You don’t have to keep making the same mistake over and over again. History is often a great informant of future strategy. Lived experience, though often painful and inconvenient, is also a terrific learning tool. To ignore either, but especially both, is foolish.

In front of us, we have a sizable problem centered around the PR blunder that will await institutions, and the NCAA at large, when college athletes who were stars on the field, court, ice, etc., end up older, poorer, dejected, and a shell of their former selves.

It’s a tale as old as time. It still happens in modern athletics.

NFL star running back Chris Johnson, aka CJ2K, was invincible and became one of the first running backs to eclipse the 2,000-yard mark in a season. He is 39 years young, and he is now bound to a wheelchair. His ALS diagnosis is, unfortunately, a more common one among military veterans and professional football players, who are at greater risk of acquiring the degenerative, incurable disease.

Duke standout and 7+ season NBA veteran Kyle Singler has very clearly fallen on hard times. Recent video of him appearing rough and saying inflammatory things about his college head coach are surefire signs of trouble for Singler.

For whatever reason, Singler has taken exception to Coach K and is blaming his addiction on a coach who helped him reach the pinnacle of the sport with a professional basketball career that paid Singler more than $22 million.

The good thing for Singler and Johnson is that professional leagues financially take care of their former players. It’s a bad look for a pro league to profit off of the labor of athletes only to see its former players turn up homeless or without the support that would predictably be needed as athletes transition away from being athletes and into life after sport.

But the startling change in everyday life for pro sports alums is similarly jarring, albeit typically on a smaller scale, for college athletes.

You go from being the BMOC or BWOC to being a footnote in the record books and historical annals of the team at that school. The world keeps spinning, life keeps “lifing,” and the clout + star power wielded by current athletes dissipates dramatically once those athletes are no longer part of the active roster and instead become part of the much larger community of alumni of that sport and university.

The ESPN documentary “Broke,” made in 2012, cited statistics that 60 percent of NBA players are broke within five years of the end of their careers. For the NFL, a more startling 78 percent were broke within just three years after their careers ended.

And NFL alums are turning up with CTE at alarming rates.

Those are two challenges that college athletics is even more ill-equipped to address than the professional ranks.

I spoke with a former NFL Players Association player rep, and he laid it out for me.

Your career ends, and so long as you eclipse three years and a handful of games, you are locked into the NFL severance, annuity, pension, and 401(k) retirement track that makes it really hard to go broke and stay broke after your career ends.

Furthermore, current NFL rookie onboarding is replete with financial literacy, professional development, continuing education, and as many resources as an active employee could care to have at their disposal.

If you run out of money as a 3½+ year NFL veteran, the NFL can most assuredly say that it tried to help.

But what about colleges?

The financial literacy onboarding is deficient at best.

A speaker or speaker series is the extent of it. There is no preferred money-manager contact list to choose from. There isn’t investment-grade guidance being offered to all athletes at a school.

Why?

Liability. Insecurity. Job security. Immaturity. Lack of return on investment.

Many reasons.

College athletes are younger, with poorer advisors, less money (typically, but not always), less maturity (mostly), and temptation confronting them without the guardrails that professional sports teams are incentivized to put in place for their athletes.

While Shohei Ohtani, Bobby Bonilla, and a bevy of other athletes have deferred money years or, in some cases, decades into the future, college athletes typically want as much as they can get, as soon as they can get it.

There is a Power 4 women’s basketball player, who shan’t be named, who has run out of gas in her vehicle multiple times and has had staff members come and get her gassed up and on her way multiple times, despite the athlete making more than a quarter-million dollars a year.

That is the caliber of decision-maker we are relying on to save for the future and hopefully not fall on hard times and besmirch the good name of the university and/or team.

One final, relevant callout is the potential fallout from CTE and related head-trauma conditions.

The reputation of college athletics has mostly been spared from it, but suppose the players unionize and gain cohesive representation like the NFLPA. You may start to see some benefits and long-term insurance coverage afforded to college athletes competing in higher-risk sports (or who generate a substantial amount of income for their respective universities).

And if CTE is shown to have been prevalent in college athletes at a rate that’s even fractionally as great as it is in pro football and other high-contact sports, the college athletics PR machine is undoubtedly not as well-funded, nor as well-versed, in refuting those claims and diverting attention from an alarming consequence of serving at the entertainment pleasure of the pro sports audience.

College athletics generates too much money to not start operating more like a professional sports league.

Except they have leadership deficient in foresight and limited in brainpower to prepare for the predictable fallout that will come from undersupported athletes who wind up broke, disabled, and/or downtrodden and then try to bring down their coaches and universities with them.

If it’s predictable, it’s preventable.

But only for those who care to recognize the obvious and who care enough to do something about it.

It started with Texas Tech. They were all for signing Brendan Sorsby, who had gambled on sports. It’s almost an unforgivable cardinal sin. And depending on the sport, it is unforgivable.

Pete Rozelle made Bud Selig promise not to let Pete Rose into the Hall of Fame. Selig probably made Manfred do something similar. Over Rozelle’s dead body would Charlie Hustle, and the all-time domestic hits leader, be admitted to the MLB Hall of Fame.

That the Hall of Fame has turned into a popularity contest filled with performance-enhancing speculation, or that writers intentionally omit unequivocal first-ballot Hall of Famers from their ballots based on some sort of principle or moral high horse, is the exact type of bullshit I’m hoping to make obvious, at least in small part, in this article.

Did Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds need performance enhancers to reach the Hall? Absolutely not. Did plenty of athletes in all sports take performance enhancers? Absolutely.

You want to block Rafael Palmeiro from the MLB HOF because of performance enhancers? Great. Barry Bonds, though? Come on.

Back to the focus. Texas Tech tried to sign an unsignable player. Sorsby couldn’t be signed based on past grievances, but because there was a competitive advantage to be gained, Texas Tech attempted to circumvent common-sense rules.

Now LSU, along a less morally detestable but similarly objectionable basis, is trying to gain a competitive advantage. I don’t blame them for being proactive and vigilant in trying to add talent to their roster, especially if them not doing it might result in some other team doing it.

But the reality is that signing professional athletes has been normalized and accepted in other sports.

So depending on the league, and the player, and how much they were paid, and, and, and, and, and then you might be able to sign them now but not have them for the season. Or you might not be able to sign them now but could sign them for the season. Or you can’t and can’t, or you can and can.

The permutations are seemingly endless.

The NCAA would have you believe that 18- and 19-year-olds are missing out on college opportunities because of an inconsistent application of rules, but that’s not really the case.

When the transfer portal exists, teams are going to source their players from non-high-school ranks. International players, other D1s, D2s, D3s, and JuCos all wind up on college rosters, which then forces, depending on the sport, athletes to take new, more inconvenient paths to get to where they ultimately want to end up: high-major, P4 athletics.

You’re upset that your QB left to take a better “job” for more money, possibly even at a school with a better degree or a more prestigious degree.

Wouldn’t you?

And let’s pretend like you wouldn’t, because you might not.

Should you not take exception to the $50 parking charge and the beer prices and the lack of clarity on your kickoff time, which can typically take between seven and 13 days for most elite teams to announce? Or that your team is playing on a Friday night?

Case in point: Northwestern projects to open their stadium in the greater Chicagoland area on a Friday night against Penn State in October, which zaps energy and attendance from high school football across one of the country’s great prep-sports cities, Chicago, Illinois.

And regarding the late release of game times, it is very hard to plan a trip to a game or some social events without knowing when a game will start or when it will end.

I understand that it is entitled to be able to have social events to plan for while waiting on a game time for a competition, but there are vendors and employees, too, who are affected by not knowing kickoff times.

Could we not do even just a little bit better in that regard?

Lane Kiffin needs a competitive advantage to win.

He wasn’t great at Tennessee or USC or with the Raiders. I will continue to say that the SEC color change he underwent, trading the Ole Miss red and blue for the yellow and purple of LSU, won’t work out.

He will have a great roster. He will attract great coaches. He will get great players to the NFL. But he requires a talent gap between him and his chasers in order to be successful.

I’m guessing he kicked the tires on Trinidad Chambliss. He definitely kicked the tires on Demond Williams. And ultimately, Sam Leavitt will be the signal caller for Lane’s Bayou Bengals this season.

Now that the SEC has been omitted from the national championship game in each of the last three years—on their volition—and an influx of new coaches has lowered the collective floor of the league’s expected performance, Lane should be able to secure a top-third-of-the-conference finish, but ultimately miss out on the prize jewel LSU covets.

Why?

Because the type of coach who leaves a team midseason, and who asks players to come back to college after going to the NFL, isn’t the type of leader who typically achieves the peak expression of his team’s talent.

Conferences need to govern themselves now. They can’t rely on the NCAA, or CSC, or the federal government to provide the framework for how they proceed.

Conferences used to be regional. Now they are sometimes national.

Conference realignment doesn’t need to be something that’s so tightly held onto. Look no further than international soccer, where promotion and relegation happen yearly.

If Florida State sees more in common with Florida and Georgia than Duke and Virginia Tech, shouldn’t it be able to act in its own best interests, especially if the SEC would have them?

And if you say no, your logic is likely rooted in legacy and nostalgia rather than recognizing that a school needs to do what it needs to do in order to position itself to be viable for the foreseeable future.

Ask Oregon State and Washington State how hitching their wagon to the Pac-12 is going.

I also like things of the past. Sub-$2.00 gasoline. Sticks of bubble gum in baseball card packs. Compact discs. Etc.

Tim McGraw’s “Back When” lyrics: “…A hoe was a hoe, Coke was a Coke, and crack’s what you were doing when you were cracking jokes.”

But in case you haven’t recognized it, artificial intelligence has infiltrated society, and the velocity of learning + information travel has made the slower, more deliberate days of the past much harder to come by.

I sometimes wonder if, save for a week in Augusta, Georgia, every April, a slower pace of life is borderline impossible to recapture.

But I don’t try to stunt progress or block growth. Concurrently, I don’t try to unbridle the logic and intellect that are ever-present among the best ambassadors in sports.

There might be no “right way” to proceed, but there are definitely some “wrong ways,” and you don’t have to stall progress in order to avoid the “wrong ways.”

A proper moral compass and common sense can mostly get the job done.

The problem with common sense is that it isn’t common, and that most people’s moral compasses are broken beyond repair.

Humanity is imperfect, but certainly the best of us—or even the very good of us—can objectively understand and allow the change that is fair and tolerable, allowing college sports to proceed in a way that makes them fair and enjoyable for most.

I say most because you simply can’t please all the people all of the time, and there will always be those who would rather see college athletes starve than see them get paid one nickel.

Those folks would rather the money keep flowing into the school’s coffers, I suppose.

Like I said, sometimes common sense isn’t common.

After being eliminated for the first time ever in the first round of the NBA playoffs in his career, LeBron James was asked about his offseason plan and remarked that his attention was shifting from the Los Angeles Lakers’ postseason defeat to taking on the Monstars, aka the Goon Squad, in Space Jam 2.

