) weighed with Clay Travis on Thursday, and his comments put the conversation into the age-old question of whether big government can save the day.
The days of college athletes not earning are over: plain and simple. But adopting the system of yesteryear isn’t Schmitt’s argument during this interview. Instead, Schmitt is looking for the government, specifically congress, to hand governing powers back to the virtually-powerless NCAA. Here’s part of his visit with Travis:
“That’s the question everyone should ask,” Schmitt said. “My natural inclination is not for government to get involved in these things, but I think we’re at where we’re at because we have kind of chaos now in the landscape by way of litigation. In a nutshell, those cases over the last decade have really neutered any governing body’s ability to have any rules… You really are now in a place where you have the wild west.”
He continued:
“Do I think the old system was too restrictive for players? Yes. Do I think now we’re at a place where you can’t have any standards for eligibility, contracts, transfers… college athletes going pro and then coming back, this is the world we live in. Only congress now can provide the kind of liability protection for some governing body to set the rules.”
The name, image and likeness revolution has set up exactly what Schmitt describes, a lawless land where the former powers have essential no say.
But how did we get here? To a place where an athlete can declare for the NBA Draft, be selected and still circumvent expectations by returning to the collegiate level. Let’s take a look at the timeline of notable events and cases that’ve brought us here.
• 2014: O’Bannon v. NCAA rules that the latter violated antitrust laws by using athletes’ likenesses without pay. This saw the suspension of the EA Sports College Football video game series, and ultimately set the stage for NIL payments as we know them today.
• 2021: NCAA v. Alston rules against the the latter and allowed schools to provide “education-related” benefits, including laptops and paid internships.
• 2021: The NCAA adopts NIL policy, allowing athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness through means of a collective. The same year sees the addition of a one-time transfer exception.
• 2023: Ohio v. NCAA rules the latter cannot enforce waiting periods for transfers; A federal judge issued an injunction, which made “unlimited” transfers a thing. The NCAA removed its restriction on how many times an athlete can transfer.
• 2024: House v. NCAA results in a $2.8 billion settlement to athletes who played between 2016 and 2024 (mostly football and basketball athletes). Allows schools to begin paying their athletes directly and begin building up their own university NIL funds.
The NCAA is a member-led institution after all and, with time, the majority perspective has morphed with a large share of spending liberally on acquiring talent. Ohio State and Texas, the country’s two biggest spenders in football, invested upwards of $35 million on their rosters last season alone.
The cost of retaining student athletes is already driving coaches nuts, and there’s no sign of the trend slowing down; It’s quite the opposite, as schools race to upgrade their facilities and attract business interests to grow their NIL chests in order to compete.
So, while a transfer rule – whether reintroducing a one-year sit rule or a limited transfer policy or whatever – would help aid the chaotic recruiting process coaches have been grappling with, it still doesn’t address the money issue. Football and basketball are the high-revenue sports; You’ve gotta feed to beast to compete, whether or not your starting running back transfers or not.
Either way, someone’s getting paid to fill the void.
