NCAA rules are just that, rules. No different than chewing gum in line, or not lining
up for lunch
In alphabetical order. Rules are made to be broken and when the NCAA comes up with rules, people just shrug and say whatever.

But laws are different. They can entail fines, and in more extreme cases of bribery fraud or tax evasion, jail time.

The current stakes require laws. Nobody gives a shit about rules.

conference a few weeks back.

They're waiting for Congress to come up with NIL laws and regulations. They're waiting to see what guidance the courts will provide. Basically, they're paralyzed, as different states have different rules and they don't know how to enforce anything.

so yeah, they're waiting on Congress and the courts.

Not a comforting thought given the state of the state.

to this mess, so at most you'll get a lot of peacocking with nothing really happening. And I don't think the courts would want to touch this with a 10 foot pole. Maybe after several more years of chaos when a better understanding of how monstrous what it is we're looking at becomes abundantly clear to most everyone, they might.

But for now, we're going to have to watch it get worse, worser, and worsest, so to speak. I doubt the NFL would want to manage this madness via minor league teams comprised of one or two and dones, but that's where it's conceivably going unless the football-playing colleges finally get religion and kick the heretics out and start paying homage to the student part of student-athlete. ROFLOL!

Johnson v NCAA should be decided pretty soon, I believe.

...See NCAA Battling From Behind in Student Athlete Employee Suit (Peter Hayes, news.bloomberglaw.com, January 17, 2023).

The legal complications are fascinating; it's quite possible, as this article says, that SCOTUS will decide on the fate of the "college athletic-industrial complex" (to steal the formulation used in an August 2022 article in The Athletic).

that would be bad news for the NCAA.

...but that's another topic, to some extent.

just bad news all around. Groupthink prevails. In the NCAA's case, you also have the added selfishness.

Right now the Power 5 have the deal of all deals. Their cash cow business has a monopoly on 18-22 year old football players, and they don't even have to pay the service providers. Why would the NFL want to compete with that? And why would the Power 5 willingly invite the NFL in to compete?

So, the Power 5 are playing "dumb". They point to the NCAA or to Congress as merely a diversion. The system is working how they want for everyone -- well, nearly everyone. Like Scooby Doo..."if it wasn't for those pesky kids".


In the next decade, the Big Ten and SEC are likely to break away with another 10 or so teams, and they'll run their own show. The rest of the NCAA will revert back to looking more like the Missouri Valley or Conference USA. Maybe they are successful enough to grow and compete with the SEC/BIG Ten league -- compete in revenues/TV contract, not on the field of play as they will not actually compete against each other ala NAIA vs. NCAA or NBA vs. CBA.

And some of us will bemoan what it was or what it should be or what it could have been.

Creating problems for the colleges, and that small percent of kids aren't why college football is successful or lucrative.

If kids who wanted to go pro had a chance to do so, colleges would be on much better ground to retain the system.

The NFL doesn't want this to happen. Running a minor league isn't profitable for them.

Seriously, consider if the NFL created a minor league of 8 teams, took the top 450-500 kids out of college ball to field those teams, and played their games on Saturdays, competing against college football.

Where would the top game in this new league rank each week against college games?

The colleges are competing against each other for available talent, but they aren't competing against other leagues at all in terms of absolute talent. It mostly doesn't matter.

I think that's almost assuredly on the horizon; things which may change the calculus for SEC/BigN acting alone.

Or why the NFL would entertain the idea of competing.

I think the only way a union and CBA work is by having similarly capable programs and unified leadership. And, if now x% of the revenues need to be shared with the service providers then I don't think the Ohio States and Alabamas will be quite as willing to share revenue equally with the Northwesterns and the Purdues and the South Carolinas.

they're already on the losing side of several cases and a few more are likely on the way.

Pigs get fat hogs get slaughtered.

watching you.