So what does this case and legal battle say about the state of college football?

Well, it says it's quite a mess, right? Here we are on the brink, the eve, right, of the first full Saturday of college football in 2026, and we're talking about a court case, right? So many reporters gathered around a a Baton Rouge courthouse on Thursday.

It's indicative of sort of the uncertain and maybe rudderless landscape of college athletics.

And right now, to use a sports term, you know, the ball is in LSU's court, right? A Baton Rouge judge granted A group of athletes, a fifth season of eligibility, several of them signed pro contracts in the NFL and then got cut and want to come back.

LSU recruited those players and have commitments from several of those players.

So the court paved the way for LSU to add those players to the roster.

But that would violate NCAA and SEC policies.

So preview this matchup for us.

Are they going after money? Like, what, [laughs] what are they going after, I guess?

Well, no, I mean, they're, they're, they're trying to get eligible, uh, their plaintiffs, right? These players that want, um, that want eligibility.

Uh, and, and partly, you know, why exactly they mentioned Greg Sankey, I, you know, I don't know.

I mean, just I guess he's just head of the conference in which authorized the rule change and the policy, so they felt like mentioning him, um, would strengthen the case.

Uh, but no, there's no...

I mean, there, there's no money involved.

You know, they're just, they're trying to get eligibility for the players, and they believe that the SEC's rule, like the NCAA's rule, um, prevents the players from, um, their economic right, right, which is to get paid.

Yes.

Can you give us, like, the Reader's Digest version of what is the Protect College Sports Act, and why is it so important?

Well, yeah, the Protect College Sports Act sort of, um, is meant to regulate, uh, college athletics.

Uh, specifically, I think the biggest concepts are around athlete compensation and movement, so it would reestablish the NCAA's one-time transfer limitation where a player can move once, and then after that would have to sit out a year.

So that's number one.

Number two, uh, it, it creates a, or establishes a five-year eligibility window for athletes, um, and bans pro players for coming back to play in college.

Uh, and it puts more of a harder cap on the athlete compensation, the revenue share cap.

Um, it establishes a, um, uh, a agent registry or certification process as well, which is important.

So if this act doesn't pass and you have conferences, like, forming their own entity away from the NCAA, what happens to women's sports and Olympic sports? I, I would think it's not a great future for them.

What's going on?

Yeah.

Hey, Paul.

Good to join you.

Yeah, a little bit of an update on what's going on right now.

First of all, there's a real time crunch here.

Probably by the end of today, if not maybe middle of the day, maybe tomorrow is kind of the drop-dead date where the majority leader, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has to do what they say, they have to file cloture, which means you schedule a bill to be voted on on the floor.

So if you

What was your take on that entire exchange there?

You know, yeah, this has been sort of, I would say, miscommunicated.

And not from Greg Sankey, but from probably my colleagues in general, our colleagues in the media.

So there are two sort of pathways for a breakaway.

I think there's one is a governance-only breakaway, where the SEC would establish its own rules and would enforce those rules, and they would be the rules around... eligibility and transfers and athlete compensation cap.

And they think that having their own rules and enforcing those, they would evade antitrust legal sort of scrutiny because they're a small group, 16, instead of the 370, 360 that's in Division I, NCAA Division I groups.

So that's the idea, that they would just basically get free of legal challenges.

The people that – you talk to a lot of people on this issue as well, Ross, do you think – well, A, do you think it's going to get done by the December 1 deadline? And, B, do you think is 24 really on the

What else is, I mean, other than the football season in the back rooms, are you watching or is that dominating at all?

Well, you know, CFP, CSC, those two things, the College Sports Commission and the College Football Playoff, the future of those.

The College Football Playoff is in the middle of expansion negotiations, obviously.

It has been.

The commissioner joked that as soon as the College Football Playoff was expanded to 12, They began to talk about when to expand again before you even played a 12 team postseason.

And so that conversation is continuing.

