Wetzel: It’s brand-new rules, usual game in NCAA athlete

Dan WetzelJun 11, 2025, 06:13 AM ET Close Dan Wetzel is a senior writer focused on investigative reporting, news analysis and function storytelling.Back in 2004, Bob Knight, the late Hall of Fame basketball coach, offered a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. He wanted to make a point about the NCAA’s addiction to passing arcane rules.He brought a couple of props.Editor’s Picks 1 Related One was a copy of the United States Constitution, whatever nicely printed throughout 15 pages. The other was the NCAA

Division I manual, thick and hardcovered, that he dropped on a table with a purposeful thud. Inside were countless bylaws and subsets and diagrams.” This is what’s incorrect with college athletics,” Knight said.Knight’s point was accurate, although in fairness to the NCAA, the

only factor its manual grew to such extremes was due to the fact that coaches, players,

boosters, administrators and even shoe companies kept breaking or discovering work-arounds to almost every rule it ever made. Additions and adaptations were forever needed.The easiest of concepts– players might get just tuition, room and board– didn’t stand a possibility against the wheels of industrialism, where your worth is what someone will pay you.

“9 out of 10 schools are cheating,”another late, great basketball coach, Jerry Tarkanian, as soon as quipped.”The other remains in last place. “College athletics is back in the guidelines business after a quick break during which name, image and similarity basically permitted donors to compensate players and hires as they saw fit.Within college sports, this was dubbed”the Wild, Wild West,”although it was really just above-the-table action that has, for generations, took place under it.Last Friday, Claudia Wilken, a federal judge in California, authorized the so-called Home settlement, ushering in a brand-new period with echoes of the past.The offer allows schools to straight share earnings with their athletes but tries to put a cap on general payouts($ 20.5 million for a whole school), fails to make the players university staff members and initiates a complex system designed to determine what a real NIL

deal is(think Caitlin Clark repping State Farm, not a million bucks in exchange for a couple of social media posts). In theory, it’s not the worst concept (unless you are a full free-market supporter). In practice, though, well, we have decades and years of college sports history that recommends individuals are very unlikely to follow the rules. Any rules.”I believe [enforcement will]

be very hard,”Kansas basketball coach Costs Self stated back in March.The free market of NIL over the last few years was a shock to the system of those in college sports, who have taken on some type of Stockholm Syndrome courtesy of that huge manual. They may have hated it, but then again,

a minimum of it existed. “We’ve remained in an unregulated environment without any rules and no enforcement,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said Monday.True, except competitive balance in fact leveled during the open NIL period– definitely in football and men’s basketball, where more groups from more locations can fielding championship game competitors. Talent, at least among the top 50 schools, expanded

. Geography, “blue blood”history and preferred shoe business status no longer appeared to matter as much.If absolutely nothing else, much of it was visible.

There were no more incorrect caps. No more bagmen or vehicles in grandmother’s name, or Adidas executives getting transported off by the FBI.”I don’t want it to get where they put it back under the table,” Houston basketball coach Kelvin Sampson informed ESPN in March.” Let’s keep whatever above. Let’s keep whatever on the table. “With open NIL, there was no more pretending. If someone associated with Texas Tech thought a softball pitcher deserved $1.2 million a year, then so be it. That’s what she deserved. Good for her.Trying to state otherwise breaks organization concepts and humanity. What is value, specifically when

athletes stay designated as students and not workers under binding contracts? Can this stand up to legal challenges?Will coaches and fans accept lower lineups due to the fact that they have reached their”salary cap”

? Will those who don’t and are implicated of cheating simply roll over and agree under a brand-new, allegedly structured enforcement system? Or will everybody attorney up, rally around the coach and fight to the bitter end, wailing about

unfairness as they always have?Is the new mess just the old mess in a new bundle?”Our schools desire guidelines, and we are offering guidelines, and we will be governed by those guidelines,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark stated.”If you break those guidelines, the ramifications

will be punitive. “College sports leaders appear to be counting on everyone simply accepting not skirt the guidelines this time. On the other hand, almost every coach in the nation is offering up confidential quotes suggesting doubt.”I have actually beinged in meeting rooms with each of our coaches’groups, “SEC commissioner Greg Sankey stated. “And I have actually asked …’ If you desire an uncontrolled, open system, simply raise

your hand and let me know.’ And generally the answer is,’No, we want oversight, we desire guardrails, we want structure.'” Those individuals don’t have the high-end to just state that in meeting rooms, duration,”Sankey said.”

They do not have the luxury to be confidential sources. They have the responsibility to make what they have actually sought, what they have actually requested, to make it work. “Maybe. However, actually? What sounds great conceptually is different when it occurs to you.The value of a player who can provide triumphes is substantial, even unquantifiable. Coaches keep financially rewarding jobs. Schools indulge in earnings, publicity and new-student applications. Alums get the immeasurable happiness of winning, which can outstrip all useful monetary sense.With NIL staying a thing, booster collectives continuing to operate, and players still permitted to have agents and online marketers, the paths to additional pay outside the authorized quantities or structure are nearly limitless. If the NCAA could not police additional benefits

before, this feels difficult.”It isn’t going to be perfect,”Phillips of the ACC

yielded. “But we’re committed to progress: knowing, adapting, strengthening the model to support and safeguard college sports.”That’s how that NCAA handbook when got so big. Here we are again, though; the era of deregulation is over. New rules. Exact same game.