— By Chris Vannini, Sam Khan Jr. and Justin Williams
Can a presidential commission do anything substantial to change college sports?
The recent news that President Donald Trump may get involved in the prolonged effort to bring stability to college sports sparked plenty of debate on that question. NCAA president Charlie Baker seemed to welcome White House involvement on Monday.
“I think the fact that there’s an interest on the executive side on this, I think it speaks to the fact that everybody is paying a lot of attention right now to what’s going on in college sports,” Baker said at ACC meetings in Amelia Island, Fla. “I’m up for anything that can help us get somewhere.”
But what could such a commission do, and what would the reported co-chairs, former Alabama coach Nick Saban and Texas Tech board chair and billionaire booster Cody Campbell, aim to accomplish?
Though we don’t yet know the scope of the commission or how deep it will dive into issues like name, image and likeness compensation or the transfer portal, Saban and Campbell’s past public statements provide some clues on what they might seek to address.
NIL
Saban has criticized the money flowing into the NIL market from deep-pocketed donors; Campbell is one of those donors, bankrolling Texas Tech’s recent success in player acquisition. Although NIL freedoms were designed to allow players to pursue marketing or endorsement deals, donors and their collectives quickly took to using them as a proxy for a pay-for-play system.
“To me, the biggest issue we have in college athletics is donor-induced name, image and likeness,” Saban said last fall at a panel in Dallas alongside Baker. “Instead of doing what we’re doing now, we should be having revenue-sharing with the athletes so that their quality of life is better.”
Revenue sharing is indeed on the way, pending approval of the House v. NCAA settlement. But Saban and Campbell have expressed a desire for national NIL rules, rather than a collection of different state laws. The NCAA has long lobbied Congress for federal NIL legislation, to no avail. A bipartisan group of senators, led by Ted Cruz (R-Texas), continues to work on the issue, but nothing appears imminent.
Campbell, who has written several op-eds about college sports for The Federalist, advocated in April for an antitrust exemption that would allow a governing body to enact a single set of rules to supersede the “patchwork of 34 different state laws” that currently exist.
The House settlement, if it’s approved, will establish a revenue-sharing cap of at least $20 million that schools can distribute to athletes, and the Power 4 leaders are planning to create an enforcement organization for traditional NIL, but it’s not yet clear whether that will slow pay-for-play “NIL” as we know it today.
Texas Tech board chair and billionaire Cody Campbell has written several op-eds about college sports for The Federalist. (Mateo Rosiles/ Avalanche-Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
Transfer portal
Campbell hasn’t written much about the portal, and Texas Tech has been an active user in recent years. Saban, however, has criticized the transfer rules for their effect on team chemistry and graduation rates.
“I’m all for the players, and I want the players to benefit, and I think we went far too long without the players being able to benefit,” Saban said last year. “But the system that we have right now makes it much more difficult for a coach to really create the culture on this team, because guys can leave whenever they want. So they don’t have to make the same kind of commitment that we all had to make, in terms of, how did you value your college experience?”
Restricting player movement hasn’t come up much in congressional hearings compared to the financial concerns, but the question of whether outgoing players should owe contract buyouts has gained steam as revenue sharing approaches. Arkansas’ NIL collective is currently looking to collect a buyout from quarterback Madden Iamaleava, who signed with Arkansas in December but has since transferred to UCLA.
Non-revenue sports
Despite their shared backgrounds in college football, Saban and Campbell have expressed concern over the impact on Olympic and non-revenue sports as more money shifts toward football and basketball.
“Of 134 FBS schools, 90 or more could lose funding for Olympic sports, women’s teams, and even football itself (not to mention the FCS and Division II),” Campbell wrote in March on The Federalist. “Local towns could crumble. Smaller colleges would fade. College sports would shrink from a national treasure to an elite clique, and countless dreams would be crushed.”
Saban cited Alabama’s softball team, one of the best in the country, as a winning program that doesn’t make money.
“What people don’t understand about college athletics, in my opinion, it’s not a business,” Saban said last September. “It’s revenue-producing. … Nobody takes a profit in college athletics. What do we do with the money? We reinvest it in the players and opportunities for non-revenue sports, so that they have an opportunity to graduate and compete.”
A large part of that cost also includes growing salaries for coaches, but Saban and Campbell both seem interested in finding ways for football — and, to a lesser extent, basketball — to continue funding non-revenue college sports under a reformed system.
Conference media rights/super leagues
Though Campbell called for antitrust protections, he doesn’t want to give those protections solely to the Power 4 leagues, even with his ties to Texas Tech and the Big 12, and said that any solutions must be “maximally inclusive” of the 130-plus Football Bowl Subdivision schools.
“Give the Autonomy Four (especially the Big 10 and SEC) a free antitrust hall pass, and they’ll build a super conference, a gilded monopoly that starves everyone else of the revenue needed to provide opportunity to more than 500,000 student athletes per year,” he wrote in March.
Saban, meanwhile, has said in the past that he’d like power conference schools to only schedule each other.
Campbell has written that the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 should be opened up to allow a broadcasting antitrust exemption for college sports as it does for pro sports, which could allow the entire FBS to pool and negotiate its broadcast rights collectively. Last week, Cruz remarked in a Senate committee hearing on streaming that the concept was something worth looking into, while also sharing concern about the NFL bumping up against protected late-season college football windows.
The SBA is one of the first major hurdles faced by recent Super League proposals from private equity groups that would include all of FBS or only the Power 4. The Big Ten and SEC have shown no interest in concepts that would lessen their financial advantage, but Campbell shares similar views with those promoting the Super League ideas: An antitrust exemption would lead to more money for everyone.
“The big and storied programs will continue to retain an advantage because of their massive ticket sales, donor support, and ability to monetize licensing and merchandise,” Campbell wrote, “but the smaller schools will at least be able to maintain solvent athletic departments and support non-revenue sports.”
Campbell has also advocated for “geographic sense” for conference alignment, expressing concern about travel time and the loss of rivalries. Finding a way to unwind conference realignment seems difficult, but it’s a topic any casual fan of college sports, including members of Congress, would understand.
Student-athlete employment status
The issue of employee or collective bargaining status for college athletes is not directly addressed in the House settlement, but it is expected to be one of the next high-profile legal battles in the industry.
Saban and Campbell have expressed desires for college athletes to remain students and for college sports to maintain some semblance of an academic model.
“Establishing this non-employee status will help to limit the cost burden of sponsoring an intercollegiate sport, and ensure that benefits like a scholarship are not taxable as income,” Campbell wrote in April.
Campbell also noted the Title IX implications of this debate: “(T)he proper application of Title IX with respect to the payment of student athletes must be made clear in order to prevent another wave of disruptive litigation.”
It’s yet to be seen who else will be on this presidential commission, what it will focus on and whether it will actually influence anything. But its existence would put more focus on doing something.
“My only hope is that leadership can emerge and consensus can be found in Washington before it’s too late,” Campbell wrote in April. “There are solutions, and the problems can be solved in a bipartisan manner. It is only a matter of will, engagement, and attention from well-intentioned individuals who wish to perpetuate the legacy and impact of the great American institution of Intercollegiate Athletics for all of its participants — not just for a privileged few.”
Saban for years has worked as a de facto voice of the sport, especially in his role at ESPN, and Campbell laid the political groundwork with his writing. The pair may soon have the ability to drive even more of the conversation for actual change.
“If we can just get it together and put it together, we’d have a great system,” Saban said. “I think the future of college football is great. I really do. I’m not down on the game. I’m just down on the system of how we get money to players. That’s got to be fixed.”
(Top photo of Nick Saban and Donald Trump: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
