Following President Donald Trump’s executive order on college sports last week, the idea of athlete employment is in the spotlight. Trump instructed the National Labor Relations Board to reaffirm college athletes are not employees.

All the while, the SCORE Act is on track for the floor of the House of Representatives, and it would also declare athletes are not employees. But North Carolina athletics director Bubba Cunningham said collective bargaining could still be worth exploring if the bill fails to pass the chambers of Congress.

Speaking on Athletes.org founder Jim Cavale’s Now It’s Legal podcast, Cunningham pointed out the complexities and questions that come with the idea of athlete employment and collective bargaining. One of the key issues is the difference in revenue between sports, not to mention Title IX. That’s why there would be multiple factors to consider.

“The SCORE Act … I think may be a step in the right direction,” Cunningham said. “I’ve seen a lot of people that are now already against the SCORE Act. But I think there’s a lot of really good things in that bill that would make some sense. If that doesn’t happen, I do think collective bargaining is a very good avenue for us to pursue. But you understand the complexities of that. There are 500,000 student-athletes in the NCAA. We have 28 teams. We have 800 student-athletes, 100 of which play sports that generate more money than they spend.

“So how do you kind of tease out the differences between students that participate in sports that generate revenue? How does Title IX fit into that equation? How do you get to a position where you can say, ‘Okay, this set of students, we’re going to treat differently and allow them to collectively bargain because they generate a lot of revenue. But this group of students over here are going to be treated differently.’ We’re struggling with that as an industry. We’re struggling with that as a nation, quite frankly, because we don’t know where Title IX fits, we don’t know where Title VII fits and we’ve got to figure out, how do we change the economic model and comply with federal law? So what I think the biggest thing we need to find is, what is a common space that has legal protection that we can get comfortable with?”

‘Is there a way for students to collectively bargain and remain students?’

With regard to collective bargaining, Bubba Cunningham said one of his biggest questions is if that would be possible without employment status. A now-rescinded memo from the Biden administration stated they viewed college athletes as employees of their institutions under the National Labor Relations Act.

Based on his conversations with employment lawyers, Cunningham learned how hard it is to differentiate between students and employees. That’s not to mention different state laws, as well as public vs. private universities and a governance structure.

“The employment lawyers that I talked to said, it’s hard to differentiate if you’re required to be somewhere for an extended period of time, perform a certain kind of work and these are the requirements to participate – that looks like an employee. Not a student. … Is there a way for students to collectively bargain and remain students, and not become employees?” Cunningham said. “Because you have all of the different laws by state, whether it’s a right-to-work state or not. You have public schools and private schools. And you have done a really good job of trying to segregate those entities into smaller groups and say, ‘Okay, maybe this group should be allowed to collectively bargain.’

“Then, we’d have to change some NCAA rules that would allow that portion of the governance structure to work differently than the rest of the governance structure. That’s what we’re working on, and I think we’re headed in the right direction. I think it’s just going to take some time to get there.”

Bubba Cunningham: ‘Incumbent’ to explore collective bargaining

As for when an answer could come on the idea of collective bargaining, Bubba Cunningham said he hears frustrations about why it isn’t happening right now. He noted the ever-changing landscape, especially with federal legislation in the works – something he didn’t think could happen a couple years ago.

With that, there are multiple layers beyond Congress. It then goes to the state level, then the conferences, then the schools. That’s why Cunningham said it will take time to decide if college sports could go down the path of collective bargaining.

“Everyone wants to have an immediate answer – and I know that people get frustrated and say, ‘Hey, we know we’re going to collectively bargain. Let’s just do it right now,’” Cunningham said. “I do think you have to kind of bring people along. I didn’t think, two years ago, that we’d have much chance of getting any kind of bill through Congress. Well, it’s not through, but we’ve had one that’s been introduced. Now, it’s getting shot at from all different sides. The idea that politics are local.

