Urban Meyer: The NCAA is a ‘toothless organization’

There have been a large number of complaints about the role of the NCAA recently in helping police NIL-related activities, but the truth of the matter is the governing body in the sport hasn’t been all that effective in several areas as of late.

FOX Sports analyst Urban Meyer, a former high-level Division I head coach, spoke out about the current state of the NCAA in a recent episode of The Triple Option podcast.

“You know what the NCAA has become?” Meyer said. “A toothless organization. I’m going to throw a couple numbers at you. A decade ago they averaged $10 million a year in legal fees. Now it’s $234 million over the last four years. In 2023, $61 million in legal fees. And they’re spending legal fees but they’re losing. They’re losing the litigation.”

The result has been an organization that is reeling to recover any and all sense of balance. It hasn’t been easy.

That’s such a stark change from what Meyer is used to seeing that it’s jarring. When he was a coach, the NCAA ruled with an iron fist.

“So the NCAA when I first started coaching was by far, they were in charge,” Meyer explained. “It was the NCAA. Everybody was horrified of the NCAA. Everybody. Des Bryant, I believe he was at Oklahoma State, he lied to the NCAA. He never could play again. I mean coaches, you had to sign stuff and you could not, I mean you had a rulebook like that and you memorized it. We had to take a test every year, you memorized the book.”

If you didn’t memorize the rulebook, you were in danger of running afoul of it. And nobody wanted to do that, knowing the potentially steep consequences.

These days, it simply doesn’t exist like that. The NCAA is on the back foot, defending itself from one lawsuit after another as the paradigm in sport shifts.

“As of right now on Oct. 1, there are basically no rules in the sport of college football in recruiting, tampering and what you can give players,” Meyer said. “No rules.”

The reasoning is straightforward. Those court cases have sucked the life out of the organization.

And a lot of the liquidity.

“And they lost,” Meyer said. “Those aren’t winning legal fees, they lost.”