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.
