According to USA Today reporting, the commissioners of the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC were paid an average of $4.9 million last year. Pretty good money if you can get it for sowing chaos and dysfunction on a national scale. But it’s even better to be a former commissioner: George Kliavkoff made $6.1 million after overseeing the demise of the Pac-12, and Jim Delany was still raking in $5.8 million five years after he retired as the leader of the Big Ten.
If there is that much money to be made in the highly ineffective oversight of college sports, we at Sports Illustrated would like to apply for those jobs. And in fact, we might even have a few ideas about how to make things better.
Behold, our Commissioner for a Day list of quick and easy fixes for what ails college athletics:
May is Complaint Month in college sports with leaders airing their grievances on everything from postseason expansion to eligibility concerns. Sports Illustrated examines these complaints and where the sport is headed. | Clockwise from bottom left: Alex Slitz/Getty Images; James Gilbert/Getty Images; David Rosenblum/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images; Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images
Addressing how the College Sports Commission enforces rules
Problem: Nobody is adhering to the rules set by the start-up CSC.
Solution: The CSC must see its job through completion, and drop the hammer if needed.
Less than a year after the landmark House v. NCAA settlement became official and athletes began receiving direct revenue-sharing payments from universities, the system is teetering on the verge of collapse. The core problem: Nobody bothered adhering to the rules that were set up under the auspices of the start-up College Sports Commission, with CEO Bryan Seeley suddenly being put in charge of herding a pack of feral cats.
The way out of this expensive morass is for the CSC to see its job through to completion—finish an infractions case and apply an appropriate penalty. Drop the hammer, if need be. Or at least as much of a hammer as the rules will permit in a system designed to be less punitive than the NCAA.
Multiple coaches at SEC spring meetings said that if there is no deterrent to sham NIL deals—the likes of which have driven player salaries through the roof—nobody will abide by the rules. So the CSC needs to show it can adequately investigate (despite not having full cooperation from schools, some of which have not signed the participation agreement to follow the rules). And if it finds illegitimate NIL deals, it needs to do more than just reject them—it needs to fine and/or suspend the bad actors to sufficiently scare other scofflaws straight.
As Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said, the sport needs to reach “a point where we can get back on the same page where we’re not always saying, ‘Yeah, that’s the rule, but here’s a way I can get around the rule. And even if I get caught, here’s what I’m going to do when I get caught.’ We’ve got to get out of that way of thinking and just get to a point of, ‘Here’s the rules, let’s go try to navigate within the rules and be the best we can be. And if I step out of bounds, here’s your penalty.’”
Nobody is doing that voluntarily. So there has to be an external disincentive that actually exists and can actually be applied. Seeley is smart and capable, but the CSC remains an early work in progress. Some patience is important, as well as a clear backing of the enterprise at a campus level. The schools have to buy in—and when one of them eventually gets busted, they have to take their medicine. — Pat Forde
Addressing the eligibility process for all college athletes
Problem: There are too many loopholes and constant lawsuits pursuing additional playing seasons.
Solution: Get the NCAA out of the waiver business and enforce the five-in-five model.
Regardless of the other hot-button issues facing college sports, there’s no more important issue than eligibility. The NCAA’s age-based eligibility model, set to be voted on in June, takes big steps toward maintaining a standard age window for players to play college sports. Essentially, players would have five years to play as much or as little as they want, starting at their 19th birthday or high school graduation (whichever comes first).
Getting the NCAA out of the waiver business and the constant subjectivity of where the line should be for who’s allowed to play an extra year and who isn’t is a huge step forward. It also avoids the increasingly common headlines of 25-year-olds still lingering in college sports.
There’d still be some rules that make players ineligible. Go through the NFL or NBA draft, and your window to play in college ends. Same goes if you leave college to play professionally outside the U.S. Once you leave college, you shouldn’t be able to come back. But for the most part, the subjectivity that fills the eligibility process now needs to go away. It’s the biggest reason for the constant court cases, cases that threaten to further destabilize the entire enterprise.
The rollout could be bumpy and likely fraught with early legal challenges, largely from those who think they too should’ve had a potential fifth year. But if it can survive those initial tests, the age-based model gets college sports to a healthier, more rational place than the waiver-filled world it currently operates in. — Kevin Sweeney
Addressing the spiraling costs of fielding a college football team
Problem: The powers that be in college sports can’t stop talking about how expensive things have gotten in the NIL era.
Solution: Some forced transparency, and a not-so-friendly reminder you can just say no.
Multiple years into the NIL and revenue-sharing era, it is no longer novel for commissioners, coaches and athletic directors to complain about the spiraling costs associated with fielding their rosters in college football. It’s almost de rigueur anytime a microphone is placed in front of anyone with a title in the college sports industrial complex, in fact, to hear a grievance lodged against dollars and cents before anything involving an issue that’s actually on the field.