There is there's a meeting in August.

They're together on a lot of things, important thing, but

so when you when you look at the tampering and all the stuff and just before we get into what we've talked about what you've been covering is there a way in your eyes since you have such a high level big picture view of college football that tampering can be calmed down is it possible

Uh, it is possible.

Um, I, I, I think you, anything's possible with enough enforcement and penalty structure to do.

Um, I think the problem with, um, the, the NCAA rules and the CSC rules, college sports commission rules at that, at this point too, I think the problem is, um, that they, uh, they don't, they don't have enforcement behind them.

They don't, they don't have, penalties that have been handed down coming from behind these rules.

That's sort of the issue.

And so if you get rules, enforcement and rules, I think you can have a decrease at least or a limiting in tampering and other rules too.

So if that's the case, would the SEC be more inclined, given the possible revenue distributions that they could receive, knowing how valuable some of their brands are, would they be more inclined to sign up for something like this than maybe they were beforehand?

I, I don't really know 100% where the SEC is on it, or do they feel like it's good for them, bad for them, multiple changes that they want in it? Where is Greg Sankey on this?

Uh, you know, we don't know.

Um, I think he said, I mean, it's 111 pages, so he hadn't gotten a chance to read it.

Um-Last night, uh, when we talked to him after the day two of meetings, um, you know, this is the last day of meetings, so he'll talk to us around probably 1:00 or 2:00, I think, today, and it'll be curious if he's read it yet, um, or if he wants to discuss it or take the position.

I'm gonna-- My sense is that there's a lot of stuff in the bill that they, they like and, and have asked for for years, like the one-time transfer, like the five-year eligibility, the ban of pro players playing in college, um, the hard cap on the revenue share and NIL.

Uh, those are some things.

You know, agent registry, limiting agent fees.

So if that's the case, would the SEC be more inclined, given the possible revenue distributions that they could receive, knowing how valuable some of their brands are, would they be more inclined to sign up for something like this than maybe they were beforehand?

It seems like a no-brainer to us, but how long is this process going to take to potentially play out?

Well, the NCAA, although it's getting faster, it doesn't process things very quickly.

And that's not necessarily the NCAA's fault as far as the people at NCAA headquarters.

I mean, the NCAA is a membership organization, right? And it involves...

A lot of schools are just in Division I, like 360 schools.

So they all have to sort of agree and things have to be socialized.

And it just takes a long time because the body, the organization is so big.

Does that get confusing to people that you talk to?

something specific or something general it feels like every time you turn your head there's a new court case that's expected to have some sort of ramifications on how the NCAA regulates this or that so what do you think that long-term big picture solution looks like to just making sure that you don't have a dozen different things being battled out in courts at any given time

Well, yeah, after my story posted this morning, someone messaged me asking if this rule change, if it does pass, will it bring order to eligibility, order to the system? And I told them what I tell most people.

There will not be order, complete order and stability until there is either congressional action... um to regulate college sports or there's a collective bargaining agreement struck with athletes um outside of those two things uh ncaa rules and even an executive order is subject to legal challenge and will probably continue to be legally challenged and so i'd expect this new proposal if it does pass that it will be subject to legal challenge and will trigger lawsuits against the NCAA in a variety of ways.

You could kind of see that there would be lawsuits brought potentially by international players, for one, who don't often start immediately in college sports but play semi-pro or pro in pro leagues overseas or in Canada before they start competing in college.

And they would be disadvantaged, obviously, by this rule since the rule would state that your five years of eligibility begins on your 19th birthday or later.

whenever you graduate high school, whichever is earliest.

So it would certainly limit the careers for those international athletes.

Do you foresee a day, sooner or later, where the NCAA says, you know what? we're going to recognize athletes as employees and we're going to collective bark, collectively barking with them, or will the NCAA continue to dig its heels in and make sure they avoid doing that at all costs? What do you foresee happening in the future?