Bravo, LeBron.

I was reminded of that nonsense answer to a question in a fairly serious moment when observing the SEC’s response to its own league being the primary culprit in signing pro athletes to their collegiate rosters.

“Blah, blah, blah…we don’t believe pro players should play in college…blah, blah, blah…college sports is for college athletes…pass the Protect College Sports Act.”

It was a rollercoaster ride unlike any I’ve been on. The prepared statement offered up after a meeting of SEC presidents and chancellors had an uncertain starting point and an unclear endpoint.

It was fascinating to me.

Presidents and chancellors meeting to talk about college sports and how, instead of conference-wide governance being a logically proposed option, we’re flinging the problem back to the NCAA to solve.

Thanks for nothing!

The SEC has been stalling, obstructing progress, and posturing, only to produce this “nothing burger” of a released statement.

Overwhelmingly, the teams signing these “pro” football players are in the SEC. Some of their coaches are only as good as their rosters, meaning they have no ability to actually coach up a roster that doesn’t have elite talent.

And the coaches don’t have to make room for them.

When Brendan Sorsby tried to go to the NFL, the league and its teams politely said, “No thanks,” and that ended that speculation pretty quickly. The players are being blamed and primarily held responsible for wanting to take 4x–10x more money than they could, but won’t necessarily, make by staying in the NFL.

What about the head coaches, personnel folks, and others who are signing these players?

The problem is that the content that gets circulated by the media is created by people who don’t want to lose their access. When the team that you cover will inherently provide you more and better access when you treat the team nicely, you’ll typically remember which side of the bread is buttered by way of the university.

If the coaches could contain themselves, the player values wouldn’t be so exorbitant.

If they didn’t switch schools all the time, then maybe these players wouldn’t be following in the same footsteps as the mentors who lead programs all the time.

Is there any concern that people trade in logos, addresses, colors, and affiliations as frequently as they do?

There is for me.

I think it’s detestable. That’s a large part of the reason I’m not in college athletics. It’s way too transactional.

And I am loyal.

I was dating a girl in college. She grew up a Texas fan. Her whole family were Texas fans.

Then she went to Oklahoma, the bitter rival of Texas.

That was the beginning of the end for that relationship.

If you are raised cheering for a team and then attend the school you were raised to loathe and detest, that says plenty about your mental stability and rational thinking.

Plenty of people are coaching at both stops of a bitter rivalry, or across town at a sworn enemy.

I understand it, but I didn’t grow up with it, and I don’t like it.

Furthermore, many of these coaches have sufficient funds to sit back and enjoy their lives outside of compromising their morals, virtues, family well-being, etc., all to try to win one more game.

I love what college athletics is, but I think it’s very safe to say that many college sports have devolved into something much different than they were even 10 years ago.

I completely support the athletes getting paid.

The college athletics ecosystem doesn’t have to deteriorate alongside the sports we love so dearly.

If the NCAA could just apply rules broadly and more logically, some—or much—of what drives Americans crazy about college sports would be made better.

If the animal that walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck—college sports—ceased to be called a rabbit—amateur sports—we’d be in a much better place.

The answers are simple, but clearly, not easy.

Too many poor leaders are making too many poor choices that are affecting everyone. But, as is typical, the people most affected are often the athletes.

There are great, sharp leaders out there, but none of them are offering up solutions or helpful guidance. Everyone is afraid of being sued or of looking like a turncoat in the united front for a more tightly regulated future.

One of these days, someone will stand up for the players, do the right thing, and create the fair outcome.

But for now, it’s lots of shilling and hyperbole with very little regard for truth, integrity, and the foundation upon which college athletics was supposedly built.

Adam Sandler, in the 1995 comedy Billy Madison, went back to school as a grown adult to prove to his father that he was capable of managing his business empire. He went back to school for a financial incentive (and perhaps, too, for Veronica Vaughn), not all that dissimilar from what some NFL players have done this very month.

I penned an article on June 1, 2025, that mentioned some lofty figures, mostly for players earning money. But I want to revisit the four-year, $4.33 million deal signed last year by Quinn Ewers, who is currently battling a groin injury. He went 1-for-8 with an interception in his first start this preseason. Ewers reportedly turned down an $8 million transfer offer last year.

Perhaps having seen the cautionary tales of those who came before them, these NFL camp players, many of whom might be referred to as “camp bodies” (players who are good enough to provide scout-team depth but who aren’t actually viable candidates to make the 53-man active roster), are wising up to the opportunity available to them back in the college ranks.

Of course, this “sampling” of the pro life only to revert to the collegiate ranks is not completely unheard of. International basketball and hockey players have been doing it in droves in recent years.

The amateurism rules that have hindered and hampered athletes for over a century have long been a problem. I’m guessing Jim Thorpe’s Native American roots probably cost him his 1912 gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon because he accepted a few bucks to play semiprofessional baseball. Rest assured, the absurdity of regulations has been alive and well for a long time when it comes to restricting competitive greatness for those deserving of opportunity and the corresponding upside that comes with it.

Of course, people are blown away that anyone could be going from the NFL to the NCAA. But the $2,000 NFL weekly training-camp salary pales in comparison to the $50,000 salary that would be paid to a $1 million-valued player (and some players are worth much more than that).

That’s life-changing money, depending on how you spend it…and you won’t have to worry about being cut (at least until next year’s NFL camp).

But how did we get here?

I’m glad you (kinda, maybe) asked.

There were the makings of a class-action lawsuit victory in Wisne v. NCAA, where all athletes who were refused a fifth year to play a fifth season (like is now being offered to all currently eligible NCAA athletes) could potentially benefit. A temporary restraining order (TRO) was granted to all athletes who fit the class description.

The class description was basically (though not absolutely) that an athlete was a member of the Class of 2022, had graduated from high school, played four years and was thought to be out of college eligibility because the previous standard was five years to play four seasons competitively.

With the change to five years to play five seasons, this theoretically—and practically—makes a fifth year available to athletes who just graduated, except for that tiny issue with the NCAA not being willing to extend that permission.

The NCAA appealed the TRO granted in the class-action suit and received a narrow 2-1 victory in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. So the freedom that was granted to the Class of 2022 athletes who had played four seasons, and which prompted a pro-sports exodus and/or re-emergence of athletes who thought themselves to be out of college eligibility but who wanted to come back to college to earn more money than they would make professionally, was rescinded.

But, in the words of iconic college football personality (coach + broadcaster) Lee Corso: “Not so fast!”

The purpose of a class-action lawsuit, oftentimes, is so that a bunch of micro-lawsuits representing a single or small group of affected plaintiffs don’t need to incur the cost and inconvenience of achieving a lawsuit victory that many others like them would seek.

The fees and legal bills gathered in these class-action lawsuits are immense, but so, too, are the benefits to the affected class. And while the eligibility that was made available is now temporarily off the table via the Wisne v. NCAA case, there are several individual cases with temporary restraining orders permitting athlete eligibility that are in place at the state level.

This is a foundational element that needs to be understood more clearly: State laws are superseding national laws in NIL. And state laws govern consent, speed limits, alcohol purchasing, etc., when national laws do not or shouldn’t.

One of the major elements of the Protect College Sports Act, and the participation agreement that the CSC is asking schools to sign, is that states won’t make their own rules to circumvent national legislation or governance rules agreed to by the whole conference, Power 4, or NCAA.

And the individual cases with plaintiffs who have received TROs from the state in which they brought their case are aplenty.

I expect we’ll see the departing pros filing their own lawsuits to get protections from the same judges in the same states, based on the same logic. Particularly as it relates to football, if you can get clearance prior to the season starting, you can just do your best to delay and prolong the matter long enough for the desired result (~4 months of eligibility) to be earned without any actual opinion being offered.

Just because this departure from the NFL defies logic or familiar convention doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make sense.

If you or I were in the same position, we’d probably do the same thing.

It’s very noble for people to tell others how to live, how to spend their money and how to parent when they haven’t walked a mile in their shoes. Let’s give others some leeway and the benefit of the doubt, especially as the tumultuous and unsettled nature of college athletics has deprived many athletes of the goodwill and pride they should be receiving, broadly, for the arduous life they subject themselves to in order to become better students and better athletes under an existing environment from which they have very little ability to deviate or choose an alternative.

There are football players in NFL training camps who have played in preseason games, who are likely on their way to making significant money while starting their NFL careers, who are about to throw things in reverse and spend one more season playing college football.

Why would they do that?

Well, if Wu-Tang is really for the children, as one of their band members (my favorite, Ol’ Dirty Bastard) once said at the 1998 Grammys, then I’ll rock with Wu-Tang in referencing the famous C.R.E.A.M. mantra that Cash Rules Everything Around Me. I’ll refrain from making any declarative statements about ODB’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya,” but if you can’t appreciate a guy taking a limousine to get his welfare check, then you just don’t like nonsense like I do.

Money is a powerful motivator in college athletics, obviously. You see it regularly with athletes transferring to bigger schools for less playing time, or athletes eschewing development in favor of “the bag” of cash that makes their lives easier, but also leaves their playing careers less strategically cared for.

While the preposterousness of players who had previously played professionally in the G League, NBA, and overseas was the flavor of the day for absurdity last academic year, this year’s preferred lawlessness is the college football player turned pro, turned college athlete again.

If you’re good enough to be in an NFL training camp at this point, or in any North American professional league, you can almost certainly contribute to a college roster. And the prices for good players at good schools are high. The prices for great players at great schools are even higher.

Basically, the math I arrive at is that a standard, baseline NFL season on the practice squad is worth 2–4x less than what players will earn on a college roster. And players will likely be even better suited for an NFL practice squad next year after another year of experience, development, training, etc.

But that assumes a regular presence on the practice squad would be consistent week in and week out, which is not guaranteed. The money for fewer games and a shorter season at the collegiate level is basically guaranteed and substantially more.

Why is this happening?

Simply put, the NCAA knew for a while that it would be moving to a five-year duration for five years of eligibility model. The plan was for the 2025–26 competition seasons to expire and then for the rule to be instituted going forward.

The timing was intentional, and so, too, was the exclusion of athletes who had exhausted their maximum eligibility of four seasons of play in four years, instead of using the five years that they could have been afforded—and would be afforded—under the new NCAA rules.

The NCAA has been trying to apply rules and logic unilaterally, but with its monopoly being steadily eroded by various judicial courts across the country, this eligibility mess has been among the most poorly considered and “planned for.”

The eligibility rules have always been inconsistent and erratic across sports and college athletics in general.

You could leave high school to go pro in baseball, for example, but not in basketball. But then, if you went to college to play baseball, you couldn’t go pro for three years. If you wanted to go pro in basketball after going to college, you only needed to wait one year.

The NCAA has a hand in determining the pathway to the professional ranks, and it clearly can dictate different policies, like how much money amateurs can accept while retaining eligibility or whether they can have advisors or agents. Hint: It has been wildly inconsistent across sports.

