Tony’s takes: My three-step plan to save college football

Create a single transfer window 

Impose a roster-transaction window 

Allow binding NIL contracts 

Drink of the week — Old Fashioned 

Last week, the attorneys representing the NCAA and power conferences agreed to a revised plan to phase in roster limits as part of a revised House v. NCAA settlement before Judge Claudia Wilken in the U.S. Northern Districk Court of California. The proposal, which would effectively grandfather all current student-athletes and any that were preemptively cut before the settlement was finalized, would appear to satisfy Wilken’s request last month.

And while Wilken is currently considering the revised proposal, if approved, the House v. NCAA settlement would pave the way for revenue-sharing between NCAA schools and student-athletes, with some programs able to share between $20-22 million annually, or 22-percent of the average Power Five school’s annual revenue, along with approximately $2.75 billion in back damages to former college athletes over a 10-year span. It would also mean strict roster limits in football (105), men’s and women’s basketball (15), baseball (34), softball (25), men’s and women’s soccer (28) and volleyball (18).

But, at least for any coaches concerned about having to cut players three months before the start of the 2025-26 academic school year, the amended settlement would seem to be a welcomed relief. Wisconsin head coach Luke Fickell, for one, explained the complicated balancing act football coaches have faced in recent months amid the ongoing uncertainty about the true impact of the settlement.

“I think the hardest thing about that is (that there are) some of the guys within your program that even in the winter we had some conversations with to say, ‘Hey, I don’t know what this thing is going to go to. If it goes to 105, we’re going to have to make some tough decisions.’ So there are some guys I think that could be looming in their head,” Fickell said last month during Spring practice. “If they do make this decision and it does come down and it is across the board, meaning everybody is going to have to conform to it, and there’s going to be obviously somebody paying attention and making sure everybody is on the same page. Then we’ll address that.

“(But) no, we can’t go about doing the things and building the things expecting to have to cut down, but I know that could be difficult on some guys that are curious what’s going to happen, and what their opportunities are going to be.”

Fickell admitted many of those conversations have already taken place at Wisconsin, though no definitive decisions will be made until the settlement has been approved and guidance is provided to programs.

“We have. And just trying to be forthright, … we care about all these kids, especially the guys that have been here for a while. If and when they do go to that, there’s going to have to be some tough decisions made. And it’s not going to be easy,” Fickell continued. “We don’t know the parameters to it all, we don’t know what that entails. Can guys be in waiting, can they still be apart of some things? We have no idea. So for us to jump too far ahead other than just being really honest and open with guys, and making sure they know what we feel and where we are with things, but not making any decisions.”

The devil is in the details, and until Wilken officially approves all parts of the revised House v. NCAA settlement, college football coaches like Fickell remain in wait-and-see mode.

— On3’s Pete Nakos and Nick Schultz contributed to this report.

A college sports commission is coming. And it’s coming for the money the players are now making.

If that wasn’t obvious, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) made it so in comments to CNN that were broadcast on Sunday.

“He’s got a commission that he’s putting together,” Tuberville said regarding President Trump’s plan to save college sports from itself. “I’ve recommended some people to go on it, of course. I’ve been working on it for four years. Nick Saban is gonna be involved. I think the NIL is in dire need of restructuring.”

And there it is. When Tuberville says “NIL is in dire need of restructuring,” he means that the players need to be making less money. And that they need to have less flexibility to go from one school to another, in order to make more money — or to simply be happier with their situation.

Earlier this month, Tuberville made his views clear regarding the preferred outcome during a radio interview: “Everybody would be on the same level. We’ve got to come up with some rules for the transfer portal, possibly a contract for players. We do not want to turn into minor league sports. I talked to [Auburn men’s basketball coach] Bruce Pearl a few weeks ago, he says it’s a disaster, absolute disaster in basketball, and I’m sure it goes over into football and some of the other sports.”

It’s a “disaster” for the schools, not the players. It’s a “disaster” for the school because decades of antitrust violations have yielded to a free market for player services. And, like so many other issues that aren’t really issues, some in politics are trying to take a trumped-up “disaster” and make it into a crisis that cries out for a solution that isn’t actually needed.

And, of course, Tuberville believes that anyone who opposes an outcome that saves the colleges to the detriment of the players hates America.

“I think we can get [legislation] on the floor, the problem is getting it past a Democrat group that really wants nothing to do with making this country better,” Tuberville said in the same radio interview. “They don’t care about college sports or education, they worry about the power that they control in this country.

What of caring about the players who will see their compensation drop and mobility restricted as a result of the NIL reform? Does it “make the country better” to artificially restrict someone’s earnings and flexibility?

Aren’t we all supposed to have the right to pursue happiness?

Tuberville, Saban, and their ilk are trafficking in multiple false presumptions, in an effort to engineer “happiness” for the colleges and the coaches. One, that college sports is broken. Two, that the colleges shouldn’t be expected to fix the problem on their own. Three, that big-time college sports is truly about education. Four, that there’s something bad about young men making as much money as they can.

It’s all one gigantic crock of shit. At its core, this is about a certain group of people making things the way they want them to be, not the way they need to be. And if, as we predict, the upcoming college sports commission has no true voice to advocate for the rights of the players, it will be a sham aimed at turning back the clock to the days when the colleges (and the coaches) had the power and the players didn’t.

Here’s what they want, in a nutshell: Amateur sports from the perspective of the players who will once again be exploited by the system, and professional sports from the fat cats who can return to the days of lighting their backroom cigars with $100 bills.