The anger, denial, bargaining and depression are gone. The country's top universities are finally landing on admissions.
The NCAA is dead. The long-awaited reckoning killed her. The powers that be know it's time to move on. They're trying to, with the only solution that can bring control to the chaos that has become college football.
Andrew Marchand and Stuart Mandel of TheAthletic.com report that a group of college presidents, working with NFL executive Brian Rolapp and others, are trying to form a so-called “Premier League“.
The current system will be blown up. Conferences will fold. The playoff system will become extinct. In their place will be a league of 70 established teams and a further 10 teams that will undergo relegation and promotion from the remaining 60 schools.
The 'Premier League' will consist of eight 10-team divisions, with the division winners and eight wild cards qualifying for a 16-team playoff.
College football would essentially become professional football. Which it is, without the tools and protections that create stability for teams.
The idea is to embrace a unionized workforce, which would legitimize rules that, in the absence of a multi-employer bargaining unit, constitute antitrust violations that have been hidden in plain sight for years. Now that case after case has proven these violations of federal law — and carries potential liability that currently exceeds $5 billion and counting — those who are aware of it know that college football needs to break the glass in an emergency, because the emergency has arrived.
Two school presidents provided on-the-record quotes to TheAthletic.com regarding the situation.
“The current model of managing and administering college athletics is dead,” Syracuse Chancellor Kent Syverud said.
“We are in an existential crisis,” West Virginia President Gordon Gee added to TheAthletic.com.
They are right. I finish. The system was inherently corrupt, and the corruption was exposed through viable lawsuits that would continue to blow huge holes in the budgets of conferences and their members.
“I truly believe that conferences in the NCAA have a very high probability of going bankrupt in the near future due to lawsuits, both the ones that will be tried soon and the ones that will follow,” Syverud told TheAthletic.com.
This is a point we made in a recent article regarding efforts to unify the Dartmouth men's basketball team. Schools that have fought the concept of unions tooth and nail need to realize that a national union for paid players is the only way out of the current maze.
“For decades, schools have refused to contribute to players’ wage pool,” we wrote. “Now that successful lawsuits against rampant antitrust violations have dropped a shark into the water, the only way to get a bigger boat is Adopting the concept of a national union workforce“.
It won't be easy. Many within the temple will resist. They will resist because they will still refuse to realize that this is the only way out of the mess they have created and maintained. Those who don't understand this need to get out of the way, before it's too late for the entire sport.
In fact, it's already too late.