The exclusion of athletes like Diego Pavia because of junior college playing experience, but not starting the eligibility clock of someone who attended a prep school after graduating high school, was an uneven application of eligibility considerations.

Moreover, the narrow eligibility accommodation for players in Diego Pavia’s specific circumstance—where he wanted one more year to play, making it a fifth year in five years but only his fourth at the NCAA level, while also having a COVID year that was reinstated—made it difficult for other junior college players with similar, but not identical, circumstances to gain eligibility.

It’s easy to look back and see the irregularity, but because the NCAA ruled with an iron fist, and schools were forced to abide by the NCAA’s mandates (or else!), everyone went along with it.

But university men’s choruses or professional skateboarders who attended college could monetize their skill and talent permissibly before July 1, 2021, while athletes couldn’t.

There wasn’t anything close to a willingness to accommodate deserving athletes who proved to have an earning capability. “No means no” and “because I said so,” straight from the upset-parent playbook, overrode any prevailing logic or fairness criteria that could have been applied.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And if you just follow the money, it’s apparent that the interests of those at the top of the NCAA pyramid of power are more focused on personal inurement and self-preservation than the actual betterment of their supposed athlete contingent.

Even a casual dive into the history of the NCAA and its “leadership” will reveal plenty about the rabbit hole that you should enter at your own risk.

Don’t blame the athletes for going pro and then going back to college.

They are playing from the NCAA playbook by following the money.

Except they’ve only been able to do it just recently.

The decision about where to attend college to compete athletically is important, but not nearly as important as it was before the transfer portal. Changing schools meant you lost a year of eligibility, and that deterrent was enough to dissuade many transfers from happening. I wouldn’t hate it if that were brought back, but the restrictions it places upon players should be the same restrictions placed upon coaches. Fair is fair.

The opportunity to compete is always the most important thing. So ensuring your seat at the table with a four-year scholarship commitment should be the baseline for consideration. Lots of programs want to turn over rosters and only offer one-year scholarships. That is theoretically better for the player and for the school/program, but what if a player goes through a slump, suffers an injury, or experiences coaching turnover? It doesn’t help the athlete to have less flexibility, fewer options, or less leverage.

So you need a four-year opportunity, but you also need an alumni network that will support you AT LEAST locally and regionally, but hopefully more broadly than that. North Carolina State, for example, is a good school, but its alumni network won’t trump other alumni networks across the country, and that degree + alumni network isn’t typically held in high regard outside of the state of North Carolina. Wake Forest and Duke, on the other hand, carry more weight.

A coach who develops better players and better people is important. The betterment of an athlete can be attributed to strength and conditioning coaches, position coaches, and many people beyond the head coach, but the head coach can definitely have a formula and reputation for achieving higher-quality outcomes with his/her players than other programs.

Technical and sport-related development is important, and that isn’t meant to be devalued, but being developed as a person who matures for their first time outside of their parents’ home is of the utmost importance as well. Ages 18–24 are a crucial period of time when people, especially high-performing athletes, find out about themselves. It is said that adversity introduces a person to themselves. When someone in their teens or early twenties has the opportunity to struggle with fewer safety nets in place than when they were in high school, the first-hand knowledge and learning gained is valuable, almost no matter how it is arrived at.

Are the chances of going to play professional sports disproportionately greater at the 25th-best program versus the 10th-best program? It turns out they are, but that’s not necessarily attributed to head coach quality. Name recognition can certainly help, as pro teams would rather sign someone from Oklahoma than Oklahoma Baptist. Remember that scouts and personnel executives are in the business of self-preservation as well, so swinging and missing on P4 players is always easier — and perhaps better — than swinging and missing on an unknown or unheard-of player.

Who makes the most of what they have? You might not be able to play elite, top-end ball in your respective sport. Who has a track record for developing talent? Follow the journey of a coach and what they did to get to where they’re at. In other words, check the receipts.

Bucky McMillan was the back-to-back-to-back SoCon Coach of the Year (’22–’24) before taking over at Texas A&M and taking them to the NCAA Tournament last year. Brooks Savage (ETSU)? Flynn Clayman (High Point)? Kyle Smith (Stanford)? Young and old alike can develop basketball talent.

For football, Pat Fitzgerald (Michigan State), Jon Sumrall (Florida), Brent Venables (Oklahoma), etc. You can point to some other names, but character, reputation, or even just a simple omission make them less mention-worthy.

The money (NIL/revenue sharing) is certainly more important than it ever has been. And you’re seeing some pro players defer compensation until later. Again, I remind readers that the revenue-sharing cap is going to get massively recalculated in two years. So why not push earnings into the future for a higher ceiling AND to alleviate current pressure on rosters?

To take it a step further, find an actuary or some sort of accounting resource that projects the future revenue-sharing cap, understand the sport-specific fraction (or eventual earned piece of that), add a little extra juice in there, and call it good.

I come back to Felix Ojo and his deal for Texas Tech. $5.1 million for three years, so long as you can evaluate appropriately and develop talent well, will look like an absolute steal as the market for long, talented offensive tackles is drier and more barren than the Sahara Desert.

Fit, development, and opportunity are all words bandied about in the conversation about where to play. What about network, culture, camaraderie, and the other important elements nurtured and nourished inside of a program?

Anyone can be a mercenary and take the most amount of money to play at the biggest or best school. But for those looking to not be a pawn in the game of sport, there’s a conscientiousness that needs to be applied.

The fun and joy that comes from doing deep work and falling in love with the process of improving at a sport — or anything — is what needs to be coveted, searched for, and prioritized in the hunt for the next great opportunity.

The college landing spot of any player will be a springboard for them for the rest of their lives. How good that springboard is depends on a litany of factors, so diligence and prudence reign supreme when deciphering what’s next.

The SAT died a swift death when it was labeled as disadvantageous to minorities. As a means of trying to standardize knowledge and aptitude, it was pretty good. It couldn’t be a perfect solution for everyone all the time, but it did its best.

But apparently, once widely accepted, standard parts of American culture were thought to be mentioned in word problems and reading passages, giving an unfair advantage to, you guessed it, the white man, the SAT ended up being vilified.

And many schools decided to move forward by simply omitting the SAT from the calculation of an applicant’s suitability to attend a school altogether. However, not everyone is so thrilled about it. One of the more liberal public school systems in America, housing Cal and other bastions of liberal pontificating, the University of California system, is now reconsidering its decision not to require SAT scores for applicants.

This joins some of the other great about-faces in modern human history that failed miserably. Defunding or doing away with police in the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, or Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, in Seattle was atrocious and deteriorated rapidly. Minnesota voters, even after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, weren’t so keen on doing away with police altogether. They needed protection from criminals like George Floyd, who actually robbed, used counterfeit money, committed theft, and spent years in prison himself.

So, what the heck does this have to do with the transfer portal?

Answer incoming…

Black Americans are roughly twice as likely to be first-generation college students. Black Americans are outnumbered by white people by between 4-to-1 and 5-to-1 in America. And there are more Black Americans than whites who play college football.

So, Black Americans represent a disproportionately large number of college football athletes, but curiously are still represented proportionately to whites in head coaching opportunities, trailing 4-to-1. Yet they are the ones most desperately in need of the evaporating opportunities being disallowed and negotiated away by the NCAA.

Black athletes don’t know what college entails. And depending on the program they are enrolling in, they might have no idea whatsoever about what they are in for. If there are more first-generation college students who are black, and there are fewer opportunities for movement, then it follows that there is at least some racial disadvantage to being black and existing in today’s uncertain college athletics landscape.

It’s not just my opinion. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education had some agreement. Even the term “African American” gets me. Are Black Americans more African American than I am European American? Does it matter? Who cares?

There hasn’t been much study done to capture the racial component of the transfer portal, but it would be curious to see.

Kanye West once famously said that President George Bush “didn’t like black people.” It’s a broad statement, but perhaps that perception was reality to Ye/Yeezy/the artist formerly known as Kanye West.

I don’t think there was any care or regard for race in designing the transfer portal, but, at the very least, it has been classist in that it made visiting schools and planning for the next school more realistic for those who have more financial means.

The earning power of white people in America is almost 70% greater than that of black people. So, when you need to “live in the district” for a player in high school, that’s easier and more affordable for a white person who made a football-specific living decision.

Now, in college, if you wanted to plan for your future landing spot and visit campuses prior to the portal formally opening, of course whites had the upper hand.

Not fair, but neither is life.

I came into this article not knowing how I would justify my point or argument. I subjected myself to some critical thinking, and I followed some common-sense understandings to put together a pretty clear case for the portal being racist and “classist” by making transfers and preparing to transfer more difficult for lower-income individuals, a disproportionately larger share of whom are black.

There could be a bit of a competitive advantage. The desperation and work ethic of someone who is a first-generation college student might be higher than someone who isn’t. So, as these opportunities out of high school dry up, or as the road to eventual success requires more resilience, a case could be made for black people and those minorities who comprise first-generation college admittees more often to actually be better positioned for success than their white counterparts.

Ultimately, it comes down to the person who is willing to try hard to do the thing. There is no shortcut to making it happen. There are lots of ways to succeed, and there are even more ways to fail.

Ultimately, success doesn’t care what color your skin is, or even the content of your character. It’s only about trying hard enough, long enough, with what God gave you, to achieve the necessary outcome.

Jayden Daniels is all in his feelings. He hasn’t gotten his number retired (but, but, but Travis Hunter got his retired!), he isn’t inducted into the LSU Hall of Fame, and he doesn’t feel like LSU has loved him up the way he wants to be loved up.

So, when LSU awarded the No. 5 jersey to a returning sophomore, who himself was a Freshman All-American, Jayden Daniels threw his sucker in the dirt. He immediately issued a cease-and-desist regarding the continued use of his name, image, and likeness as it relates to promoting LSU football.

Jayden Daniels played at LSU for two seasons. They went 10-4 in Year 1 of the Jayden Daniels era. Then, LSU went 9-3 as a starter in Year 2 (no SEC Championship Game, sat out the bowl game) and won the Heisman Trophy.

Now, supposedly, Jayden Daniels isn’t so concerned that Joe Burrow’s No. 9 hasn’t been issued to anyone else. Burrow is a fellow LSU alum and Heisman Trophy winner. He went 10-3 in Year 1, but famously went 15-0 in Year 2 of his tenure at LSU, when he won the national championship.

Joe showed love for Baton Rouge, won a natty, and seemed to prioritize ingraining himself into the LSU community and the hearts of those in the fine state of Louisiana. And while I don’t know how he’d feel about his number being given out, I also don’t care.

The program is bigger than any one player. And certainly bigger than any one Heisman winner.

And here’s the real kicker: If you’re the type of person who sends a cease-and-desist regarding the use of your NIL years after you graduate in response to someone else wearing the same number that you wore (and that many other great players wore before you), then you probably weren’t the type of person who should have your jersey retired in the first place!

