Biggest issue in college sports? Good luck choosing just one

There are no serious issues facing college sports these days, well, except for a potential employee or revenue-sharing model, a potential $4.2 billion damages bill for the NCAA, a reckoning over athlete rights and Title IX, ballooning coaching salaries and severance packages, athlete well-being in the age of cross-country conference travel, a patchwork of state NIL laws, escalating sports wagering issues and the NCAA’s contention that it can’t govern without being sued.

Other than those minor peccadillos, it’s all kumbaya, right?

Given the number of existential issues at play, how there is no certainty that the NCAA’s potentially ground-breaking reform proposal will ever be implemented, and how the enterprise’s upper crust is printing money by the billions – it’s impossible to overstate the level of tumult that exists throughout college athletics. It is an industry on tilt.

In recent weeks, On3’s reporting team conducted exclusive interviews with more than 50 leading college sports voices – commissioners, athletic directors, coaches, collectives, athletes, NIL and legal experts and others – to gather insights on the industry’s most consequential issues. As part of On3’s State of College Sports project, we are publishing their responses, along with accompanying stories. 

Asked to pinpoint their biggest issue in college athletics, the wide array of answers underscores the extent of disorder that exists nationwide.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: What’s biggest issue with college sports?

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my association with college sports,” said Tom McMillen, the former U.S. Congressman and CEO of LEAD1 Association, who has been involved in college sports since the early 1970s.

Line between college, pro sports ‘paramount’ issue

Most common responses centered on the future of the NCAA, whatever revenue-sharing or employment model is likely on the horizon, and trepidation over potentially $4.2 billion the NCAA and power leagues may owe thousands of athletes in damages because of the House antitrust lawsuit.

In addition to concerns about the NIL space and potential far-reaching implications of an employment model – all of which NCAA President Charlie Baker discussed earlier with On3 – the former Massachusetts governor pinpointed sports wagering concerns as a central issue.

Sports betting is now legal in some 40 states. About $150 billion is expected to be wagered on sports in North America this year alone. Sports gambling insiders tell On3 that the chances of a major sports wagering campus scandal in the next few years are virtually 100%.

Baker told On3: “I’m also concerned about student-athletes accidentally becoming sources for gamblers by talking about what happened at practice that day, or worse even, being asked by their friends to miss a shot here or there in a way that doesn’t change the outcome of a game but can help their friend win a few bucks in prop bets.”

From a 30,000-foot view, the increasing professionalization of college sports is also raising concerns among some.

Escalating broadcast rights revenue is driving moves to create coast-to-coast super conferences and is poised to make the expanded College Football Playoff one of the most lucrative properties in sports history. But many asked: Do the dollar-driven decisions come with a cost? Does it come at the expense of the collegiate experience that the vast majority of college athletes thought they were signing up for?

“The blurred line between collegiate and professional sports is the paramount issue,” Sean Hughes, co-founder and CEO of Athliance, a top NIL compliance solution, told On3. “Balancing athlete rights with preserving the essence of college athletics is the tightrope we walk.” 

Revenue-sharing ‘has to be part of path forward’

When it comes to a new model, perhaps Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork said it best: “Let’s just get to whatever the model is sooner rather than later. Because the uncertainty is basically driving everyone crazy right now from coaches to athletes to administrators – it doesn’t matter the level of administrator, from the athletic director to the marketing person. Everybody is just in this uncertain time.”

Many leading stakeholders, including conference commissioners, told On3 that they were shocked, even blindsided by the NCAA’s unveiling last week of a bold proposal, which would for the first time allow schools to directly pay athletes. Baker made clear that the proposal is a mere starting point for discussion. The NCAA hopes to spur Congress into passing its long-sought reform bill that includes at least limited antitrust protection and a formal designation that athletes are not university employees.

But even as a growing number of stakeholders view some sort of revenue-sharing model as a near inevitability, everything in college sports moves with glacier-like speed. That said, sentiment is changing before our eyes. The subject of true revenue sharing is not the taboo subject it was just a year or two ago – even though Baker makes clear that his reform plan is not revenue sharing.

Joe Castiglione, Oklahoma’s athletic director, is among forward-thinking leaders who embrace which way the winds are blowing.

“I support establishing a new structure that allows for us to rightly share some revenue with student-athletes,” Castiglione told On3. “That has to be part of our path forward. However, I also recognize that path takes us to an unknown reality with unpredictable economic implications for our departments, dramatically impacting how we can support a broad-based athletics program.”

How Title IX compliance squares with a revenue-sharing model, much less a complex employment paradigm – or even the NCAA’s innovative proposal – is likely to raise a thicket of complex issues to untangle, industry leaders say. 

Can college sports ‘determine its own destiny’?

Dan Butterly, the Big West Conference commissioner, is concerned about the “survivability of the NCAA with the current judicial threats facing the NCAA and its college athletics model.” The association, sources say, is paralyzed from passing and enforcing rules because of fear of perpetual litigation.

The biggest question that Mit Winter, a college sports attorney at Kennyhertz Perry, contemplates is: will a new economic model be created piecemeal by courts and the National Labor Relations Board?

“Or will some university and college athletics leaders step up and take the lead on creating a model that complies with the law and creates long-term certainty and stability for all involved,” Winter said.

In general, Beth Goetz, Iowa‘s interim athletic director, said before the NCAA unveiled its plan, “We’re trying to be reactive – and reactive on a lot of fronts. And so how do we control our own destiny? And did we miss that opportunity? I think it’s arguable that perhaps we’ve missed that opportunity, and that’s why we’re in this position because we didn’t take ownership and make some change at an earlier point.”

That leads to, again, the 30,000-foot view by McMillen, who has seen a lot of fits and starts and stumbles by the industry in a half-century. Yet, he hasn’t seen anything quite like this.

“The No. 1 issue is that college sports can’t determine its own destiny,” McMillen told On3. “Either you’re going to eventually evolve to an employee model or you’re going to have to have some hybrids. And those hybrids are going to have to be codified by Congress. They have to go to Congress to get things done – and we’ve never, ever been in a position like that. There’s a lot on the table.”