Let me try and understand this, because I’m a little fuzzy after decades of deceit and distrust.
It now appears that college football is headed toward the implementation of a commissioner, a czar of sorts who will control enforcement and whose rulings will be final.
Unless, of course, you want to head to arbitration.
A commissioner, or CEO or whatever you want to call him or her, whose office will control oversight of all things NIL and declare what deals are within fair-market range.
In a free-market economy.
A commissioner who, despite this brand new power and influence given to them by university presidents (see: fox, meet henhouse), will have zero – and when I say zero, I mean zero – control over player movement.
The most pressing problem for which there is no legal answer, short of players becoming employees and collectively bargaining.
A commissioner who will be paid a boatload of cash to do, in theory, what current NCAA president Charlie Baker should’ve been doing all along — if given the opportunity.
Apparently, a man who ran one of the largest state budgets as governor of Massachusetts needs another multimillion dollar salaried colleague to pull college sports from its self-induced mess.
I have no doubt this, too, will be a resounding success. That’s sarcasm, everyone.
Want to blame someone for this never-ending, unwieldy morass? Blame the eggheads at the very top of the food chain.
The same university presidents that have no business sticking their noses in the business of college sports, but do so, anyway. Why, you ask?
Because the last thing they need is for athletics to encroach onto academics, for athletics to need financial support from the university. Most university presidents are hired for fundraising first, and everything else second.
That everything else doesn’t include paying for athletics.
So don’t blame SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, or Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti for the ills of college football. They’re doing what their respective university presidents – their bosses who sign their paychecks – tell them to do.
The same university presidents who have lost in nearly every single legal case brought against their association of schools.
What’s constantly lost in these inevitable screwups is the NCAA is nothing more than a conglomeration of 300-plus university presidents, each with egos the size of Desmond Watson. These presidents vote each other and their subordinate athletic directors into various committees and subcommittees that eventually decide Boise State will be placed on probation for buying a recruit a bagel.
Or that North Carolina won’t be placed on probation because years of fake classes to keep athletes eligible were – and I still can’t believe I’m writing this – also available to the rest of the student population.
So excuse me if I’m a little hesitant about this latest iteration of change from a group of men and women at the highest level of higher education. The same group that not long ago swore up and down there would never be “second semester” football.
Now the College Football Playoff ends in late January, well into the second semester. And competes for television ratings against the big, bad NFL ― a losing proposition by anyone or anything that has tried.
The same university presidents who not long ago swore up and down that pay for play would never work for any number of reasons, the least of which was Title IX. There’s no way to pay men to play, and then pay women equally, they declared.
Women, they said, deserve the same opportunities as men.
Now we’re days away from a U.S. District judge potentially signing off on the House case – another devastating loss for the sharp legal minds at the NCAA – and more than $2 billion in back pay for former student athletes, complete with a future revenue sharing plan that will give nearly 90 percent of a salary pool of $20 million-23 million to football and men’s basketball.
But buddy, you better believe they have it figured out this time. This new commissioner or CEO or czar will solve all problems.
There’s no chance he’ll strike down an NIL deal because it isn’t fair, and the NCAA – or whatever they’ll eventually call the elite football-playing schools – won’t be sued and lose again.
Look, I have no law degree, but I did pay attention in college during ECON 101. The market dictates what services are worth.
Not some doofus plopped into a position by 300-plus university presidents, whose sole purpose is to protect their own asses at all cost.
Yeah, this new CEO will be a resounding success.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