Derrius Guice, Jarvis Landry, and Skyler Green (who I don’t have much recollection of, honestly) have all worn No. 5 and have done great things for the LSU program. A two-year player who didn’t win a conference or national championship wants his jersey retired?

Miss me with that.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a world-class football player. However, I have set and broken records at both my high school and college football programs. I was an All-State player in California in high school. I was an All-American FCS football player at the University of San Diego.

And the thought of having my jersey retired has never crossed my mind.

If someone approaches me about ever having my jersey retired, which they shouldn’t and won’t, I would tell them to please keep it in rotation and award or offer it to the best RB. Or give it to the hardest worker. Or make the jersey mean something to the team instead of disallowing it from circulation.

I just saw Michigan State football vote on who would get to wear No. 1 this season. And the recipient was hyped! He embodies what Michigan State believes its team stands for.

How awesome is that?!?!

Tom Brady probably hasn’t given very many pregame speeches in his life. And he probably hasn’t given many pregame speeches to a college football team, but he certainly only gave one pregame speech to his alma mater, in the same locker room he dressed in for games, inside the famed Michigan Stadium where he played much of his collegiate football.

And I was there for it.

It was badass. I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you.

But the core tenet of that speech was that, as a member of your position group, you play to uphold the legacy of the greats before you.

If you’re a QB, you play to respect Leach, Grbac, Harbaugh, and Henne. (He omitted himself.)

If you play RB, you play for Biakabutuka, Harmon, Hart, and Wheatley.

And so on, and so forth.

Pride in the program. Honor in competing for the team, the team, the team.

If I am LSU, I issue two No. 5 jerseys. One for offense and one for defense. So long as they aren’t on the field at the same time, it’s permissible.

Let’s get the full juice out of this Jayden Daniels debacle and move beyond the absurdity of harboring threats against a former school over how they assign your jersey.

It is worth noting that the indefinite use of NIL rights is a major contractual element worth negotiating if you are involved in protecting an athlete’s rights, particularly if they play a premium position.

Or, at the very least, don’t give it away indefinitely or without some additional financial consideration.

But I suppose that’s just the day and age that we live in.

A player can’t appreciate the money, opportunity, development, networking, and legacy they built. They can only think about extracting more and more from an already lush situation.

I’ve heard people coming to Daniels’ defense, and I ain’t buying any of what they are selling.

The actions speak louder than the words, and I hope this new No. 5 ends up being the best player in the history of football. And I hope he plays for five years at LSU.

And I hope they never retire his number!

Geaux Tigers.

Professional athletes are not great savers. I don’t know what percentage of them are actually diligent about not spending money and intentionally saving for themselves 10 or more years down the line. If I had to guess, the number would be in the single digits.

But thankfully, for professional sports organizations, there are players associations and formalized employment contracts that protect the retired versions of those athletes. Those protections include benefits like health insurance, 401(k) plans, pensions, and a multitude of other savings vehicles provided by the sports leagues and/or players associations.

College athletes have no such protections or are afforded no such benefits. That’s not to say those vehicles aren’t at least partially made available to them. But most athletes aren’t wise enough, or counselled wisely enough, to protect themselves from running out of money or experiencing disproportionately negative outcomes.

How much money do you need to live off of?

And I’m not talking about you right now. I’m talking about single you, by yourself, 18 to 24 years old, with housing, room and board, and many other necessary costs being covered.

A.k.a., you’re on scholarship.

Let’s just say that you really need a car. You want to go out to nice dinners, travel home, and do things that 99% of other college students don’t need to spend money on or don’t have to endure as regularly as you might.

$100,000 a year, maybe?

But then maybe there are still other costs. Maybe you’re in a nice city. Maybe there are prudent investments that you want to make with this newfound earning potential that you’ve stumbled upon as an athlete in college.

Let’s even give you an additional $150,000.

That sets aside $250,000 for you to live off of in an academic year.

If Power Four programs decided that, for all athletes making over $250,000 in their year of athletic competition, they would mandate a minimum savings threshold, there could be much greater athlete retention and positive outcomes.

Perhaps it could even reduce transfer volume.

The idea would be to strategically plan for the future rather than pressure athletes to leave based on financial circumstances and the immediate desire for money.

How would you execute this?

Well, not too differently from how scholarship agreements are produced and presented.

These are the terms of being a member of this organization. You certainly have the right and license to negotiate, modify, or adjust these terms. But these are the preferred terms of the school, the program, and the individuals associated with presenting this offer to you.

Moreover, most athletes are on payment terms that dictate that payments are made every month, every two months, every quarter, or perhaps in lump sums. That could depend on the date of signing and/or the date of the exhaustion of eligibility.

This idea isn’t new, at least not to me, because one of the athletes whom I advise has this very same carve-out in his contract.

Given the knowledge that there will be delayed compensation conditional upon mutually agreed-upon terms, why not set ourselves up with some conscientiously allocated funds?

There are many people in the ecosystem of NIL who do very little to fix any of the problems.

Those people are not helpful.

But those people also govern coaches who are frustrated with what is going on in NIL. They receive, decide to throw their hands up, and don’t do the best job that they’re capable of with their revenue-share agreements and NIL contract structures.

Why?

Because it is exhausting to have extensive back-and-forth review processes with agents, lawyers, and players who want a bevy of negotiable items.

So the staff members negotiating on behalf of the team and university end up capitulating and giving into the athletes’ wants and requests. Or they stand firm on uncertain grounds because they were told to do so by the conference or their university’s legal counsel.

This, of course, neglects the savings and financial well-being of the athlete in future years.

The athletes trust the teams so much from the outset.

An athlete entrusts their development, health, skill, evolution, collegiate trajectory, professional competition, prospects, and so much more to a school.

So why not integrate savings and compensation into future years that are untethered to the athlete’s performance in the upcoming year?

It is a very realistic and pragmatic exercise that can be practiced by a team if they are so inclined.

I mentioned the things in the previous paragraph to highlight that I don’t believe trust is what is holding back teams from deferring earnings for players into future calendar years.

I believe the intent and desire are what’s lacking from a team and university standpoint.

The goal should be to do the right thing and protect the 18-to-24-year-old athlete from making many of the most common financial mistakes that young adults would make if they were randomly dropped into a windfall of money.

Especially when that money is tied only to something as fleeting as their athletic ability.

Need we hear from another broke athlete? Need we watch another documentary or cautionary tale about how wealth and financial comfortability can evaporate quickly?

Athletes can spend haphazardly, and the runway of funding can be much shorter than they realize.

Many programs still won’t even allow themselves to trust their seasoned evaluators enough to offer multi-year contracts to the athletes whom they adore in the recruiting process.

If teams, conferences, and the NCAA are going to constantly change the rules and treat the NIL earning landscape as a transactional, year-to-year experience, then what would the reasonable expectation be for an athlete taking part in that universe?

Of course, they would mirror the energy and intent being shown to them.

It ain’t rocket science.

Hopefully, there can be more good actors and more positive influences to improve the NIL earning — and saving — landscape for athletes going forward.

Politicians, our fearless Commander-in-Chief included, got their names all tied up in headlines about how they were trying to “protect” or “save” college sports by way of wonky, incomplete legislation that was haphazardly assembled and, like, lacked enough bipartisan support to get it passed in the first place.

You probably wouldn’t be surprised to know that, historically, the best-performing quarter for the S&P 500, largely a measure of stock and investment success, during a president’s four-year term is the fourth quarter of their second year in office.

That is the very quarter we are entering in Donald Trump’s second presidency — aka the quarter most squarely responsible for shaping voter sentiment as they head into the polls for midterm elections.

In other words, and by a good margin, the most impactful time for politicians during a president’s term just so happens to historically be the most lucrative time for the stock market (and by quite a bit).

And so now, as we approach Q4, the politicians are looking to come to the rescue, approaching with a solution that supposedly solves all of the many problems currently existing in college sports.

There are so many competing interests and so many competing agendas that passing broad legislation that makes meaningful progress while not slowing, stalling, or negating other initiatives is a fierce challenge.

A challenge made fiercer by some politicians sneakily trying to have federal legislation preempt state laws, not address transgender athletes in college sports, etc.

Since the beginning of this publication, I have identified the unrelenting strategy of NCAA officials seeking an antitrust exemption (or something akin to it).

Without it, I’m not sure how the NCAA continues meaningfully.

The private-equity sharks are circling. Billionaires have already begun to see behind the curtain of how investing in athletics can return a windfall for a school in terms of money, notoriety, applications, support, staff improvements, etc.

Trust that if the business case can be made for allowing an investor to be involved in the business of college sports more intimately, they will be.

Billionaires wouldn’t exactly miss $100 million.

Often, when those gifts are announced, they are deferred or spread out over several years so that the donor can get the goodwill of making a major gift, but on terms more friendly to their specific tax situation.

So while LSU is rumored to have a donor waiting in the wings to invest in athletics, I suspect that is more of a sleight of hand.

Perhaps on its face, it can appear to be an investment in the school and its media rights, but I suspect that it is truly a down payment on a broader business deal.

For $100 million, you have the right to build this business adjacent to LSU athletics, and in the event that it doesn’t yield what it is supposed to, we have fortified ourselves against the downside risk.

Edgar Allan Poe is often attributed with the saying, “Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see.”

And I would say that skepticism about intent, motivation, quality, etc. is entirely fair to have, particularly when there is ample corruption and special interest swirling around the college athletics ecosystem currently.

Lots of politicians have taken their crack at intervening in college sports in a nonproductive, reactive way.

I haven’t seen hardly any politicians proactively run down the opportunities and protections that would logically and naturally make sense for these athletes to have.

California, back in 2019, before NIL was mass-adopted by the NCAA in 2021, allowed college athletes to earn money from NIL deals and hire sports agents.

I’m not sure why other states didn’t more readily follow suit, but it doesn’t matter. My point remains.

Mandatory financial literacy, a pension or deferred-earning vehicle, health benefits, etc. are all very logical additions that need to be made available to athletes.

Play from the pro sports playbook and look after the athletes beyond just when they compete for the team and league.

The money has gotten too substantial to just pay the athletes as mercenaries and disregard them thereafter.

What I mention and cover in these newsletters isn’t rocket science.

The landscape seems pretty evident to me in terms of where things are at and where the NIL/revenue-sharing momentum is headed.

A recent panic from coaches to try to add recently graduated players who were thought to have had their eligibility expire, only to see it reinstated by a newly enacted “5 for 5” — five years of eligibility for five years in duration — is just one of the many sudden changes that has captured the time and attention of many coaches, agents, players, and collectives recently.

In the absence of leadership, chaos ensues.

And in this case, the chaos is the fault of the NCAA — or perhaps even the design of the NCAA, as some others have insisted (like I have).

The NIL era will indeed be marked by deficient leadership and advocacy by many, but none more lacking than the NCAA leadership that is supposed to be the most leadership-adept.

