College football has never looked more successful. Television ratings are strong. Coaching salaries are shattering precedent. And starting this Friday with a matchup between the Oklahoma Sooners and Alabama Crimson Tide, the College Football Playoff will command the attention of tens of millions of Americans.
But beneath the spectacle lies a system unraveling in real time.
“College Sports is in $BIG trouble, just like I said it would be,” President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this month. The comment came after a federal judge approved a settlement permitting colleges to pay athletes directly while awarding $2.8 billion in back damages to former players.
Trump’s concern is not with the idea of compensating college athletes, but with the absence of a coherent framework to govern how that compensation is structured and enforced. “They had the old way where they gave scholarships and they did lots of good things,” Trump said back in November on The Pat McAfee Show. “There could be some form of payments, but the NFL and all teams have caps. You don’t really have that in college sports.”
Any casual observer of the sport over the last few years knows that Trump is right.
The traditions that once defined college football—regional conferences, stable rosters, meaningful rivalries, and the understanding that athletes were students first—are collapsing under the weight of legal chaos, financial excess, and the complete absence of national oversight.
The current disorder did not emerge organically. It was created by congressional apathy.
For decades, college football operated under an imperfect but governable system. That equilibrium was upended in 2021 when the Supreme Court ruled in NCAA v. Alston that the NCAA’s limits on certain athlete compensation violated the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Neil Gorsuch recognized the NCAA’s argument that its unique role at the crossroads of education, commerce, and public funding sets it apart from ordinary industries. But the Court refused to create a special legal carve-out from antitrust law, making clear that such policy judgments do not belong to judges. As Gorsuch put it plainly, “that appeal is properly addressed to Congress.”
But Congress has yet to act.
In the meantime, dysfunction has become routine. Coaches negotiate with rival schools while teams are preparing for playoff runs. Players are contacted by boosters and agents before championship games. Athletes threaten to transfer midseason unless new payments are arranged. Wealthy donors increasingly bankroll competitiveness, widening the gap between haves and have-nots. Schools fire coaches early to trigger transfer windows, leading to massive buyouts they can barely afford.
The current status quo is bad for coaches, bad for players, bad for fans, and ultimately, will be bad for business once the product on the field inevitably suffers.
The NCAA has proven incapable of enforcing order. Conferences cannibalize one another to shut out competitors, while scheduling remains unregulated, allowing teams to manipulate playoff access. The College Football Playoff Committee controls the championship but lacks authority beyond it.
No successful sports league operates this way.
Lately, universities have entered a financial arms race whose only logical end is mutually assured destruction. Nearly 90 percent of Division I athletic departments now operate at a deficit. Flagship universities are tens of millions of dollars underwater. The Ohio State University athletics department, the reigning football national champion, posted an operating deficit of about $38 million last year.
Other major programs face similar shortfalls every year. After the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) athletics department ran a deficit of $30 million, administration staff told newsrooms that they would simply “cover the latest deficit.”
“The college athletics model is in the midst of a profound shift,” a UCLA athletic department statement read. “Adapting to changes from conference realignment to NCAA deregulation has resulted in growing expenses for programs across the country.”
These losses are not sustainable. Government subsidies and student tuition dollars cannot continue to be diverted to finance an unchecked and chaotic sports system. This is not free-market competition at work. It is the predictable outcome of a prolonged vacuum of leadership.
Congress has solved this problem before. Professional sports leagues function today because lawmakers granted limited antitrust exemptions that allow leagues to pool media rights, regulate competition, and maintain a balance between large and small markets. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, along with subsequent labor laws, imposed structure without destroying competition. Without those guardrails, even the NFL would splinter into regional megadivisions almost overnight.
Trump foresaw the college sports dilemma six months into his term after evaluating the new legal landscape. Trump’s July executive order titled “Saving College Sports” diagnosed the real disease around athlete compensation and transfers. It declared that federally supported athletic programs should ensure a focus on the educational development of their student-athletes and further called for congressional action to restore stability and competitive balance.
But recent congressional efforts are short-sighted. The House’s SCORE Act attempted to formalize revenue sharing but left the underlying dysfunction untouched. They are not yet willing to heed Trump’s urgency to impose limits on conference sprawl, transfer structure, and demand fiscal discipline.
Congress ultimately tabled the bill, with Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy urging action closer to Trump’s suggestion. “If we’re going to take a big federal step because the federal court intervened, and we’re going to intervene, well, then maybe we should fully intervene,” Roy said.
The exhortation of Trump and congressional conservatives is not government micromanagement. It Good governance is needed to enable excellent competition.
The system was broken by government action, specifically by courts applying antitrust law to an industry that cannot function under it. Pretending otherwise is intellectual evasion.
As the College Football Playoff captivates the nation, the contrast could not be clearer. The product on the field remains compelling, while the system behind it is unsustainable.
Congress has been given both the warning and the roadmap. What remains lacking is the resolve to act.
W.J. Lee has served in the White House, NASA, on multiple political campaigns, and in nearly all levels of government. In his free time, he enjoys the “three R’s” – reading, running, and writing.
College athletes should not be paid. They already receive free tuition.
Having graduated from a Big Ten school, I have been into college basketball and football for most of my life. I remember when just getting a free ride to a good school because of a kid’s athletic skills was enough of a “payment”. Introducing outright payment to a kid plus paying for his schooling is ridiculous. Any time you introduce a ton of money into anything fraud occurs. What all this money has done is to ruin what use to be a lot of fun. And conferences??? My Big Ten Conference now has 18 schools. I detest the “new” way of handling college sports. This is why it has been said that money is one of the evils in this world.
