Should there be an age limit in college football

[4Q Basket Case]

I've begun to believe the best path forward is just some sort of a breakaway. It doesn't necessarily have to be completely from the NCAA entirely, in fact I think it might offer a bit more legal protection to stay within that framework.

For the sake of argument, imagine the SEC, Big 10 and let's say Big 12 ( to achieve something closer to a plurality) all broke away to form their own governing body. This governing body then created rules and regulations for the three conferences at the behest of those conferences, who then competed in their own post season.

This would be entirely optional, you don't have to go to one of these schools, you don't have to subject yourself to this framework, but once you do you can be expected to follow conference rules. One of the issues is there is now an adversarial relationship. The school is basically encouraging the player to sue the NCAA so the player can play, and the conference is sitting on the sidelines because they don't want to have a competitive disadvantage. If all the top conferences agreed to the same level of additional oversight, this could deal with a lot of the issues.

I get it, and would agree if I thought the NCAA was the core underlying problem.

While it's unquestionably incompetent, hypocritical, arbitrary, and vindictive, I don't think the NCAA is the true problem.

The problem is that no institution -- even if it were run competently, fairly, and with unquestioned integrity -- currently has the legal standing to tell a school or an athlete anywhere in the country where they can go to school, how much money they can make, or how or when they can leave for greener pastures.

Not the NCAA and not this new CSC thing -- whatever it is. And without federal jurisdiction, not any successor governing institution. That's why the NCAA is 0-fer on every lawsuit since SCOTUS dope-slapped them in the O'Bannon case.

Only Congress or the NLRB can do that. And even the NLRB needs a union / management structure.

If the breakaway organization (1) carried Congressional backing, or (2) incorporated the union / management structure and a negotiated contract, along with competent administration, I'd be in favor.

But without Congress or a union, I just don't see where it would have legal standing that the NCAA doesn't have.

Which is exactly the question I had about the CSC when it was first announced.

 

[KrAzY3]

The problem is that no institution -- even if it were run competently, fairly, and with unquestioned integrity -- currently has the legal standing to tell a school or an athlete anywhere in the country where they can go to school, how much money they can make, or how or when they can leave for greener pastures.

I agree with that, and I also agree that there are legal hurdles.

However, there's nothing that entitles an athlete to go to X school. For instance, let's say a player is on his 8th year and he's ruled eligible by the courts. I don't think they can actually compel the University of Alabama to allow that player to play for them.

So for this to work every single school, and every conference involved would have to co-sign basically, agree completely to any oversight in this regard. That of course means schools outside of this can do what ever they want, but they'd be largely irrelevant anyway.

Not perfect, nothing is... but thus far most suits have basically been silently backed by the school. Vanderbilt, Alabama, etc... because they don't want to lose out competitively while other schools do similar things. If they all were given the same exact framework and agreed to it for the sake of, well, sanity I think they would be willing to stop this sort of thing. Ultimately I don't think Alabama wants a former G-League player, they just don't want to be the only one without former G-League players for example.