“So we’ve got Congress now at least talking about it. … The next layer of that’s going to be at the state level. I’m at a state school. There’s a lot of state schools out there that have governors and have [attorneys general] that feel differently about the NCAA and the national governing body. We’ve got to bring all those people along. It’s incumbent on all of us in the industry to really examine it … is, what is the best way to economically support intercollegiate athletics today? And that is the broad group of the national governing body, the smaller group of a conference and then, we’re all the way down to a school and the individual students. It all changes depending on the perspective that you have.”

A new chapter in college athletics has begun … but the story is far from finished. This summer’s landmark House v. NCAA settlement cracked open the door to revenue sharing and ushered in sweeping reforms, but even a multibillion-dollar agreement can’t escape turbulence. Legal challenges are already mounting, Congress is inching closer to direct involvement, and the sport’s power brokers are bracing for another round of seismic decisions as key media deals — including that involving the College Football Playoff — near expiration in the early 2030s.

Using the House settlement’s 10-year timeline as a guiding framework, CBS Sports spoke with dozens of stakeholders to explore what the future of college athletics might look like by 2035. This four-part series begins with the most crucial piece of them all: the players.

The Collective Bargaining Chip

As college sports hurtle into a new era of revenue sharing and tighter reins on third-party payments, the landscape is shifting fast — and not without friction. A new battle is brewing between athletes and administrators, one that could redefine the power dynamic at the heart of the multibillion-dollar enterprise.

Yes, players are finally sharing revenue with their schools, but they still lack negotiating power over salary caps, health benefits and rule making. Across the sprawling ecosystem of stakeholders — athletic directors, attorneys, commissioners, and player advocates — there’s little agreement on whether collective bargaining is a solution, a threat or both.

Tennessee athletics director Danny White saw the storm clouds forming back on July 1, 2021 — the day the NCAA cracked open the door for athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. What followed was a chaotic rush into a largely unregulated marketplace where some NIL deals looked more like thinly veiled pay-for-play handouts than legitimate business arrangements. Now, with the $2.8 billion House settlement and federal proposals like the SCORE Act on the table, some within college athletics believe the chaos might finally be contained by a set of new guardrails.

Others, like White, believe the House setlement doesn’t address key issues related to athlete compensation — and that means the threat of more antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA, its conferences and schools is likely.

“There’s only two ways,” White told CBS Sports. “Congressional intervention or complying with the law. There is a pathway by which we can comply with the law: it’s called collective bargaining.”

“Collective bargaining” may as well be a four-letter word in the collegiate space, but the idea is gaining traction among power brokers. Legal hurdles, both state and federal, along with a decades-long battle against unionization, make such a shift politically and logistically complex.

Check out Part 1: After the House v. NCAA Settlement: Expiring media rights deals set to reshape college football by 2035

Colleges withholding revenue-sharing contract details: How schools can remain tight-lipped on player payments Richard Johnson

That hasn’t stopped White. For three years he’s quietly developed a collective bargaining model he believes could save college sports from the paralysis of future litigation, endless rule rewrites and constant internal strife.

His plan would not classify players as university employees. Instead, it proposes a national employment organization for football and men’s basketball players. They would be employed by that entity — akin to the Screen Actors Guild — and represented by a players association capable of negotiating salary caps, health and educational benefits and rules governing the sports. That would include taming the unregulated transfer portal that’s thrown rosters into disarray.

“We can draw a line of delineation as it relates to antitrust and Title IX between the two sports that profit, and all the rest of our sports that are so important to the college athletics model,” White said.

White’s framework would also sidestep state labor laws, a critical detail in the football-obsessed SEC where right-to-work laws dominate. Still, the politics remain thorny. “The right-to-work, red-state, blue-state thing has confused this issue,” White said. “They don’t have to be employees of the schools, they don’t have to be employees of the states. They could all be employees of one national entity.”

Commissioners often argue players already have a voice through the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, which provides input on major issues but lacks the voting clout of unions like those in the NFL or NBA. In recent years, administrators have refused to engage with groups calling themselves players associations.

