College sports has undergone dramatic change in the six years since Chris Hill stepped down as Utah’s athletic director, to the point that the industry is unrecognizable.
“There is an entirely different set of challenges,” he said recently. “It’s a totally different world.”
That’s true of the past seven weeks alone.
Since Michigan won the national championship:
— Two high-profile coaches, Alabama’s Nick Saban and Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, have left the sport.
— The Department of Justice has taken aim at the NCAA.
— The College Football Playoff has approved a new format and is discussing additional expansion.
— Boosters have won the right to buy recruits.
— Players on an Ivy League basketball team have been declared employees.
“The NCAA needs to admit that everything they’ve done is wrong and stop trying to fix it all with Band-Aids,” said Hill, who retired in March 2018 after three decades in charge of the Utes.
“Start with the things that have to happen. We know players are going to get paid. We know they have to go to school. We know football is where the real money is. We know the transfer portal is a challenge but kids have to have freedom.
“They have to find solutions.”
Keeping track of all the recent changes isn’t easy. Here’s a primer on the key off-the-field developments (in rough chronological order) …
Uncle Sam gets involved
To the list of plaintiffs against the NCAA, add the Department of Justice.
Just 10 days after the national championship, the DOJ joined a lawsuit against the NCAA’s policy on second-time transfers.
First-time transfers were granted immediate eligibility in the spring of 2021, but the NCAA did not offer the same treatment for undergraduates switching schools a second time — until recently.
Prior to Christmas, a West Virginia judge issued an injunction stating the NCAA could not force second-time transfers to sit out a full season.
Weeks later, the DOJ joined the suit — and will eventually make its case in court.
Until then, the injunction stands and players are immediately eligible following their second transfer.
Big Two team up
Frustrated by the NCAA’s inability to succeed in court or produce meaningful change to a broken model, the heavyweight conferences are stepping into the void and consolidating their authority.
In early February, the SEC and Big Ten announced the formation of a joint advisory group of university presidents and athletic directors that will consider “the significant challenges facing college athletics.”
The partnership will undoubtedly consider everything from revenue-sharing deals with players to policies governing the transfer portal and name, image and likeness to whether the sport must be separated from the rest of college athletics.
In other words, they plan to find solutions — solutions that suit their purposes specifically — and offer other FBS leagues the opportunity to join the journey.
Those who decline will be left behind.
“They know what they want,” Hill said, “And everyone else has to react.”
NLRB involvement
The National Labor Relations Board has taken aim at the NCAA on both coasts. While a complaint against USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA plays out in Los Angeles, a regional office in New England ruled in early February that Dartmouth’s men’s basketball players are employees of the school.
An upcoming election — it hasn’t been scheduled — will determine if the Green Wave players are entitled to form the NCAA’s first labor union.
“It’s the first step to potential employee status for college athletes,” Tulane law professor Gabe Feldman told ESPN.
The USC case might be more significant. To this point, the NLRB’s jurisdiction is limited to private schools. But if the Pac-12 and NCAA are determined to be joint employers of USC athletes, then athletes across the NCAA (both private and public universities) could become employees.
Unleashing name, image and likeness
Last week, a federal judge in Tennessee became the latest contributor to the dismantling of the NCAA. Clifton Corker issued a preliminary injunction that allows third parties (i.e., NIL collectives funded by boosters) to offer financial inducements to recruits in exchange for them attending a particular school.
“The NCAA’s prohibition likely violates federal antitrust law and harms student-athletes,” Corker wrote.
With that, the bedrock of NCAA amateurism for a century was declared illegal. And yes, it applies to players across the country — those in the transfer portal and high school recruits.
Obviously, inducements have been integral to the recruiting process for eons. Corker’s ruling means all the arrangements previously made in the shadows can unfold in broad daylight.
CFP changes, parts 1 and (maybe) 2
Last week, the College Football Playoff’s board of managers approved the so-called 5/7 format for the 12-team event. In the 2024-25 seasons, there will be five automatic qualifiers and seven at-large teams.
(Originally, the CFP planned to have six and six, but the demise of the Pac-12 changed the calculation by eliminating a major conference.)
The new format carves an automatic bid for the highest-ranked team from the Group of Five, while Washington State and Oregon State — the lone remaining members of the Pac-12 — must qualify as at-large teams.
But that wasn’t the only development impacting the postseason. The conference commissioners on the CFP’s management committee began discussing the format for the 2026 season, which marks a new contract cycle.
The SEC and Big Ten, which possess so many of the sport’s bluebloods, are interested in creating a 14-team event in which only the top two seeds would have byes in the opening round.
What’s more, the two conferences want a bundle of automatic bids for themselves, thus limiting access to the playoff for everyone else.
A decision on the future format of the CFP could come in the next month or two.
Summer signings? Oh, my
The NCAA is considering a massive change to the football recruiting calendar. Officials are meeting this week, according to ESPN, to discuss what’s called the “three-period model” for signing National Letters of Intent.
Prospects could sign with schools in late June, late November (after the regular season) or early February.
The goal is to eliminate the current early signing window that falls just before Christmas because it overlaps with the transfer portal and bowl games — and, starting next season, will conflict with the opening round of the expanded playoff.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is among those who believe the recruiting calendar needs a makeover.
“Putting signing day in the middle of December with playoff games no longer works,” he told Yahoo.
And those are just the most immediate developments across the college football landscape.
There are several ongoing court cases that could inflict further damage on the NCAA model, plus Florida State’s legal challenge to the ACC’s grant-of-rights contract and early-stage discussions about expanding March Madness.
The past seven weeks have been packed with enough news to last seven months. And there is no end in sight.
“They should say, ‘Let’s look at the whole package. What are the outcomes that are legal?'” Hill said.
“They can’t take one little thing and try to fix it. They have to make major changes. They need to pay the players, and everything else will come from that.”
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