Students go to College to learn a profession! They should be required to pass those classes in order to play a sport! Football is a wonderful College sport, but players should NOT be paid to play! Scholarships would be ok, but that is all! If the NFL wants to recruit a player, ok, they can pay him, and if he so desires, he can continue his studies, but not play college football for money!
Nothing is left untouched by POWER, GREED AND MONEY. AND ALL THREE OF THESE EVILS HAVE TAKEN COMPLETE CONTROL OF COLLEGE SPORTS.
ANY person, business or corporation with just one of these three guarantees problems. But when you have all three of these EVILS, it will eventually implode, ruining whoever or whatever it was involved with, including lives.
The NCAA should be cleansed of it’s corrupt, spineless, and incompetent controlling ‘big wigs’.
COACHING salaries should be reduced to $100-200k annually with no more than a 5-year contract. And NO BUYOUT if fired for cause – failing to win most of their games.
PLAYERS, if good, should be recruited with and awarded scholarships, NOT hundreds of thousands of dollars, free cars, jewelry, houses, and other expensive gifts. Such extravagance only instills and builds a ‘power, greed and money’ attitude and builds a dangerous career foundation.
And when considering the MEGA TUITION EXPENSES, DORM, BOOK AND LAB FEES, AND OF COURSE GAME TICKET PRICES, THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THESE MEGA UNIVERSITIES TO BE IN THE RED.
UNKESS they’re paying their players too much, their coaches too much, and their university president and other top-level staff and faculty too much.
What ALL of these schools DESPERATELY NEED AND MUST HAVE, ARE ANNUAL INDEPENDENT AUDITS, AND SOME SERIOUS DOGE-like WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE INSPECTIONS.
I venture to say there would be LONG LISTS OF SERIOUS DISCREPANCIES AND MASSIVE WASTE FRAUD AND ABUSE FOUND AT EVERY SCHOOL.
Let’s face it, Congress is more interested in throwing articles of impeachment against President Trump than to worry about the way of college football is going. NCAA has everything so screwed up that I don’t have any interest in watching college football anymore.
Giving these huge amounts of money to college kids is a disaster. They have no idea how to handle small amounts of money, much less millions. Look around any college town and see all the expensive cars they are recklessly driving. They are also buying expensive clothes, going to night clubs and passing cash around for lap dances and drinks. It’s not only a disaster for today but for their future. What happens when they are out of the game and the money is gone? They will have little education and no money.
In addition, they will not have learned the value of being a true team member and building life-long friendships while learning something they can use in the future to earn a living.
If the powers that be are determined to pay these kids, it needs to be in the form of a trust fund accessible on graduation. They can be given a stipend for food and clothes but the millions stay out of reach. Even $500/month is too much in the hands of immature kids.
Those scholarships are worth $300 to $500 thousand by graduation and that should be deducted from any money paid if they leave the school before graduation or don’t graduate because of failing academics.
At the rate this is going, criminal records are being created and a whole lot of broken lives in other ways, too.
There should just be minor leagues with paid players having no connection to colleges.
No athlete playing for a school should be paid. Payment is for when you get out and choose to go pro. They get scholarships if they are really good. That is enough payment. If they want to go pro, this is the “internship” so that scouters get to know them when the time comes around. You don’t pay for any school sports. It is not a job!
You thought our impotent Congress would act on it in a timely manner? Really?
Many years ago, colleges like Harvard and Yale use to “hire” local athletes off the streets to play football on football Saturday. check out the history of early collegiate sport. 1900’s forward.
The NCAA first big battle came with the formation of the Ivy league code of conduct.
Then you had the NCAA battle with the AAU (that controlled sport on the international level, and quite a battle it was.
The NCAA’s power came from football revenue, even in the early years. Once TV entered the picture with the football dollars. The battle between the dollar and amateur sport escalated.
Could go on for pages over the crash of titans (AAU vs NCAA).
Too bad the Democrats are so busy full time blocking all legislation in Congress and still hoping to “get Trump.” There should be a Congressional Subcommittee on Amateur Athletics that works with the college boards and Olympics trainers to assure that our young athletes are well served and not exploited by greed or criminals.
Once again, we can blame the Left for this!! So, if major colleges are losing money, how can they make it up? ‘Legalized’ betting, folks! The NCAA should be eliminated, and college sports should be restored to amateur athletics!
OK, I have to ask why is there even such a thing as “federally supported athletic programs?” How long has this been going on? Why are our tax dollars involved in supporting college sports? Isn’t it bad enough that we’re “GIVING AWAY” billions in unsupported student loans that will never be repaid. This is just crazy.
Are they there to play the sport or to study to get the degree , are they so talented that they excel in the classroom and the field as well? If they require tutors and are on sport scholarship, is that not the pay enough, do they want to be payed athletes or students, there is a difference between the two.
Congress has no business meddling in sports
I just got paid my Social Security from working 47 years at a good career!
I have NO website to copy or link or share and couldn’t give a spit about anyone else’s BS money making opportunity. I can recognize an obvious scam though.
Also this article is right on target.
Too bad the Democrats are so busy full time blocking all legislation in Congress and still hoping to “get Trump.” There should be a Congressional Subcommittee on Amateur Athletics that works with the college boards and Olympics trainers to assure that our young athletes are well served and not exploited by greed or criminals.
Why is a D1 sports program part of a land grant university’s mission?
I am a Dallas Cowboys fan, and can remember waaaay back when they had a good football team every 3 years or so. But NOW, most college teams are better, year after year.
C’mon, Jerry Jones! Pay the Cowboys at least as well as the colleges pay their folks….
Joe
“The College Football Crisis Congress Can No Longer Ignore”. Strongly disagree. These are agreements between adults and the government has no business sticking their noses into it. Less government intrusion, not more!