“The last thing these commissioners and NCAA officials want are athletes having an independent voice where they can actually have access to real information, not NCAA propaganda that is self serving to the schools, administrators, their salaries and their interests,” said Ramogi Huma, executive director of the College Players Association and vociferous critic of the NCAA’s policies.

White’s collective bargaining proposal ruffled feathers within the SEC.

“I’ve opined about bargaining,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in the spring. “I’m not going to jump into some public disagreement.”

Sankey, who has mastered the art of deflection, has a record of skepticism on collective bargaining.

“I think that’s problematic for a number of reasons,” he said last summer. “I think there’s a better way.”

🗣️ What key voices in collective bargaining debate say

Name / Title Stance Key Quote Danny White (Tennessee AD) Pro–bargaining, non-employee “There’s only two ways…” Greg Sankey (SEC Commissioner) Preservation of status quo “I think [collective bargaining] is problematic …” Ramogi Huma (College Players Assoc.) Strong pro-labor “They want real info, not propaganda.” Maddie Salamone (Sports Attorney) Pro-union “Sweeping antitrust exemption = jeopardy.” Jay Ezelle (NIL Attorney) Anti–employee model “We just killed college athletics.”

Conference administrators remain hopeful that Congress — via the newly introduced SCORE Act — will codify aspects of the $2.8 billion House settlement, which took effect July 1. The settlement allows schools to share up to $20.5 million annually with athletes, with the aggregate increasing by at least 4% annually over the next decade. Revenue sharing and NIL deals now fall under the oversight of the newly formed College Sports Commission — a leaner, more nimble enforcement body created as part of the House settlement to replace the NCAA’s previous, often-criticized system.

“It’s positive progress and has an opportunity to serve the enterprise well,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “For the naysayers, the alternative was bleak, continued uncertainty, never-ending legal challenges and enforcement that was somewhat marginalized because of legal issues.”

Still, the new framework isn’t immune to legal pushback.

Conferences and the NCAA have spent millions lobbying lawmakers in Washington over the last several years, asking for antitrust protection from a slew of lawsuits related to player compensation, movement and eligibility. After years of losing court battles, the NCAA is closer than ever from getting what they want in Congress.

“If the NCAA is granted a broad, sweeping antitrust exemption, athlete collective bargaining and representation is in tremendous jeopardy,” said Maddie Salamone, a sports law attorney and former vice president of the College Football Players Association. “You’re going to see a lot of litigation over all of this for a number of years, regardless. Effectively, if the NCAA is given that antitrust exemption, they’re just going to claw everything back.”

The SCORE Act would override existing NIL laws in 34 states — many of which conflict — and provide limited legal immunity to the NCAA and its member schools. It would also officially deem athletes as students, not employees, striking at the heart of the current labor debate. Critics argue the bill undercuts the power that players have only recently begun to build.

“If Congress is going to come in and give us antitrust protection and allow us to set up guardrails that are fair for everybody, with basically a pass on what the Sherman Act says, then we don’t need collective bargaining,” White said. “That could be a solution. I don’t suggest that we go back to the way it used to be. I think it’s great that the players are making money. They should have always gotten a piece of the pie, and we’ve settled that with the past damages and the House settlement, and moving forward, they’ll get a piece of the pie, and they deserve that, but the system needs organization and guardrails, and I’m not sure that the House settlement on its own is enough for us to put those things in place.”

But do players even want to unionize? That’s far from clear. No prominent players have organized, and commissioners claim athletes don’t want to become employees.

📉 What changes if players are employees?