There are various types of fuel for automobiles. Standard gasoline is a blend of crude oil and ethanol. The more ethanol and the less crude oil in the fuel, the cheaper it is, the fewer miles per gallon you get, and the less efficiently it burns. High-performance vehicles generally don’t perform as well on lower-grade fuel.

Premium (“91”) fuel is designed for higher-performance vehicles. Most cars can run on 85 or 87. I’ve never quite known who 89 is for.

“Give me the mid-grade gasoline,” said no one ever.

Likewise, providing an 85- or 87-octane solution for today’s high-performing athletes simply ain’t it, as they say in the streets.

Cal, Rutgers, Wisconsin, and others are reportedly exploring the use of state tax dollars through various mechanisms to help fund NIL opportunities for athletes. That’s according to Dan Furman, who went from leading Louisville’s 502Circle NIL Collective to becoming a prominent NIL content creator and social media voice.

His access and relevance are probably due in large part to his experience in the space. I can’t knock the hustle—or the education he’s providing—but on its face, this “tax loophole” discussion is misleading and unlikely to produce meaningful results.

Why do you say that, J.T.? I’m glad you asked.

Universities investing in their own content departments isn’t all that different from what they’ve already been doing. Athletic departments have long possessed significant production capabilities. The question is whether fans will remain invested in storytelling and athlete-driven content when rosters turn over so rapidly.

Can you tell me who the starting quarterbacks are for the two teams that played in last season’s national championship?

You may know Darian Mensah, who spent two years at Tulane and one at Duke before transferring to Miami. He has roughly 4,200 followers on X and around 80,000 on Instagram. That’s not an enormous audience to monetize, particularly given his relatively infrequent posting.

Indiana quarterback Josh Hoover has roughly 28,000 Instagram followers and, as far as I can tell, no active X account.

Beyond that, schools are competing against established message boards, beat writers, independent content creators, fan communities, video producers, graphic designers, and countless others already producing compelling content.

I say this as a matter of record: during my time at Michigan (2016–2018), the most engaging piece of digital content published by the Michigan Football social media accounts was something I sourced, advised on, and helped plan. Because it centered on Jabrill Peppers’ Heisman Trophy campaign, I became involved. It remains the only piece of social content I actively participated in creating during my time there.

Our digital creative team certainly could have built viral campaigns around many incredible moments during those years—Michael Jordan serving as honorary captain, Tom Brady’s pregame speech, multiple Top-10 matchups, and more. Yet the Heisman hype video ultimately became our highest-performing piece of content during that period, and perhaps for an even longer stretch.

So pardon my lack of enthusiasm for using taxpayer dollars to fund player NIL, particularly if the circuitous path to compensating athletes requires athletic departments to suddenly become elite media companies capable of consistently producing viral content.

Besides, taxpayer dollars already support many public universities. In a less direct sense, taxpayers are already helping fund the broader athletic ecosystem that enables NIL.

Dan Furman’s University of Louisville reportedly receives approximately $186 million in state funding, with athletics receiving roughly $17.3 million in 2026. Men’s basketball likely commands an NIL budget in that same general neighborhood. However you choose to account for it, taxpayer dollars are already intertwined with athletic spending to some degree.

I have personally been paid by a private Power Four school to consult with one of its athletic programs. I have also been paid by a public university where some of that work ultimately helped facilitate athlete compensation.

I say that simply to point out that “taxpayer dollars paying players” isn’t nearly as revolutionary or earth-shattering as it’s being portrayed.

Likewise, building out an expensive content, production, and media operation may very well generate some measurable return. But it’s highly unlikely that return will consistently outpace the annual investment required to sustain it.

The goal of generating real NIL value for athletes and teams is absolutely a noble one.

The problem is that this simply isn’t the highest and best use of scarce resources if the investment only produces modest NIL returns.

We can’t keep celebrating these low-grade NIL improvements if we genuinely want meaningful progress for athletes, schools, and college sports as a whole.

Hopefully, schools not named LSU can develop more innovative ideas that produce sustainable revenue and lasting NIL value going forward.

And if there’s a topic, team, situation, scenario, or anything NIL-related (or perhaps even non-NIL, ha!) that you’d like me to write about, please send me a message or leave a comment on this post.

Thank you for reading!

There are occasions when failing to prioritize what matters most ends up being incredibly costly.

Take your car, for example. If you don’t change the oil, flush the transmission, or maintain its critical components, the repair bill can become enormous. A new transmission. A new engine. Preventative maintenance is almost always cheaper than fixing catastrophic damage.

The NCAA is currently experiencing both relatively minor costs and major costs because of its continued neglect of the athletes.

The NCAA’s recent decision to move to a “5-for-5” eligibility model—where athletes will generally have five years to compete, provided they begin their college careers before turning 19—is already becoming a costly proposition. The organization chose not to extend that benefit to athletes who had already exhausted the previous four-year eligibility limit but would have qualified under the new rules.

As a result, both the athletes and the NCAA are now enduring expensive legal battles over what appears to be an inevitable outcome.

It’s a microcosm of the broader NIL industry.

Instead of taking the obvious and ultimately beneficial step of allowing athletes to unionize, the NCAA has embraced a haphazard, patchwork system that is unnecessarily overtaxing donors, universities, and their surrounding communities in ways that are entirely preventable—even if they aren’t currently avoidable.

Almost everyone (mostly everyone except me) insists that athlete compensation can’t continue climbing forever.

I think they underestimate both fan affinity and the mathematics behind funding college rosters.

Across the country, enormous sums of money are routinely allocated to priorities that many people believe produce little return. College athletics is no different. The question isn’t whether the money exists. It’s whether institutions are willing to prioritize spending in ways that align with what actually drives the product.

A billionaire could generate enough annual investment income to fund the roster of an elite college football program without ever touching principal.

Earlier this week, I attended the College Football Recruiting and Personnel Symposium alongside roughly 1,600 people from every corner of the college football industry.

None of them seemed particularly worried about finding more money for player compensation.

Stanford was the lone exception, with representatives acknowledging some difficulty convincing donors to increase their support. Sometimes Stanford people are simply too smart—and too analytical—for their own good.

Not always.

But sometimes.

Legendary head coach Mack Brown opened the event with a fireside chat alongside college football personality Josh Pate.

Brown shared stories about recruiting, prioritizing his family, and lessons learned during more than 50 years in football.

One story stood out.

As an assistant coach at Oklahoma, Brown recalled berating his players at halftime of a game against Kansas, telling them they were going to lose because of how poorly they had played in the first half.

They did exactly that.

Afterward, head coach Barry Switzer told Brown that the players simply fulfilled the future he had spoken into existence.

Brown said he vowed from that moment forward to become a coach who built his players up rather than tore them down.

Later, as Texas’ head coach, his team trailed Oklahoma State by 21 points at halftime. Instead of criticizing his players, he focused on positivity and belief.

Texas responded by outscoring Oklahoma State 42-0 in the second half.

Brown’s message for today’s college athletics landscape was simple:

He’s worried about the players.

And he believes we need to pick them up.

Brown cited a statistic suggesting that only 62% of athletes who transfer eventually graduate. That number may be outdated—or simply inaccurate—but even if it were true, publicly available data suggests that the graduation rate for all college students who transfer generally falls somewhere between 46% and 60%.

If that’s the comparison, transferring athletes are graduating at least as often—and perhaps more often—than the average transfer student.

That doesn’t sound like a transfer problem.

The real problem is the continued suppression of athletes’ wants, needs, and voices.

There is another groundswell of athlete-led energy building around reshaping college sports through organized advocacy and activism. What remains missing are the financial resources and institutional support necessary for athletes to fully represent and advance their collective interests.

Instead, the NCAA continues to benefit from athletes who simply want to compete and pursue their dreams.

Imagine if the same energy devoted to restricting athletes were redirected toward helping them.

Financial literacy.

Tax planning.

Business education.

Mental health resources.

Career development.

Those investments may not produce an immediate financial return for universities, but they almost certainly produce better outcomes for athletes.

Instead, athletes are criticized for transferring.

They’re criticized for wanting more money—something nearly every working adult understands.

They’re criticized for occasionally failing to fulfill contractual obligations, even though contract disputes occur every day throughout the business world.

Maybe Mack Brown is right.

Maybe the kids don’t need to be put down.

Maybe they simply need to be picked up.

Everyone is in win-now mode.

Every year, rosters reload, rebalance, reassemble, and hope to find enough of the secret sauce to capture lightning in a bottle on the way to a national championship. Undoubtedly, there is an element of luck involved, but the best programs also have a way of creating their own.

With talent development taking more of a back seat to talent acquisition, important changes have followed. Recruiting relationships matter less than the amount of money a program can offer. As the old adage goes, everyone has a price. The good feeling of a coach offering $50,000 isn’t likely to overcome the appeal of another coach offering $100,000.

But where are coaches evaluating talent from?

In short: everywhere.

The number of players who transfer to a new school every year continues to grow, creating a marketplace filled with mercenaries chasing the best opportunity. And yes, there is undeniable value in being able to outbid your opponents for players already on their rosters.

The NCAA is attempting to reduce—or eliminate—in-season roster poaching. At the same time, it continues restricting athlete mobility by denying players even some of the most basic transfer freedoms that ordinary students enjoy. Additionally, the transfer portal windows have been reduced in both number and duration.

Curiously, the transfer “portal” for coaches and administrators remains effectively wide open, with only limited in-season restrictions even being considered. The difference is striking: players face severe limitations and meaningful penalties, while the consequences for the adults making the decisions are comparatively minor.

As my old coworker Jon Falk would say, “Equal treatment for all, and special favors for just a few.”

But what are today’s leaders doing differently? How are they thinking differently, acting differently, or adapting to the obvious changes reshaping college athletics?

To their credit, most acknowledge that the landscape looks dramatically different than it did even five years ago.

But beyond retirement, many coaches continue reaching into the same old bag of tricks: coaching harder, demanding more effort, promoting from within, hiring patchwork solutions like inexperienced or unproven general managers, and hoping those incremental changes are enough.

How’s that working out?

Is anyone seeing a truly meaningful difference?

If only there were unconventional solutions that allowed programs to zig while everyone else zagged…

Maybe that’s why Illinois has partnered with a sophisticated behavioral profiling company to evaluate recruits—not just for talent, but also for personality fit, disposition, and other characteristics that influence how a newly assembled roster comes together.

Or consider Indiana volleyball, which has become a recruiting buzzsaw following a historically successful season. Imagine if training camp wasn’t treated as another item on a preseason checklist. Imagine if every person interacting with the team—from athletic trainers and academic support staff to sport administrators and strength coaches—delivered a unified, military-grade presentation that reinforced the program’s vision and coaching philosophy instead of relying on varying levels of public-speaking ability.

And what if the people who have supported those athletes the longest—their families and closest mentors—were intentionally integrated into the emotional fabric of the team’s journey?

The challenge is obvious.

How do you take a collection of strangers—or players who are mostly strangers—and get them to trust one another, believe in one another, sacrifice for one another, and ultimately perform together?

