Photo: Tyler Schank/NCAA Photos/Getty Images

A certain strain of thought around college sports goes something like this: While it may be corrupted by big money these days, there was a time — a time long ago, back when Red Grange was playing, or Dick Butkus, or maybe even that Rudy kid — when the whole enterprise was different. It was pure. It was about the joy of competition, about academics, about working hard enough to get a scholarship and a free education. One immediate challenge to this line of thinking is trying to determine when the supposed golden age of college sports ended. Was it during the Jerry Tarkanian UNLV Runnin’ Rebels era, starting in the ‘70s, in which the famous head coach was suspended for multiple recruiting violations? Was it during the ‘80s, when SMU’s football program was given the “death penalty” for paying players under the table? Was it when the ‘90s Miami Hurricanes became dominant? Reggie Bush in the 2000s? The FBI investigation of the late 2010s? Literally any moment in college sports, ever?

The truth of course, is that this golden age never really existed. Money has always fueled college sports, and the 2021 Supreme Court ruling that essentially struck down the NCAA as a cartel simply made it semi-official. That decision essentially ended amateurism and paved the way for athletes to be paid and the NCAA to essentially cede all controls to schools and conferences (and the network executives who pay them to do their bidding). College sports has turned into a Wild West of almost unfettered free-market capitalism over the last few years — and it’s mostly out in the open. No longer do the NCAA bigwigs pretend this is all about the purity of amateur competition. In other words, they’ve started being honest with us.

Since the Court weighed in, players have been able to maximize their value, earning whatever the market will bear to attend any school, at any time. Network executives have gotten rich, athletic departments have gotten rich, coaches have gotten rich; it is only right that players have too. And, not coincidentally, the quality of the games themselves have increased dramatically: The best young players, particularly in basketball, are staying in college because they’re getting paid handsomely to do so, raising the talent bar to a new level. There are obvious problems, namely with college football’s dangerous slide toward conference consolidation, which could kill this whole golden goose. But on the whole, college sports are peaking right now. There’s a reason people want to watch all these games.

Unfortunately, this actual golden age of transparency and quality may soon come to an end — ironically, under the guise of reform. Last week, a federal judge approved the so-called “House settlement,” (named after an Arizona swimmer, not the House of Representatives), which will resolve ongoing lawsuits against the NCAA, paving the way for another complete overhaul of college sports. The settlement is meant to institute some guidelines and guardrails and to help provide a foundation for the future. But all it will do is take everything that has operated out in the open the last few years and push it underground. That, in turn, will give everyone an incentive to cheat. Which, of course, they will.

The details are complicated, but the gist is that schools that opt into it, — which everyone except small Ivies is expected to do — will essentially have a roughly $20 million budget every year to pay athletes among all their sports. But only two of those sports typically make money: football (the lion’s share) and men’s basketball. (There are a few women’s college basketball programs that break even or even finish in the black, as well as hockey and volleyball and others, but collectively, they’re non-revenue sports.) Thus, football and basketball players will get more money, generally at the discretion of the school’s athletic directors. And almost none will go to athletes in any other sports, which will already be in trouble as schools are pushed to concentrate just on the revenue-generators. So, sure: Athletes will, for the first time, get paid by their universities. But not very many athletes. And, considering how much television contracts are, not very much.

But what about those NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) deals? That’s where athletes have been making much of their money the last few years, via rich alumni who are willing to stretch regulatory limits, in effect paying millions directly to prospective stars to come to their schools. This system will still exist, but with a huge and rather complicated catch: All NIL deals over $600 must be reported to a clearinghouse known as NIL Go, run by accounting firm Deloitte, which marks and logs the deals. That entity, independent of the NCAA, will decide what constitutes a “reasonable range of compensation based on multiple factors.” How does one define “reasonable range?” Good question! It seems to come down to the judgment of one man, Bryan Seeley, just hired from Major League Baseball, to determine whether a deal is a legitimate endorsement deal or a bribe from a rich donor who just wants a player to come to their school.

The problems here are obvious, and veer toward the infinite. Multiple college basketball players are currently making more than $5 million this year, all from those collectives that are now supposedly being phased out. A Texas Tech softball player will make $1 million, a figure that does not reflect what she will bring into the program itself. (The NCAA champion Oklahoma softball program ran a $4 million deficit last year.) She’s there because a rich donor wanted her there; that is how college sports has worked in its Wild West era. This new group exists to put a stop to this system, but the genie is out and can’t possibly be put back in the bottle. As CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish put it, “Last month, NIL Go officials told ACC administrators that more than 70 percent of current NIL deals with booster collectives would have been denied according to the new rules. That suggests NIL Go will frequently be in the business of telling student-athletes they cannot take what somebody is willing to give them.” This disjunction will lead to two obvious results: A shit-ton of lawsuits (who is NIL Go to tell some rich guy from Texas that he can’t fund a softball player?) and a shit-ton of under-the-table transactions. We all now know that players are worth this much money on the market. The players know it too. They’ll find a way to get it.

That $20 million figure is absurd, too. North Carolina’s basketball team made headlines just last week for having a $14 million roster. Do you think some arbitrary spending limit — that, again, will just be challenged in court, probably tomorrow — is going to keep them from spending that much again next year? How about their football team, with the Hall of Fame coach and his ubiquitous girlfriend? You think they’re just gonna take $6 million? Of course not. Everyone is going to spend as much money as they always have, just in even less savory ways.

Which speaks to the inherent dishonesty at the center of all of this. What is being painted as “getting control” of college sports—an enterprise that of course rampages wildly out of control if it means getting more money in the hands of network executives, conference commissioners and coaches — is, in the end, just another way to try to tamp down compensation of athletes themselves. The powers that be are pretending to “settle” with wronged athletes by paying them, but really, they’re making athletes’ lives worse and as Parrish puts it, “ simply trading in one set of issues for a new set of issues.” College sports’s Wild West Era may be about to end. The new era might be a lot wilder — and a lot more corrupt.