Scenario Players Are Employees Players Are Not Employees Taxes Yes (payroll, W-2) Yes (self-employment tax on NIL, usually 1099) Union Rights Yes No (limited input only) Contracts Binding, multi-year deals NIL-based, flexible, often short-term Transfer Rules May involve buyouts Loosely governed, little enforcement Health Benefits Employer-sponsored Varies by school or NCAA policy Risk of Termination Yes (can be cut or traded) No

If college players become employees, schools will have to treat them exactly like employees under the law — paying payroll taxes, providing benefits, obeying labor relations rules, etc. Players could also be fired or traded. “Think of the Pandora’s box we opened,” said Jay Ezelle, an attorney who represents several NIL collectives, including Yea Alabama, the Crimson Tide’s official NIL collective. If universities must treat athletes as workers, “we just killed college athletics,” Ezelle warned.

“I talk to a lot of student-athletes, I’ve not encountered one who wants to be an employee,” he continued. “What I hear from them is we’ve got this pretty good right now. We like what we’re doing. We like this setup.

“I would start listening to the student-athletes on this. It’s amazing to me that there’s all this talk that we need CBAs, and none of it is coming from student-athletes.”

Said one executive within a power conference who wished to remain anonymous: “That is more than just a talking point. That is a thing. The commissioners are coming at it from a place where they recognize a lot of their student-athletes don’t want it.”

Vocal or not, more than 4,100 players, including 2,365 in power conferences, are members of Athletes.org, chairman Jim Cavale said. Members include Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia and former Arizona State swimmer Grant House, the namesake of the antitrust lawsuit that has paved the way for revenue sharing with players. Cavale claims 12 of 16 athletic directors in the SEC support collective bargaining, though most remain silent.

Supporters say organizing has been slow because the rules keep shifting.

“What’s happened the last few years has given athletes crash courses on what their rights are and what they should be thinking about longterm,” Salamone said.

But corralling thousands of players across dozens of programs is no small feat.

“They’re a hard cohort to wrangle because they graduate and move around so quickly, and they’re young people,” Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez told CBS Sports. ” I feel like a lot has been done to increase their organization and voice in the NCAA system. Would they be more effective if they had an outside organization? I don’t know the answer to that.”

Athletes.org is seeking collective bargaining under a non-employee model, working within the House settlement’s framework. Cavale has drafted legislation — the Save College Athletics Act — and is seeking sponsors in Congress.

Meanwhile, NIL deals have grown more complex. Many now include buyouts and penalties if players transfer. Arkansas, for example, is attempting to recoup nearly $500,000 from a contract signed by quarterback Madden Iamaleava, who left the school for UCLA after just four months on campus to join his brother, former Tennessee QB Nico Iamaleava.

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin is a supporter of a player-backed organizations because he believes it could eliminate headaches in the current system.

“For a while now it’s all been very player friendly with the regulations and rules around it,” he said. “Now it’s going to come back somewhere in the middle, but there probably needs to be [collective bargaining] because you’re still going to have a lot of loophole issues and problems for both sides until there’s real contracts that have years to them.”

The National College Players Association, however, believes anything short of full employee status denies athletes their rights under labor laws.

The SCORE Act, which is backed by the NCAA, was introduced July 10 and has the most support in Washington, though it remains questionable whether it will pass a divided Senate, where several Democrats would need to support the Republican-backed bill.

“We’ll still be in a world where we don’t have the guardrails we need,” White said. “That doesn’t touch the transfer issue at all.”

A Democrat-backed bill that would make players employees under the National Labor Relations Act was introduced the same week as the SCORE Act. The “College Athlete Right to Organize Act” has been endorsed by the major players associations in professional sports.

Cavale believes organizing players at the top 20 programs could create a domino effect across the FBS, with negotiations separated by tier. He thinks that shift could happen within two years — if schools get on board.

“They want the result but haven’t taken the time to grasp how to do it,” Cavale said.

There are other avenues that may disrupt the new model introduced under the House settlement.

Tennessee AD Danny White has served as a key voice in helping shape the uncertain future of college athletes. Imagn Images

Other factors could still unravel the House model. If a future court ruling — like the pending Johnson v. NCAA case — determines players are employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act, defendants in the House settlement could seek to modify or eliminate the current revenue-sharing structure.