That’s easy to describe.

It’s incredibly difficult to accomplish.

The speed of change in college athletics demands more than simply recruiting better players. It requires researching, vetting, and implementing resources that improve the team—not just athletically, but individually and collectively.

If my last 350-plus articles haven’t made it obvious, I am deeply fascinated by human performance and how to optimize it.

As a former non-scholarship football player who eventually became an All-American after initially not even receiving a training camp invitation, I’m predisposed to believe that extraordinary outcomes are possible when people are placed in the right environment.

Sometimes they accomplish things beyond what they—or anyone else—thought possible.

One area I’ve continued exploring over the past several years is vision and visual performance.

It’s an area that’s often overlooked—pardon the pun—but it can be remarkably important and, in many cases, surprisingly predictive of athletic success.

A friend of mine, whom I've known for more than six years, has been a pioneer in this field. I've visited his facility on multiple occasions, most recently this past April with the editor of this publication, Tristan Hughes.

There are coaches who are embracing the changing recruiting and competitive landscape. While no one knows exactly what’s coming next, every program can invest in professional development, explore innovative ideas, and carefully evaluate the experts and vendors who might provide a genuine competitive advantage.

The programs that remain curious, adaptable, and willing to challenge conventional thinking will be the ones best positioned to win.

So don’t sit back.

Go claim the competitive advantage that’s waiting to be earned.

Or watch your opponents claim it first.

I have said all along that the federal government isn’t coming to the rescue of college athletics.

I have written about the progress that has been made in the effort to solicit and engage federal help, but perhaps it has never been said better than by an “anonymous lobbyist,” who remarked:

“For how many conversations we have had with the Cruz and Cantwell team, I would say we’ve made stunningly little progress.”

Well, brother (or sister), I would say not only did you get exactly what you paid for—you got exactly what you deserved.

The enormous and gluttonous waste that has been permitted over the past few years in this effort has to produce some tangible outcome. Millions upon millions of dollars from the NCAA and the Power 4 conferences can’t result in nothing to show for it. So instead, there is this Hail Mary attempt to pass the “Protect College Sports Act”—a proposal that sounds good in theory but can’t even gain consensus within college athletics, let alone among those outside of it.

The stalling and foot-dragging by the most powerful conferences gave way to a 35-day summer recess, which now gives way to preparations for the midterm elections. And nothing is more important than politicians lobbying for themselves to retain their cushy positions of self-enrichment.

Just top off the campaign coffers before spending it all to hopefully keep a seat in what many would argue is the most corrupt industry in the world: politics.

Like Kleenex is both a product and a brand, politics serves as multiple parts of speech. People can politic. There can be politics at play when someone loses out on something entirely unrelated to the government. Or there can be actual political events and outcomes.

Politics has become so ugly that it’s like two four-letter words smushed together: Po*it*cs.

Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin.

The pendulum swings so far in one direction that transgender women are competing in women’s sports. Then it swings so far the other direction that President Trump spends so much money—and appears to benefit himself and his family so substantially during his second term—that many people feel as though they were bamboozled.

Or, as Kanye West rapped on “Two Words” from one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time, The College Dropout: “Pimped up and hoed down.”

In poker, there’s a saying: if you can’t identify the fish (the weakest player) at the table within the first five minutes, it’s probably you.

In this college athletics hustle, a bunch of junior lightweights tried to play at the heavyweight table. This entire charade ended up exposing either how inept college athletics decision-makers are—or how unaware college athletics administrators were of the political game they were being hustled in.

Can we just pause to appreciate how ludicrous this is?

Spotify pays roughly $75 million to have its logo on the front of FC Barcelona’s jersey. That’s for one team in one sport. Meanwhile, FC Barcelona pays its players well over $200 million annually—more than 2.5 times the sponsorship amount.

Liverpool reportedly receives roughly $58 million from its front-of-shirt sponsor while paying around $170 million in player salaries.

How much should Notre Dame football be worth if a jersey sponsor is paying only $20 million across an entire athletic department?

Using professional sports as a rough comparison, probably at least $50 million.

Maybe that’s not a fair comparison for you.

Then consider the Los Angeles Lakers reportedly receiving about $30 million annually from Albert for a jersey patch, while paying approximately $210 million in player salaries.

Like politics, college athletics is full of distractions designed to keep you from paying attention to what is really happening.

Instead of focusing on whether athletes are actually receiving fair compensation, everyone debates loopholes, caps, collectives, and enforcement.

Meanwhile, schools are selling jersey patch sponsorships far too cheaply while simultaneously insisting they can only afford to pay athletes a fraction of what they’re actually worth.

“We really should close the loophole.”

“We need a firm cap.”

Really?

Are you truly that upset that donors and outside entities are helping fund your rosters?

Is that so devastating that you’re willing to disregard your own proposed political lifelines?

Don’t you think that if the schools represented by conference leadership were truly in dire straits, they would gladly accept a compromise and move forward toward a better future?

In case it isn’t clear, let me say it more plainly.

All of this political wrangling, House Settlement discussion, speculation, and endless debate amounts to little more than sleight of hand designed to distract everyone from one unavoidable reality:

Eventually, athletes are going to get paid what they deserve.

Your tire company doesn’t lose money simply because your mechanic earns more repairing your brakes.

So why should a football player earn less simply because an athletic director arbitrarily decides another sport deserves more funding?

It’s simply a reminder to athletes that, as comedian George Carlin famously put it:

“It’s a big club… and you ain’t in it.”

I don’t much care for some rules of the road.

I think driving with an open container of alcohol shouldn’t be illegal (though I very much agree that drunk driving should be). I don’t much care for parking meters or metered spaces, either. The anxiety of reloading a meter—or downloading a new app, entering whatever rental car I’m driving, and paying electronically—is a terrible user experience that cities and states seem to have no interest in improving.

But the one that really gets me is street sweeping at 2 a.m. on some random weekday, every single week.

I mean, is there really so much trash accumulating in neighborhood gutters that we need loud street sweepers driving through the middle of the night, potentially waking people up, just to collect the occasional piece of debris? Couldn’t someone simply walk the route and accomplish the same task without ticketing or towing unsuspecting—or simply inattentive—drivers?

We have unpainted curbs, white curbs, yellow curbs, red curbs, green curbs, and more. Could we not at least paint the curb with some sort of color or insignia to warn people that a hefty fine is coming their way if they fail to notice a 12-inch by 6-inch sign that’s partially obstructed, covered in stickers, or positioned half a block away?

But that would cost money.

It’s much easier to keep collecting fines and redirecting that revenue elsewhere. Shout out to Nick Shirley. Like Curt Cignetti says, you can Google him. He wins.

So how does this tie back to NIL?

I’m not entirely sure that it does, but let me give it a shot.

It is better to have street parking than not. It is better to have NIL than not. And you’d rather not be unknowingly hoodwinked by confusing rules or shady tactics—whether you’re parking your car or navigating the NIL marketplace.

Hopefully you’re starting to see the admittedly imperfect analogy.

The powers that be are once again attempting to reshape the future of NIL through the proposed Protect College Sports Act.

It’s beginning to feel less like the “Protect College Sports Act” and more like the “Protect the Special Interests of the Rich and Powerful Act.”

The latest amendments to the PCSA—which still appears highly unlikely to pass—are even more punitive and do very little to improve athletes’ earning opportunities. But desperate teams throw Hail Marys all the time. No one wants to concede defeat when there’s still a chance.

The two most notable revisions are:

1. Capped athlete earnings.

2. A prohibition on high school NIL earnings.

I have opposed athlete earning caps in every conceivable form.

We generally don’t cap what people can earn in America. If a city wants to pay a traffic officer $2 million, it can. If someone wants to pay a landscaper $5 million, have at it.

So why are we capping what athletes can earn, especially when the marketplace has demonstrated a willingness to compensate them far more generously?

Even the NFL salary cap isn’t arbitrary. It’s recalculated annually based on league revenues.

The part that really gets me is that the amount available for revenue sharing in one sport depends on how much an athletic department chooses to distribute across every other sport.

Duke may meaningfully fund three sports. LSU may fund six or more. What one school pays its basketball players is directly affected by what it decides to allocate to football, baseball, softball, volleyball, and everything else.

Why?

Professional sports would never tolerate that structure.

The New York Giants’ payroll doesn’t affect what the Knicks, Yankees, or Liberty can spend.

Yet there is now discussion that roughly 10% of athletic department revenue-sharing dollars should be earmarked for women’s sports.

Gee, thanks.

Awfully generous—particularly when many schools would likely prefer to direct even more money toward men’s sports, while many female athletes would simply prefer to maintain the level of equity they previously enjoyed and believed was protected under Title IX.

So why are all of these athletes being forced to compete for the same pool of athletic department dollars?

The system is broken in ways that most casual fans don’t fully appreciate.

The revised PCSA—the version that a relatively small number of people continue to push despite remaining unpopular and unlikely to pass—would also prohibit high school athletes from earning NIL compensation.

Ironically, I heard an attorney today discuss securing an $800,000 NIL offer for a high school athlete.

My reaction?

Good for that kid.

To those trying to eliminate high school NIL opportunities, I say: shame on you.

You’re restricting the earning potential of athletes who may never again have an opportunity to earn anything close to the money they’re projected to make today.

There are countless safeguards that could be implemented to protect high school athletes—and even college athletes—from mismanaging or prematurely accessing significant compensation.

Those ideas rarely receive attention.

Instead of discussing constructive safeguards, policymakers continue proposing restrictions that simply reduce earning opportunities.

Ultimately, these restrictions exist largely to save schools money.

Schools are collectively spending billions of dollars on roster construction across the Power 4 through revenue sharing and NIL compensation.

And those numbers aren’t getting smaller.

Do we really believe that if Congress capped roster spending at $51 million—as the current proposal suggests—schools would simply comply?

The incentives to win, generate revenue, attract fans, and remain nationally competitive are far too great.

Donors, alumni, boosters, and ultra-wealthy supporters will continue finding ways to fund elite rosters.

History has shown that whenever demand substantially exceeds an artificial cap, markets rarely disappear.

They simply find another route.

These suggestions are largely common sense, but perhaps you’ve also discovered that common sense is neither common nor commonplace.

Much is made of why these solutions can’t be implemented (and I’ll do my best to acknowledge some of the most common objections), but with enough support and momentum, almost anything is possible.

Many of my suggestions borrow from professional sports because that’s where the most progressive player advocacy has taken place. College athletes are significantly more disadvantaged and considerably less experienced, meaning the absence of structure is even more damaging than it would be in professional sports.

Let’s take a closer look.

Standardized Revenue-Sharing Contracts

The inefficiency and waste for both athletes and schools are exorbitant.

Far too much money is spent by athletes on agents and attorneys, while schools spend heavily on general counsel and outside legal firms. Both sides are trying to solve the same problem, yet neither benefits from an exhaustive, back-and-forth legal review process.

