Unsettled

The House settlement is a Rorschach test.

Happy Father’s Day to all who celebrate — especially to my dad, Paul Dougherty, the most devoted reader and commenter here, even though he’s never been much of a college sports guy. Of course, that’s why dads are the best, and since mine often asks when I’m writing next, I figured I would ship out a post this afternoon. (I also mentioned I would likely have some additional thoughts on last Thursday’s Congressional hearing on college sports, so we’re killing two birds with one newsletter.).

So I don’t overdo the cat photos, I’ll likely switch between them and the my other phone-camera-related hobby: Snapping pictures of random basketball hoops. This one is in our new neighborhood and is currently my computer background.

Unsettled

When I watch Congressional hearings for work, I keep a running list of thoughts, all stream of consciousness, in a Word document or on a legal pad. (When I watch Congressional hearings not for work, I re-evaluate everything that has happened to that point of my life).

On Thursday, for the latest college sports hearing in the House of Representatives, I went with a legal pad. It began like this:

Starts at 10:03.

Took 40 seconds for Gus Bilirakis to mention the House settlement.

I can’t remember if I actually timed it. But it either was 40 seconds or felt like 40 seconds, which made the same point that Bilirakis, chair of the House subcommittee that held the hearing, got straight to his and the NCAA’s main argument for federal legislation: The now-approved House vs. NCAA settlement fixes a lot of major issues in college sports, mainly because it will allow schools to directly pay athletes for the first time. And for that reason more than any other, Congress should help the NCAA enforce a host of new rules established by the settlement, mainly by delivering sweeping protection from antitrust lawsuits.

That, again, is the view of the college sports establishment and many Republican politicians. But as shown at Thursday’s hearing, a lot of House Democrats and athlete labor advocates disagree. Then to take it a step further, those people are flipping the entire argument around, saying the House settlement is exactly why the NCAA and its conferences SHOULDN’T receive the antitrust protections they’ve long sought (and in recent years, have spent millions of lobbying dollars to get).

This is why the House settlement is a Rorschach test. It is either proof of progress, of a a changed NCAA, that deserves a silver bullet of legal protection to restore order to college sports (fewer transfers, less booster spending, eligibility rules that can’t be challenged in court, etc.). Or the settlement shows that progress only happened because of the lawsuits it concluded, meaning the next phase of progress would require additional lawsuits, meaning they should continue as needed without Congress getting in the way.

Yvette Clarke, a Democratic Rep. from New York, summed up the latter view Thursday, saying at the hearing: “I am extremely hesitant to grant any kind of liability limit on antitrust protections at this stage given that antitrust lawsuits are the driving factor in bringing about this long overdue era of fair compensation for athletes.”

The House settlement consolidated three major antitrust cases — House, Hubbard and Carter — that claimed past restrictions on college athlete compensation were illegal. After it was approved June 6, NCAA president Charlie Baker released a statement that included the lines: “Approving the agreement reached by the NCAA, the defendant conferences and student-athletes in the settlement opens a pathway to begin stabilizing college sports. Opportunities to drive transformative change don’t come often to organizations like ours. It’s important we make the most of this one.”

Re-ordered a bit, that was Baker articulating his hope for what the settlement would bring: Transformative change (schools finally paying athletes) opening a pathway to stabilizing college sports (with a big assist from Congress). When I profiled him last fall, he laid out a similar timeline, one he’s repeated many times over. Once the NCAA cleaned up its house, Baker reasoned, Congress would be more willing to handle the parts it couldn’t reach — you know, the floorboards behind the radiator, the potential lawsuits on new-look compensation restrictions that weren’t negotiated in collective bargaining, that sort of stuff. But now, with the three cases settled, there are rules in the settlement that seem ripe for another round of suits, namely an annual spending cap for schools and a system in which the NCAA and power conferences will attempt to regulate the booster spending that’s driven the name, image and likeness (NIL) economy for four years.

That’s why, in the partisan argument over what Congress should do with college sports — or if it should do anything at all — some are wielding the settlement in a much different way. When you look at the inkblot, what do you see?