Huma, a vocal advocate for labor rights, believes the battle over employee status won’t be resolved within the next decade — and that the House settlement may eventually fall.

“I could see 10 years from now there’s a free market, just like there are for coaches, commissioners and ADs who make millions of dollars,” Huma said. “I haven’t seen a piece of legislation yet that would cap coaches’ salaries in the name of preserving amateursim or common sense. I haven’t seen any legislation restricting coaches from movement for one team to another in the interest of stabilizing rosters.”

Introducing ideas like unionization, NIL rights and pay-for-play into a 100-year-old system that had long banned player compensation altogether has sent shockwaves through college sports. Historically, the NCAA has changed only when forced — most often by the courts.

Former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby co-chaired the NCAA’s NIL Task Force in 2019, two years before the Supreme Court’s Alston ruling and a flurry of state NIL laws forced the NCAA’s hand. Bowlsby believed progress was being made on fair guidelines — never intended to be inducements — before legislation upended the process.

“We all knew this is exactly what was going to happen,” White said. “It’s not NIL, and for us to continue to say it’s not pay-for-play … I mean, come on, what are we talking about? We’re so intellectually dishonest with the words we’re using.”

For decades, inequity has been a silent undercurrent within the NCAA model. Now, that imbalance is finally being challenged in full view.

“You see $12 million coaches and you don’t blame the kids for wondering, ‘What about me? I’m doing all the work,'” Bowlsby said. “It’s particularly difficult when a lot of the star participants are young African Americans and the people, for the most part, that are making the money, are old white guys. It’s easy to see why we got to where we got to.”

Proposals to stabilize the system range from preserving vestiges of amateurism to embracing a full-fledged free market. Yet, more leaders believe football — the financial engine of college athletics — may eventually need to break away from the traditional model to address Title IX concerns and create a workable partnership with players.

More than a dozen Power Five athletic directors told CBS Sports they believe collective bargaining is a road worth exploring.

“A lot of people think it’s inevitable but aren’t saying it,” a power conference executive said. “There’s going to be too many complications that continue to come up that will ultimately result in the biggest voices saying, ‘F*** it, let’s try this.'”

On July 2nd, Harvard announced that it had decided to remove a significant number of graduate students from the bargaining unit represented by HGSU. The University said that it would no longer “include any students in the bargaining unit receiving stipends to pursue research toward their degrees.” The explanation for this decision was brief. The email announcement stated only that “[u]nder the law, only employees can unionize. These stipendee students are not employees because they do not perform services for the university in exchange for compensation, a determination that has been recently clarified by multiple decisions interpreting the NLRA.”

This conclusion runs counter to recent history in the law and at Harvard. First, the law. Under current NLRB precedent, graduate student TAs and RAs are employees of the universities where they work so long as they meet the common law definition of employee and irrespective of whether their relationship with the University could be described as primarily academic or educational. Under the rule of Columbia University, graduate students are employees within the meaning of federal labor law and thus entitled to be included in a bargaining unit where “they perform work, at the direction of the university, for which they are compensated.” Applying this test in Columbia, the Board found that an extremely wide range of graduate student research and teaching assistants met the definition of employee and were appropriately included in a bargaining unit.

Next, recent history at Harvard. Up until the University’s announcement, all stipendee research assistants had been included in the HGSU bargaining unit and had been covered by the parties’ collective bargaining agreement.

So, what changed? Since Columbia was decided, a single regional director of the NLRB has decided two cases in which she upheld challenges to the inclusion of certain graduate students in bargaining units at MIT and Brown. In the MIT case, the regional director’s decision was approved by the NLRB on the ground that the graduate students at issue:

do not perform work controlled by the Employer in exchange for compensation. Rather, they perform research (or, occasionally, teach) to further their own academic purposes and are provided with funding to do so regardless of whether their activities also benefit the Employer.