Furthermore, programs often use an athlete’s public commitment as leverage during negotiations because very few athletes are willing to publicly commit and then walk away if the contract comes back with unfavorable terms.

The NIL era also got off on the wrong foot from the very beginning.

While negotiating a deal for a Power Four player, one collective operator assured me they would accept any redlines. That sounded encouraging, but it didn’t stop the base agreement from being extraordinarily one-sided. Meanwhile, another Power Four collective—using its own legal resources—produced an entirely different contract with different language and provisions that nevertheless reached the same destination: maximizing protections for the collective and the university at the athlete’s expense.

Lastly, I have it on good authority that one Power Four conference is fully aware of the intentionally lopsided nature of its contracts and has instructed member schools not to deviate from the conference’s preferred format, structure, or terms.

That isn’t negotiation. It’s standardization for the benefit of one party.

Beginning a relationship with that level of distrust creates a dynamic that is difficult, if not impossible, to repair.

Distributions

Most revenue-sharing money ultimately comes from television contracts, ticket sales, concessions, sponsorships, and other revenue streams that are frequently administered by third-party entities.

I’ve never understood why universities insisted on distributing the money themselves, thereby inviting greater Title IX scrutiny, student visa complications, CSC oversight, and countless other regulatory headaches.

Why not allow the entities through which the revenue is generated to distribute those funds directly?

At this point, those organizations may now be considered sufficiently connected to the universities that such a solution would face legal resistance. Still, I’ve seen enough far more convoluted ideas become law—with enthusiastic political support—that this seems considerably more logical than many proposals that continue to gain traction.

Proper Sport-by-Sport Revenue Sharing and a Salary Cap

There needs to be a salary cap.

More importantly, there needs to be a legitimate effort to enforce it.

I’m in favor of athletes earning as much money as possible. But the NFL demonstrates that salary caps don’t prevent compensation from growing. The league simply adjusts the cap annually based on revenue growth.

The three major American professional leagues illustrate the spectrum well. Major League Baseball has no salary cap. The NBA has a soft cap with luxury-tax penalties. The NFL operates under a hard cap.

College athletics should adopt something similar.

I don’t believe there needs to be a mandatory spending floor. Everyone should know what they’re competing against regarding revenue sharing and NIL spending, but schools should retain flexibility.

In fact, there may be strategic value in spending less one year to spend more the next. If someone wants to operate like the Oakland Athletics, they should be allowed to do so.

Ironically, the NCAA spent decades promoting competitive balance across conferences and programs. Today, there appears to be little concern for parity regarding how money is distributed or how athletes within each sport are compensated.

Even if perfect parity is unattainable, a sincere attempt at creating reasonable competitive boundaries would be an enormous improvement.

Annual CSC Audits

The CSC should require documentation for every dollar paid to every athlete.

At a minimum, that would force schools to maintain accurate records while giving the CSC meaningful enforcement authority when unreported payments or undisclosed agreements inevitably surface.

Enforcement has to possess legitimacy.

To date, it has been woefully inconsistent and largely unimpressive.

If nobody fears the consequences, why would anyone alter the behavior that creates those consequences?

Agent Certification

When a parent or agent negotiates a free academic scholarship for an athlete’s sibling based solely on that athlete’s market value, it’s one of the ugliest practices in the NIL industry.

In effect, the athlete’s compensation has simply been redirected. If a scholarship worth roughly $50,000 is awarded to a sibling so the family avoids paying tuition, that’s still compensation generated by the athlete’s value.

It’s manipulation.

Any certified agent engaging in that behavior should face suspension or lose their certification.

Even worse, the sibling may be pressured into attending a school they never wanted to attend, despite possibly qualifying for scholarships or financial aid elsewhere.

It’s bad business for everyone involved.

There should be a meaningful agent certification process.

Perhaps commissions should be capped at a reasonable percentage. Better yet, establish approved fee-for-service attorneys who can negotiate contracts, conduct legal reviews, or handle litigation without creating incentives to maximize commissions.

For massive contracts, athletes may still choose traditional representation. But for many others, there are better alternatives.

Jaylen Brown famously negotiated his own NBA contract while utilizing complimentary resources available through the NBPA. Their players association has existed for more than 70 years—longer than the unions representing football, baseball, or hockey players.

There are proven models worth adapting.

Unfortunately, meaningful reform is unlikely because too few influential people stand to benefit from changing the current system.

Punishments

Finally, punishments need to be standardized.

For decades, the NCAA has mishandled investigations while issuing penalties that often appear arbitrary and inconsistent.

Professional sports generally move much more decisively. Teams violating league rules are punished quickly, and players who violate conduct policies face swift discipline.

The fact that the NCAA even entertained allowing Brendan Sorsby to continue playing after he allegedly bet on his own games illustrates just how ineffective and uncertain its disciplinary process has become.

College athletics needs higher standards for athlete accountability, clearer spending limits, and objective consequences when those limits are violated.

Many people complain about the lawlessness of today’s NIL environment.

Far fewer seem interested in implementing the reforms necessary to improve it.

Dalton Kincaid is probably the highest-profile football alumnus in the University of San Diego’s history.

He was selected in the first round of the NFL Draft by the Buffalo Bills, but that path almost certainly doesn’t happen if he never transfers to Utah after spending two seasons at USD.

Leaving wasn’t an easy decision.

Dalton was, and still is, incredibly loyal to his teammates. But when the Pioneer Football League canceled its 2020 fall season because of COVID-19, he found himself paying private-school tuition for a football experience that suddenly looked far less appealing. The opportunity to transfer to a Power Five program on a full scholarship became impossible to ignore.

The rest is history.

After two standout seasons at Utah, Dalton became a first-round draft pick three years ago and has quickly established himself as one of the Bills’ cornerstone players.

We’ve stayed in touch periodically over the years, though I wouldn’t describe us as close friends. Last season he signed a few footballs for me, partly because I went through a mutual acquaintance who worked for the Bills at the time.

So when I donated a Buffalo Bills experience to the silent auction at a recent USD golf tournament, I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to fulfill every part of it.

I knew I could get a signed Dalton Kincaid football.

I knew I could secure two tickets to a Bills game.

But pregame field access? A postgame meet-and-greet with players and coaches? Those weren’t guaranteed.

I reached out to Dalton and asked if he’d be willing to help.

He immediately said yes.

Bingo.

Not only was the package now complete, but it was being personally supported by one of the biggest names to ever come through the USD football program. That’s the kind of thing donors remember.

A few months earlier, I had commissioned an artist to paint our 2005 Pioneer Football League championship team.

Between the artwork itself and the cost of reproducing, framing, shipping, and delivering prints, the project cost roughly $7,000.

When it came time to auction the original painting, however, it was placed in an online silent auction.

That proved to be a mistake.

Technology is wonderful, but live fundraising is driven by emotion, competition, and energy. Those things are difficult to recreate through someone’s phone.

The painting ultimately sold for just $3,000.

Ironically, Coach Jim Harbaugh and another wealthy donor had both expressed interest in bidding. They simply never figured out how to participate in the online auction.

That’s a painful lesson.

So when I walked into the reception after this year’s golf tournament and saw the Dalton Kincaid experience sitting in the same online silent auction at just $1,750, alarm bells went off.

I wasn’t about to watch lightning strike twice.

I asked the tournament leadership if I could pull the package from the silent auction and auction it live instead.

After assuring everyone that I could at least move the bidding from $1,750 to $2,500, they gave me the green light.

The room included football fans.

Bills fans.

USD football alumni.

Major donors.

People capable of writing very large checks.

The opportunity was sitting right in front of us.

I opened the bidding at $2,000.

Immediately, several paddles went up.

Then, jokingly, Dalton bid on his own package.

The room laughed.

He came up on stage with me as the bidding climbed.

$3,000.

$4,000.

At that point, Dalton sweetened the deal by adding a signed game-worn jersey.

The room responded instantly.

$5,000.

$6,000.

$6,500.

Finally, after one bidder reached $6,500, the two finalists looked at Dalton and asked a simple question:

“Would you be willing to do this twice?”

Dalton smiled and said yes.

Instead of one winning bidder at $6,500, we suddenly had two winning bidders paying $6,500 each.

In roughly three minutes, the package generated $13,000.

The experience left me thinking about a bigger question.

Why aren’t athletic departments more intentional about leveraging their most successful alumni?

How do you have someone like Dalton Kincaid willing to help, yet not have multiple fundraising opportunities built around him throughout the year?

Why did Dalton spend the tournament golfing with me instead of the biggest football donor in attendance?

Why wasn’t every major Bills fan in the room aware that one of the NFL’s rising stars was going to be there?

These opportunities don’t happen by accident.

Relationships have to be cultivated.

Experiences have to be designed.

Donors have to be connected with people and moments they can’t access anywhere else.

Too often, athletic departments think they’re selling golf tournaments, dinners, or memorabilia.

They’re not.

They’re selling access.

They’re selling stories.

They’re selling relationships.

And those things are often worth far more than the item itself.

Overall, the event was very well executed, and the people involved deserve credit.

But there was still money left on the table.

That’s not a criticism so much as an observation.

Fundraising isn’t just about asking for money.

It’s about creating moments that make people excited to give.

In the NIL era—where every additional dollar can help retain players, attract talent, and improve competitive success—those moments matter more than ever.

Sometimes the difference between a $1,750 silent auction item and a $13,000 fundraiser isn’t the prize.

It’s simply putting the right person in front of the room for three minutes.

I’ve used the Abraham Lincoln question, “How many legs does a dog have if you consider its tail to be a leg?” too many times, so I’ll let you look up the answer if you haven’t read it in this newsletter before. (Hint: The tail isn’t a leg, no matter what you call it. I’m sorry—I can’t help myself.)

The point remains that just because you say you’re doing something doesn’t necessarily—or even actually—make it true.

Imagine that once I received my driver’s license, my parents forbade me from driving a vehicle out of a spirit of “protection.” While that could be true in some minor way, the defining element of restricting me from driving would be oppression, restriction, and limitation. Protection? Not so much.

So the Protect College Sports Act should be viewed through a similar lens.

Sen. Cantwell and Sen. Cruz aren’t trying to save college sports, protect college sports, or whatever anyone wants to call it. They’re trying to curry favor with voters, attract lobbying dollars, and undoubtedly win headlines for trying to do the thing everyone knows should be done, but can’t actually do.

We should really stop the conflict in the Middle East. And we should release the unredacted Epstein files. And we should cure cancer.

Let’s take up more causes that are easy to get behind while being difficult and/or expensive to accomplish. No new taxes! Save the whales! Free healthcare for all!

Let’s do the easy and popular advocacy.

Of course, if we were politicians, we wouldn’t be graded on performance, success, attendance, or anything closely related to quality.

I am of the opinion that, like most of these political endeavors involving college athletics, the sizzle is loud, but the steak is small.

