Professional Chaos in College Sports

Apr 24, 2025 | Sports

Our Take

Ever since Villanova hoops legend Ed O’Bannon leaned in toward the screen on which he was playing NCAA Basketball 09 and said “Wait – that’s me!” the writing of the NCAA’s demise has been on the wall. It’s a delicious narrative twist that the district judge who originally found in favor of O’Bannon and his fellow former star college athletes in their 2014 lawsuit against the NCAA was… Claudia Wilken. While it’s undeniably good that players now get a cut of the billions in annual broadcast and licensing deals previously hoarded by universities at the behest of the NCAA, much less good is the accompanying commercial and organizational chaos that now threatens the very existence of non-revenue sports and non-scholarship athletes in college athletics.

As Predicted - July 2022

N.I.L. Rules and College Recruiting’s Growing Pains Could Be Terminal for the NCAA

In 2022, Luke Bronson’s opinion piece looked at the dramatic changes since the days when SMU received the NCAA’s “death penalty” for illicit payments to players. Luke warned that the laudable effort to correct the injustice of unpaid college athletes was rapidly devolving into an unregulated system where financial arms races and booster influence threaten the NCAA’s existence—and college sports as we know it.

Luke Bronson Warned Us

Source Summary

Federal judge Claudia Wilken presided over a sprawling hearing on the proposed $2.8 billion settlement in the House v. NCAA case, which would allow colleges to directly compensate student-athletes. The settlement sets guidelines for schools to share revenue with athletes, imposes roster limits to replace scholarship caps, and establishes a third-party clearinghouse for monitoring name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals.

During the hearing, former LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne objected to the settlement’s limits on pre-NIL-era compensation, noting that NCAA restrictions deprived her of sponsorship opportunities worth millions. Current collegiate athletes voiced concerns about the disruption that roster limits will cause, including the end of walk-on team members.

Judge Wilken clearly listened to the players’ input: on April 23, she notified all parties that she was only ready to approve the settlement if the NCAA and its member schools agree to “grandfather” players currently on college teams, protecting the players against the disruptive and draconian cuts that would be mandated by the roster limits. She gave the NCAA and its member schools 14 days to come back with a fix that protects the players.

[USA Today]