That said, of those decision makers, how much hesitation is there that this would be something that could be held up, like supported in a

courtroom? Probably unlikely.

I think that it just depends sort of on whatever the suit is.

is because the NCAA is penalizing coaches in the school and not the player, it probably makes it more difficult, but not impossible, to succeed in some kind of lawsuit.

You can imagine a couple situations I'll give you.

One, if a player gets hurt in the spring or summertime and a coach wants to fill that spot with somebody interested from another school, If they go and do that and then get sued, I think the coach could, or I'm sorry, if the coach does that and gets penalized, I think the coach could sue and say that these penalties are too severe and you're limiting maybe what he could do, you know, his success as a coach by preventing this from happening.

But the more likely suit is you get one from an athlete who sues, and although the athlete's not penalized under this penalty structure, he or she would probably argue that the penalties on the school and the coach are disadvantages the athlete by preventing the athlete from moving and potentially accepting a bigger NIL compensation package with another school.

Are the Big Ten and SEC, especially in football, just kind of going to like, you know, pick up their stuff and walk away together and go somewhere else? As time has gone on over these last year, two years, is that something that we're getting closer to becoming a reality, or is it something that hasn't necessarily moved in any way towards being a reality? And I know I'm kind of using two things here, and I'm only using the NCAA tournament part of this as just another example of the incredible leverage that the Power Leagues have.

[laughs]

... as you started to talk, before you started talking about this event.

And I would say that plenty of people in attendance probably had a similar sigh, uh, after it wrapped up.

Um, you know, I think, uh, the goal of this event, uh, Dan, was to bring attention to the issue by gathering all these important people, these dignitaries at the White House in front of the president.

So I think there was a goal of, number one, bringing attention to the issue, and number two, by way of bringing attention to it, maybe you put pressure on congressional lawmakers to push something through, a con- a c- a college sports bill through the, the Congress, uh, which is what the president, uh, wants, has said he wants.

Uh, and I think actually it, it accomplished goal one.

It certainly got people talking and had the attention brought to it.

Why not a current coach or current players?

What do you think about that?

Yeah.

Well, there, you know, there is a proposal from the, the Big Ten.

Uh, it's a 2014 proposal, and it would basically kill the conference championship games, right? It would, um, it would force, uh, f- it would force, you know, college athletic leaders to basically, um, eliminate conference championship games.

And then on this week, um, you have p- perhaps you have Army-Navy.

You move it up a week.

And then next week you start, you know, a round of the playoffs.

If Duke wins the ACC Championship, do they get in?

Right.

Right? Where they rely on these TV networks, the SEC to ESPN.

Obviously the Big 10 to Fox and NBC and CBS.

Um, the Big 12 to Fox and ESPN, they have them both.

ACC to ESPN.

Like, they get a majority, their schools get a majority of their, their revenue from these TV contracts.

And so it's sorta like one of the questions is always like, who's making these de- decisions? Who's running these conferences? And how, what's the influence that a TV network has? And, um, you know, I, I think it's, it's for- sort of a, like a fascinating dynamic moving forward, um, because you're right, right? Like, Fox, um, has this huge share in the Big 10, pays a lot of money, uh, to the Big 10 and its schools, um, and wants to see them thrive and do well.

So what was he like as a guy?

How would you summarize the NCAA's punishment of Michigan football?

Ooh.

That's a good question, Dan.

Um, I would summarize it as, uh...

You know, it d- I guess it depends on who you ask, Dan.

You know, if you ask Michigan people, right, they say it was too hard and the penalties financially are too, are too stiff and that's probably a point of why they're appealing, right? If you ask everybody else in college football and college sports, they'll say it was way, way too light....

right? Um, that the NCAA should have given Michigan a post-season ban, and they should have vacated wins and championships, and they should have, um, added more suspension and penalties to the- the current head football coach, Sharon Moore.

How long is it gonna take to get there?