There are so many competing interests, egos, and agendas that getting anything of substance done is going to be difficult. If something does get done, it will undoubtedly be punitive toward the athletes and will move the Big Ten and SEC toward a new reality that looks less like the present and more like one in which they control the purse strings of future postseason college competition, namely college football.

The reason college athletics is turning to politicians is mostly because there are no other options.

Even then, whatever they accomplish through the legislative or executive branch can still be undone or wiped out by the judicial branch.

As a reminder, there is an agreed-upon settlement with terms in place that was (kind of) agreed to by the involved parties in the college athletics ecosystem. Of course, no one ever truly represents the athletes, and when an athlete does get something that resembles representation (which is really in name alone—Grant House of House settlement infamy), he receives threats and disparaging remarks.

I mean, of course no athlete would agree to capped revenue sharing that falls massively short of actual revenues.

Twenty-two percent of the average Power Four school’s revenue? So athletes at Texas, whose athletic department generated more than $300 million a year ago, have to split roughly $20.5 million because that’s what they agreed to, right? The athletes wanted that? If so, which ones?

Well, now there are all sorts of exceptions, provisions, and workarounds being sought by the very same people who tried to limit and restrict earnings in the first place.

In a simple phrase, they played themselves.

College athletics—or more specifically, the NCAA and its exorbitantly expensive legal team—did as much as they could to save schools money and stack the deck in favor of the schools.

But then capitalism happened.

The market began trying to pay talent what it believed they were worth, not merely what the NCAA wanted schools to pay.

And now the Protect College Sports Act is attempting to reduce transferring while continuing to impose specific rules that broadly discriminate against athletes by giving them even less latitude.

A deal they also won’t agree to.

The best way to “protect college sports” is to mandate the continued existence of programs across the country.

Ultimately, the money for swimming, rowing, or field hockey is going to have to come from the football and basketball coffers.

That’s how college sports were “protected” previously.

Except that “protection” was really just grifting off the work and value creation of some of the most elite athletes on the planet.

Value extraction. Mobility restrictions. Cost suppression. Structural rigidity.

Those terms more accurately describe what the Protect College Sports Act is attempting to accomplish.

And while it’s unlikely to pass, I look forward to the mafia coming for its “protection fee” if things ultimately shake out in the NCAA’s favor.

Sometimes it pays to be protected, and sometimes protection requires payment.

Meanwhile, the primary value creators in college athletics remain at the bottom of the food chain.

But boy are they “protected.”

Protected with punitive, one-sided NIL contracts.

Protected with one-time, 10-day transfer windows (likely coming).

Protected with limited optionality.

Protected with constantly changing eligibility rules.

Protected with $10,000-plus legal bills for nearly every eligibility dispute.

Not “pro”tection.

“Amateur”tection.

They made their beds, but seemingly no one wants to sleep in them.

In the song “Anti-Hero,” Taylor Swift acknowledges that she’s the problem. Well, not literally, but after singing about all of her failed relationships, perhaps she’s becoming self-aware—though probably not. And marrying Travis Kelce, with his reported 22 Wonderlic score, suggests she found her intellectual equivalent. According to a deep dive by @cremieuxrecueil on X, a 22 is “exceedingly average.” Behind every great man is a great woman. And behind an average man? Well, you can decide that for yourself.

How we all ended up here was the byproduct of neglecting the athlete while taking for granted the obvious reality that the entire system depends on elite athletic talent.

Predating my involvement, both the USFL and AFL were startup leagues that challenged for the title of America’s premier football league. Of course, the NFL has retained that distinction for the better part of the last 50-plus years.

The Super Bowl was once a novel and creative concept. It wasn’t nearly the spectacle in 1965 that it is today. There were cheerleaders, men in jetpacks, and all sorts of gimmicky attractions intended to dazzle the crowd in ways that were both different from and surprisingly similar to today’s Super Bowl theatrics. Similar because the spectacle has always mattered. Different because today’s production is infinitely more coordinated, media coverage is far more sensationalized, and nearly every moment is engineered for maximum attention.

The NCAA is no longer operating from a position of competitive advantage. Its value proposition continues to erode, particularly as ongoing legal challenges produce far more losses than victories.

But how did we end up here?

Was it by undervaluing the athlete?

Was it by undervaluing the donor?

Was it through shortsighted planning?

Was it through a lack of enterprising leadership?

In short, yes.

I say “undervaluing the athlete” not to assign an opinion about how much athletes should be paid. For the record, from the very beginning of NIL, I predicted it would eventually become more profitable for many elite athletes to remain in college than to turn professional. That much seemed obvious.

The undervaluation is evident elsewhere.

It’s the lack of tax guidance.

The lack of meaningful regulation of agents.

The lack of protection for future earnings.

Most importantly, it’s the one-sided contracts that athletes are often pressured into signing.

Quite a way to treat the very talent that makes the entire enterprise possible.

The counterargument—that athletes are not undervalued—is, at least from a capitalist perspective, incomplete. No matter how immature an athlete may be, how often they hold out, violate team rules, receive a “free education,” or any of the other arguments frequently made against them, it ultimately comes down to simple economics.

Without athletes, there is no legitimate revenue stream for coaches, administrators, conferences, or everyone else who earns a living from college sports.

And if the incentives became great enough, a rival league could quickly challenge the existing model.

Imagine that instead of cheering for the LSU Tigers, you’re cheering for the Baton Rouge Bayou Bengals. Instead of the Florida Gators, you’re cheering for the Gainesville Swamp Swimmers.

Who cares what the team is called?

The colors are similar.

The coaching staffs are equally talented.

But the athletes make twice as much money.

The SEC and Big Ten become the foundation of a breakaway league. Venture capital funds it. Politics and 501(c)(3) complications disappear, and what remains is primarily football and basketball—the sports people watch most anyway.

HOW MUCH MONEY WOULD FOOTBALL AND BASKETBALL ATHLETES MAKE IF THEIR EARNINGS NO LONGER HAD TO SUBSIDIZE OTHER SPORTS, WHILE THE OPERATING COSTS OF THOSE SPORTS WERE REMOVED FROM THE EQUATION?

Just understand that if college athletics fundamentally changes in the future, it will likely be because sophisticated venture capital firms recognized that the economics made sense. Restructuring the system may ultimately prove far easier than attempting to satisfy every competing interest currently pulling college athletics in different directions.

The other major piece of this equation is the persistent undervaluation of the donor.

Like the airline industry, the taxicab industry, or even the DMV, donor relations operate under an outdated model that is overdue for meaningful change.

Too often, the objective is simply to raise as much money as possible while accepting as little accountability as possible.

How can development officers maximize donations while preserving the greatest amount of discretion over how those funds are spent?

Make donors feel appreciated.

Keep the athletic department operating comfortably.

Avoid accountability whenever possible.

Meanwhile, the requests for more money never stop, while tangible value returned to donors often remains minimal.

Yes, there are naming opportunities.

But what about measurable standards for coaches?

What about accountability for wins and losses?

What about objective measures of success instead of asking donors to rely on hope, faith, and blind trust?

Simple in theory.

Far more difficult in practice.

Treat donors better.

Treat athletes better.

Don’t spend your time trying to justify why those ideas make sense.

Build systems that actually do it—and remain committed to serving both the athletes and the people who make college athletics financially possible.

Yesterday, I spoke with a prominent basketball agent who had just returned from the Las Vegas Summer League. He said something that seems obvious, but perhaps isn’t always apparent: donors don’t want to throw good money after bad.

There is perhaps no place where good money is thrown after bad quite like Las Vegas. You lose a big bet on a team (conceivably a good bet), then double down on a long shot to win your money back (bad money), only to lose even more.

Or you enter a poker hand with pocket aces and confidently bet them (good money), only to see three cards of the same suit come out, none of which match your hand. You keep betting anyway (bad money), only to lose to an obvious flush.

In college athletics, there was a rush to fund the ever-rising costs of NIL and athlete compensation. That was, at least theoretically, good money. I take plenty of exception, however, with the industry’s failure to take a sufficiently long view of the downstream effects of the NIL runway.

Everyone, it seems, underestimates NIL’s annual growth (at least Opendorse has consistently done so in its yearly projections). And the vision for funding NIL remains exceptionally shortsighted. The communication to donors about what they are funding, why it’s important, how players affect the future of the program, and how their support fits into a broader vision for the athletic department is perhaps even worse than the strategy behind the spending itself.

So why would donors throw good money after bad in NIL?

T. Boone Pickens might have thrown good money after bad. Cody Campbell might potentially do it. But do you think Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban would do that for Indiana?

The shrewd investor has turned down eager entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas and proven, viable products. Do we really think he’d enthusiastically support haphazard spending and poorly planned athlete compensation? Not likely.

So how do you avoid throwing good money after bad? Better yet, how do you ensure that future dollars are smarter than those already spent?

It seems simple to me, though perhaps not easy.

Collectives originally operated as independent organizations at the outset of the NIL era. They offered donors tax-deductible giving opportunities, but that has largely disappeared after the IRS placed school-specific collectives under heightened scrutiny. Schools have attempted to be clever in structuring future-conscious solutions, but ultimately, anything closely tied to the university could be deemed an associated entity, significantly limiting a school’s ability to compensate athletes through alternative mechanisms.

Moreover, donors feel like fools when they contribute to a losing cause—or when their money supports players who are kicked off the team because they missed the team bus for a road game (sadly, a reality at my alma mater last year).

Instead of thinking only about how much money is needed to acquire players, perhaps we should think more about impact, culture, relationships, and value when asking donors to contribute.

Donors rarely throw good money after bad because no one enjoys being made to look like a fool. Likewise, donors won’t give as generously if they perceive they’re supporting a losing endeavor with few meaningful or justifiable outcomes.

Donors don’t particularly like giving to “NIL.” That’s because NIL didn’t exist when most of them attended college, and it has been portrayed—fairly or unfairly—as the villain in the fictional movie, What’s Wrong With College Sports?

Wouldn’t donors rather support continuing education? Athlete retention? Community engagement? Alumni outreach?

Long story short, since NIL isn’t even what athletic departments are most often paying athletes for anymore, stop beating the NIL drum. Most other drums produce a much sweeter sound.

How is Florida State going to win?

The school has multiple collectives, yet it hasn’t consistently been on the right side of winning lately. In the Learfield Directors’ Cup—the most widely used measure of overall athletic department success—Florida State finished 41st, while Yale finished 45th. Had Yale sponsored FBS football scholarships, it likely would have gained enough points to leapfrog Florida State.

The point is this: with underwhelming results like that, who wants to lead Florida State’s NIL and revenue-sharing fundraising efforts?

How are already average gift officers and development officers supposed to convince donors to invest in future roster funding against a backdrop of continued underperformance?

Obviously, schools can’t simply abandon the effort, and solving these problems will require creativity. But roster funding has become one of the defining challenges in college athletics—especially for programs that have yet to achieve sustained success in the NIL era.

Those who fail to approach it thoughtfully will increasingly be left behind in the race toward annual athletic department player payrolls approaching $100 million.