The NLRB’s approval of the regional director’s decision in MIT explicitly did not rely on her finding “that the fellows are not statutory employees because ‘the compensation received by the fellows is not directly tied to completing particular tasks.’” In other words, the rule of the MIT case is the straightforward proposition that graduate students who do not “perform work controlled by the Employer in exchange for compensation” are not employees.

It is important to emphasize that neither of the regional director’s decisions alters the prevailing law regarding graduate student employee status that the NLRB established in Columbia. That case is binding precedent and will remain so unless and until it is reversed by another decision of the NLRB.

Next, what changed at Harvard? One salient change is that the collective bargaining agreement that had included the stipendee students expired. Under longstanding Board doctrine, the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement gave Harvard the first opportunity to make its argument about the status of the stipendee students. Of course, much else has changed since Harvard first agreed to include the stipendee students in the bargaining unit. We have seen the return of President Trump, who previously appointed members of the NLRB who were hostile to collective bargaining generally and at higher education institutions specifically.

The key question is whether any of these changes — in the law or at Harvard — mean that Harvard is justified in excluding the stipendee students from the bargaining unit. Many subsidiary questions inform this larger one: Is the work of these graduate students controlled by Harvard in exchange for compensation? Do these graduate students only teach occasionally? Do they pursue research only to advance their own, and not Harvard’s, academic purposes? Are their stipends not linked to any benefit Harvard may derive from their research? And, finally, do they perform any other tasks for the benefit of Harvard for which they receive their stipends, such as guiding or supporting undergraduates?

At bottom, the relevant question is how many of the stipendee students satisfy the test of performing no work, controlled by Harvard University, in exchange for compensation. While this is a highly fact-specific test that will require lots of line drawing, it would be surprising if all graduate students “receiving stipends to pursue research toward their degrees” meet the test. It would be surprising, in other words, if no Harvard graduate student who receives a stipend does any work that is controlled by Harvard. Whatever the facts, we trust that Harvard will respect the law it cites and exclude only those graduate students who truly perform no work, controlled by the University, in exchange for compensation. And that when the call is a close one, we hope that the University will err on the side of according collective bargaining rights to these critical members of our community.

LAS VEGAS — Less than a month into the implementation of the House settlement, college sports’ new enforcement entity is adjusting its approach.

Attorneys for the House plaintiffs have struck an agreement with the power conferences and NCAA officials to amend the decision-making from the industry’s new enforcement arm, the College Sports Commission, related to how booster-backed collectives can compensate athletes. Multiple sources spoke to Yahoo Sports under condition of anonymity.

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As part of the agreement, the College Sports Commission is expected to treat collectives or any “school-associated entity” in a similar fashion as other businesses when determining the legitimacy of third-party NIL deals submitted to the CSC’s NIL Go clearinghouse.

This is a change from the CSC’s previously publicized approach.

According to a memo sent to schools two weeks ago, the CSC — created and administered by the power conferences — explained that it has denied dozens of athlete deals from collectives because it is holding collectives to a higher threshold, announcing that businesses whose sole existence is to pay athletes (i.e. collectives) cannot meet the definition of a “valid business purpose.”

House plaintiff attorneys Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman took issue with that interpretation, sending to the NCAA and power league officials a letter demanding the guidance be retracted and suggesting those rejected deals be reinstated. Kessler, in his letter, threatened to take the issue to the magistrate judge, Nathanael Cousins, who is presiding over House settlement disputes.

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Some of the NIL deals that the CSC rejected while applying the previous guidance will be re-evaluated based on the new approach.

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A spokesperson for the power conferences and the CSC said conversations with class counsel “remain ongoing.” A formal statement will be issued when the issue has been resolved.

The interpretation of the “valid business purpose” rule is not insignificant.

It is one of two measurements used by the new CSC’s NIL Go clearinghouse to determine the legitimacy of third-party deals. The second is a Deloitte-created “compensation range” standard that deals must fall within.

