{"id":6915,"date":"2026-04-03T22:39:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T22:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/?p=6915"},"modified":"2026-04-03T22:39:52","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T22:39:52","slug":"returning-to-the-roots-of-college-sports-pathways-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/?p=6915","title":{"rendered":"Returning to the Roots of College Sports: Pathways Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Gasche<\/em><\/p>\n

Associate Editor<\/em><\/p>\n

Loyola University Chicago School of Law<\/em><\/p>\n

College sports once featured iconic teams of students that would return year after year to compete for glory in tournaments like March Madness and the College Football Playoff. Now, teams are sparsely populated with returning players. Prior to the start of the 2025 March Madness tournament, more than half of the players<\/a> that competed in the tournament played for a different D1 team before the start of the season. Following the advent of NIL (\u201cName, Image, and Likeness\u201d), and recent rule changes surrounding the transfer portal, college sports are more like a professional, free-agent market. Team loyalty and the once classic \u201cunderdog\u201d Cinderella stories are a thing of the past.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Against the backdrop of continued antitrust enforcement<\/strong><\/p>\n

Returning to the days before NIL, and the commercialization of college sports, would be akin to trying to put the genie back into the bottle. Fixes are limited due to the continued enforcement of antitrust litigation and the continued rejection of the procompetitive arguments furthered on behalf of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). However, the Trump Administration recently made it clear that one of their priorities is going to be comprehensive reform of the college sports system.<\/p>\n

The landscape of college sports has evolved largely as a result of the progressive curtailment of NCAA authority. Following the decision in the Supreme Court case, NCAA v. Alston<\/em><\/a>, players are now able to receive compensation in the form of NIL deals. This means that they are able to be compensated by third party brands and in some cases<\/a> by the schools they represent in the form of scholarships and other grants. Since federal law does not govern the terms and requirements for these deals, state law must fill that void. This often results in very different regulations for each state.<\/p>\n

Antitrust claims against the NCAA are traditionally brought under \u00a7 1 of the Sherman Act. Plaintiffs typically argue that the regulations imposed by the NCAA unduly restrains trade or commerce in violation of the Act. Defendants in these cases can offer procompetitive justifications for their conduct, allowing them to argue that the restraint on trade is justifiable. In Alston<\/em>, the NCAA attempted to argue that compensation limits are procompetitive because they promote amateurism, which thereby increases consumer demand for any given college sport. Claiming amateurism is the NCAA\u2019s backstop preventing college sports from becoming professional ones. This is because the payment of an athlete for their sporting performance is generally what delineates amateur sports from professional ones.<\/p>\n

The Court in Alston <\/em>found that<\/a> athletes were already getting paid through other channels, thus rendering the NCCA\u2019s argument unpersuasive because if they were already being paid, there was no way to discern whether there was a positive impact on consumer demand from imposing compensation limits. Additionally, the NCCA was unclear in its definitions of amateurism and failed to make a relevant distinction between amateur football and professional football as it relates to the relevant market.<\/p>\n

Most recently, a massive antitrust settlement for $2.8 billion dollars<\/a> reduced the ability of the NCAA to regulate NIL deals. More than 400,000 current and former NCAA athletes brought cases alleging that the NCAA rules denied them the chance to be compensated for endorsements and media appearances. Following this settlement<\/a>, players will now be able to share in the revenue generated by college athletics; colleges are now able to offer more athletic scholarships; and the restrictions on NIL pay from unaffiliated third parties will be lessened. Previously, there was a cap on the number of scholarships that schools would be able to offer. Now, after this settlement, schools are no longer capped and can provide as many scholarships as possible.<\/p>\n

The problem
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

While paying athletes is objectively a good thing, the guardrails are starting to fall off<\/a>. Contracts signed by athletes are now essentially employment contracts. Generally, an employee is someone performing services for another party\u2019s benefit in exchange for compensation while under that party\u2019s control. Athletes are undoubtedly performing a service for another party, namely, their school. Athletes are also subject to extensive control by the school through their commitment to the program in exchange for scholarships and other NIL deals.<\/p>\n

By tying performance to scholarships, these contracts become pseudo employment contracts. Although schools are quick to say that athletes are not being paid in exchange for these commitments, these contracts often include provisions<\/a> that allow the school to reduce or increase an athlete\u2019s pay depending on performance or playing time. If these students were to be classified as employees, it would solidify that college sports are never returning to where they were before. The idea of college athletes being amateurs would quickly slip away because there would be nothing differentiating these athletes from professional ones.<\/p>\n

Current solutions and possible proposals<\/strong><\/p>\n

The development of the transfer portal introduces further challenges into college sports. Athletes can now be paid directly by schools and can thus leverage their contracts with other schools that might be offering them better monetary awards. The NCAA also got rid of many restrictions<\/a> requiring that athletes sit out following a transfer. Now, athletes can transfer as much as they want without penalties long as they are in good academic standing.<\/p>\n

On July 24, 2025 President Trump issued an executive order<\/a> declaring that the current system in college athletics is deeply flawed. The Trump administration intends to address these flaws by working with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to fight these antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA. The FTC and the Attorney General have agreed to work together to revise their litigation positions and review their plans to implement proper oversight of future antitrust litigation. Aside from the emphasis on reduced antitrust litigation, President Trump also proposed that athletic departments that generate certain amounts of revenue be required to allocate more scholarship opportunities for athletes in non-revenue sports.<\/p>\n

Last week, President Trump met with a large group<\/a> of executives and coaches across professional and college sports to determine a clear path forward. It appears the main purpose of the meeting was to solidify that only Congress could establish a permanent solution to the problem because only state-wide regulation of NIL currently exists. By making the regulation federal, it would provide a key backbone in the effort to return college sports back to their roots.<\/p>\n

The Administration pledges to work towards achieving a comprehensive bill that would fix many of the issues. For example, a proposed bill, titled the SCORE Act<\/a>, would establish a national standard on NIL deals for student athletes, establish a manageable guideline for transfer portal eligibility, as well as protect the NCAA from countless lawsuits stemming from increased regulation. Although the bill initially died in the House of Representatives last year, the Administration now believes that it may have the votes necessary to get it to the floor for a vote.<\/p>\n

Even with the passage of the Score Act, it is going to take a fundamental reversal of antitrust jurisprudence and new national standards to reinvent the way college academic programs operate. The current landscape is mired in constant litigation often producing inarticulable standards. Paving a path forward is going to take bipartisan agreement and sweeping legislation to effectuate lasting change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

College sports once featured iconic teams of students that would return year after year to compete for glory in tournaments like March Madness and the College Football Playoff. Now, teams are sparsely populated with returning players. Prior to the start of the 2025 March Madness tournament, more than half of the players that competed in the tournament played for a different D1 team before the start of the season. Following the advent of NIL (\u201cName, Image, and Likeness\u201d), and recent rule changes surrounding the transfer portal, college sports are more like a professional, free-agent market. Team loyalty and the once classic \u201cunderdog\u201d Cinderella stories are a thing of the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":185,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,14],"tags":[447,1390,1421],"class_list":["post-6915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antitrust","category-department-of-justice","tag-college-sports","tag-ncaa","tag-nil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/185"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6916,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6915\/revisions\/6916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}