Stakeholders navigate the ever-evolving NIL space and incremental movement toward a potential landscape-shifting employee model. All the while, the NCAA fervently pursues
a Congressional antitrust lifeline and confronts its own uncertain future.
In recent weeks, On3's reporting team conducted exclusive interviews with more than 50 leading college sports voices – commissioners, athletic directors, coaches, athletes, NIL and legal experts and others – for their insights on the most consequential issues. On3 will publish their responses, along with accompanying stories, throughout the week.
Perspectives run the gamut. One consensus: Radical change is afoot.
"There is no question college sports has been slow to change," NCAA President Charlie Baker told On3. "The NCAA is making real progress in delivering greater benefits to student-athletes and will continue to, but employment should not be one of those changes."
Public sentiment around athlete rights has evolved. Broadcast revenue has risen astronomically. And in a post-Alston world, courts and other entities increasingly look askance at the NCAA's slow-to-advance amateur model.
A brave new world awaits.
"The NCAA is going to have to adapt," SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey told On3. "All of us should confess we are part of it. We have been slow to adapt. I think there's a clear need for a national association, and the NCAA can fill that role. But change is going to be a constant and more rapid as we try to decipher what that role will be."
We approach a tipping point, industry leaders say, if we aren't there already. Consequential change to the industry's financial model is coming – the only questions are what the new paradigm will entail and what entity will be the catalyst.
Some forward-thinking stakeholders are already embracing what may be seen as a virtual inevitability: a revenue-sharing model.
"I support establishing a new structure that allows for us to rightly share some revenue with student-athletes," Oklahoma
Athletic Director Joe Castiglione told On3. "That has to be part of our path forward. However, I also recognize that path takes us to an unknown reality with unpredictable economic implications for our departments, dramatically impacting how we can support a broad-based athletics program."
Others, like Texas A&M Athletic Director Ross Bjork, told On3: "We have protected amateurism way too long. We held athletes back from real NIL opportunities when it would have been much simpler ... We haven't sat down with our athletes and asked them, 'What do you want out of this experience?' We've done a lot of this to ourselves."
And some with a half-century of experience in the collegiate arena view this for what it is: an unprecedented time of dynamic evolution.
"It won't surprise me if one conference decides to go off and maybe pay some athletes and others decide not to," Tom McMillen, CEO of LEAD1 Association, told On3.
So many existential issues are swirling, the former U.S. Congressman later added, "I've never seen anything like it in my association with college sports." – Eric Prisbell
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