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The change to the valid business purpose standard potentially opens the door for the continuation of school-affiliated, booster-backed collectives to provide athletes with compensation that, if approved by the clearinghouse, does not count against a school’s House settlement revenue-share cap. This provides collectives a path to strike deals with athletes as long as those transactions deliver to the public goods and services for a profit for the organization, such as holding athlete merchandise sales, autograph signings and athlete appearances at, for example, golf tournaments.

The resolution creates what administrators term more of a “soft cap” as opposed to a hard cap, as SEC commissioner Greg Sankey described it last week in an interview with Yahoo Sports. The expectation is that collectives will create legal ways to provide additional compensation, as Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti described Monday in an interview with Yahoo Sports from Big Ten media days.

“When something works, it gets copied,” he said. “Things happening out there to provide additional NIL deals for student athletes that make sense and are allowed under rules, you’re going to see more versions of that.”

The change also, at least for now, prevents a legal challenge from leaders of a group of NIL collectives who began drafting a lawsuit against the CSC’s approach. Over the last four years, collectives have served as the driving force for schools to compensate athletes, raising millions in booster money to provide schools a way to recruit and retain players.

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However, the CSC’s original interpretation of the “valid business purpose” definition, and resulting denials of collective deals, speaks to one of administrators’ goals of the settlement — to shift athlete pay from these booster-run organizations to the schools, which are now permitted to directly share revenue with athletes under the capped system that began July 1. That said, many schools are still operating their collectives as a way to, perhaps, circumvent the system.

For example, schools continue to operate their collectives — some out of fear that others are doing the same and some believing that the settlement will fail under the weight of legal challenges.

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“We know that some people are saying, ‘We’re not worried because we don’t think they can really enforce it.’” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin told Yahoo Sports last week from SEC media days. “They don’t think NIL contracts are going to get kicked back [by the clearinghouse] or they think they’re not going to be able to win long-term [legal challenges] because of players rights.”

Ultimately, Sankey suggested, schools hold authority to control their own affiliated collectives.

“For how long have people been begging for guardrails?” Sankey asked. “Well, now we have guardrails. Those broadly across the country that claim they wanted guardrails need to operate within the guardrails. If you allow what’s happened to continue to escalate, there would be a very small number of programs that would be competitive with each other and we’d not have a national sport or a national championship.”

The resolution may not completely end what will likely be continuous negotiations over particular enforcement rules between the power leagues controlling the CSC and the House plaintiff attorneys, who hold authority and veto powers over various aspects of the settlement.

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Petitti cautioned Tuesday that more such negotiations are expected in the future.

“I don’t think it will be the last time that an issue comes up in the process,” he said. “The settlement approval came later than expected. It compressed the time period.”

The guidance change may also not prevent future legal challenges over other enforcement aspects, including Deloitte’s compensation range concept or the appeals arbitration system that athletes can use for deals denied a second time.

The CSC, in its first month of existence, is reliant on athletes submitting deals. Athletes are required to submit any third-party deal of $600 or more to an NIL clearinghouse, NIL Go. Those deals flagged by NIL Go are sent to the CSC and its new leader, Bryan Seeley, to determine an enforcement decision. As of two weeks ago, more than 100 deals were denied and at least 100 more were under review. More than 1,500 deals had been approved.

As WNBA All-Star Weekend got underway in Indianapolis, events on the hardwood took a backseat to crucial conversations in the boardroom.

Ahead of All-Star festivities, the WNBA and its Players’ Association (WNBPA) met to continue negotiating a new Collective Bargaining Agreement after opting out of the current CBA in October.

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With the October deadline fast approaching, the sides remain far apart as they enter an important juncture in negotiations. Should no resolution be met, WNBA players are “bracing” for a work stoppage, according to a report from the New York Post’s Madeline Kenney.

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In the aftermath of that report, WNBPA president and Storm All-Star Nneka Ogwumike clarified by saying, “I guess that’s what they said. That’s not what we’re saying. We want to get a good deal done, so this meeting we’re going to have [Thursday] comes with high player participation. … I think the league and the players know what’s at stake.”

A stoppage in work would mean the 2026 season could be put on hold with a lockout looming. Here is why the league’s players are prepared for the worst as negotiations continue.

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WNBA ‘work stoppage’, explained

The potential work stoppage stems from the WNBPA announcing its intention to opt out of the current CBA at the end of the 2025 season. The deadline for the WNBPA and WNBA to come to terms on a new CBA is Oct. 31, 2025.

If no agreement is reached, the 2026 season is in danger of starting late or not starting at all.

The league and its players’ association had preliminary conversations to negotiate a new agreement in December, per CBS Sports, but no significant updates have come in the time since.

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In the lead-up to the All-Star break (July 17-19), a few WNBA players discussed the upcoming meetings and where things stood. Under the condition of anonymity, a few knowledgeable sources mentioned the potential of a work stoppage to the New York Post.

Conversations around a potential lockout are not new, as Lynx superstar Napheesa Collier mentioned the possibility during a podcast appearance in March. Collier acknowledged that “no one wants” a lockout, but added that the players are “prepared for any possibility right now.”

At that time, Ogwumike said, “We are ready to lead transformational change — change that goes beyond women’s sports and sets a precedent for something greater.”

Ogwumike added that “Opting out isn’t just about bigger paychecks — it’s about claiming our rightful share of the business we’ve built, improving working conditions, and securing a future where the success we create benefits today’s players and the generations to come. We’re not just asking for a CBA that reflects our value; we’re demanding it, because we’ve earned it.”

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Ahead of the July meetings in Indianapolis, Liberty guard Natasha Cloud planned to be one of 20-plus players on hand. Of negotiations, Cloud said, “This is a huge CBA for us. We know our worth. We know our value. And this is us going and fighting for it,” per Kenney.

Before heading to Indianapolis, an “encouraged” Ogwumike said she looked forward to beginning All-Star weekend with those meetings, citing past CBA negotiations that accelerated through face-to-face meetings.

The meeting took place on Thursday, July 17, involving more than 40 players. The WNBPA issued a statement upon the meeting’s conclusion asserting that the league’s response to the union’s concerns “fails to address the priorities” players have centered in recent years, namely building a “transformational CBA” that improves work conditions.

“This business is booming,” the WNBPA declared in a statement. “Media rights, ratings, revenue, team valuations, expansion fees, attendance, ticket sales are all up in historic fashion. But short-changing the working women who make the business possible stalls growth. The only thing more unsustainable than the current system is pretending it can go on forever.

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“It’s not complicated.”

Ahead of the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game, all players on both teams removed their warm-ups to reveal shirts that read “Pay Us What You Owe Us,” with the WNBAPA’s logo.

As it stands, the current agreement is believed to be more owner-friendly in terms of revenue sharing, and, as acknowledged by Ogwumike, players are looking for a greater share of the overall business and better working conditions.

What is a work stoppage?

A work stoppage in professional sports is when the league’s procedures come to a halt due to a lack of an agreement between the league and its players’ union. This is also referred to as a lockout.

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In the event of a lockout, games will not be scheduled as the league would effectively have no players,

The most recent notable example in professional basketball was the NBA lockout in 2011, which caused the beginning of the 2011-12 season to be delayed by two months and truncated to 66 games. The league and its players’ association reached an agreement in November, and games began on Christmas Day.

What is a CBA in the WNBA?

A CBA is a collective bargaining agreement.

By definition, the WNBA’s CBA is a written contract negotiated through collective bargaining for players by the players’ union with the league itself. The agreement regulates the terms and conditions of player contracts, among many other procedural rules.

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The CBA that is set to expire in 2025 is 350 pages long and contains 41 articles spanning from contract specifics, health benefits, revenue sharing, player eligibility, player conduct and discipline, and rules around offseason play, among many other topics.