If I were to be granted the requisite decision-making powers as college football czar or Power 4 commissioner though, such protests would be brought to a firm and screeching halt at conference meetings like the ones we’ve had during May. In addition to lecturing anyone with a connection to the sport that nobody wants to hear millionaire coaches or ADs crying wolf about kids becoming millionaires in their own right, I’d point out that nobody is making them inflate the market so far beyond what it should be. You can, of course, say no to a player or his agent and put all those analysts you’re already paying to work on finding a more palatable solution that meets the price you’re capable of paying.
The other tangible thing is to prevent some of the siloing off of information that often leads to schools making rash (or downright bad) decisions when it comes to player compensation. That would include distributing conference-wide figures at the end of the season involving revenue-sharing amounts from the salary cap system that the College Sports Commission has in place. That would not include details on outside NIL deals that increasingly are used to fund these $40-plus million rosters, but it would be a start. When combined with figures from other outside vendors who have insight into the process, it should allow everyone to put two and two together when they see a quarterback is asking for triple what his entire position group was paid. Standard league-wide contracts can benefit all parties. Pushing to work with bodies like the NFLPA to help track and certify agents should bring a bit more order to things, too.
However, that is just helping manage inflation to a more reasonable level. The reality is combining cutthroat competitors with an irrational market is always going to lead to it becoming more and more expensive to field a winner—and the inevitable complaints that follow. — Bryan Fischer
Addressing roster continuity, especially among Group of 6 schools, in the age of the transfer portal
Problem: The transfer portal has turned into a de facto free agency period with every player on a one-year contract, and smaller schools are struggling to keep their stars.
Solution: Stabilized, multiyear contracts and adding transfer fees to the transfer portal.
The transfer portal is at the heart of the widening gap between the haves and have-nots in college sports. Many won’t like this answer, but outside of a collective bargaining agreement in which there are contracts and restrictions placed on when players can transfer, mid-majors and Group of 6 schools are going to be up against it. There is much opposition to such agreements, and any sort of restrictions on player movement are likely to be met with lawsuits, exactly what the NCAA does not want more of. If you can’t treat the student-athletes like professional athletes and you can’t restrict the freedom of markets, you’re left with few options to help fix the broken transfer portal system.
College sports needs some sort of transfer fee system, as exists in European soccer and in the Nippon Professional Baseball League, where teams who lose a player to another team are paid a percentage of that player’s deal from the team the player departed to as compensation for losing the player. There could be structured tiers for percentages based on movement by conference—from mid-major to Power 4, or between Power 4 conferences, as protection for all transfers. But ultimately, the main goal is to protect the little guys. If power schools are going to treat mid-major schools like a minor league baseball team, the mid-major school should at least be compensated for it. Alas, this is an idea that, again, would require a collective bargaining agreement, a line the sport has been unwilling to cross. But a transfer fee system wouldn’t restrict player movement to the degree in which a Bird Rights system or, a step further, some sort of restriction on the number of times a player can transfer or when they can transfer would.
Does anyone else have a headache?
If the sport ever did want to move toward some sort of contract structure, there’s arguably no better time for it than now with the five-in-five eligibility proposal on the table. Give players a set one-, two- or three-year contract built into their five-year clock. Include incentives within these logical transfer checkpoints based on academic performance—maintain a certain GPA to transfer, or achievements on the field—in which players can transfer a year earlier than their contract states should they meet the requirements for an early transfer. While there are some restrictions on player freedom here, players will still have one, if not two chances to transfer and pursue a better situation on the field if they desire. Plus, with a structured contract in place, schools—especially the smaller ones—would be able to recruit and plan for the future knowing exactly who is transferring when, as opposed to the free-for-all in today’s landscape. — Tim Capurso
Addressing the constantly moving target of crafting the perfect schedule
Problem: Schedules are vastly inconsistent, with teams all leaning on different motivations to try and construct a schedule that will help their team reach the playoffs.
Solution: The schedule lottery.
Why does Alabama football have eight different out-of-conference Power 4 opponents on its future schedules while Indiana has one (Notre Dame in 2030 and ’31)? How is it that High Point men’s basketball coach Flynn Clayman can assail major-conference teams for not playing his school, Purdue’s Matt Painter can note that his school routinely plays good mid-majors, and both can be right? Scheduling in basketball and football is a complex business, and its laissez-faire nature benefits the great (major-conference teams can buy all the lesser opponents their hearts desire) and the small (mid-majors can fill their coffers with buy-game money) alike.
For the purposes of fairness, television and sheer variety, however, both college basketball and football could use some sort of independent scheduling regulator. Each Power 4 football team is thrown into a lottery and matched with a random nonconference opponent for two select weeks every season (one on the home, one on the road—neutral sites are for bowl games). The same for each Group of 6 team (remember basketball’s BracketBusters?). ESPN and Fox would drown in TV ratings, and games between Charleston Southern and South Carolina would give way to games between, say, California and West Virginia.
Of course, this solution would require all of college sports to confront what it fears most—ceding power. — Patrick Andres
Addressing the current state of athletic departments across the college sports landscape
Problem: Athletic departments were built and structured around a world of college sports that is vastly different from the one we exist in today.
Solution: A zoomed-out look at rebuilding athletic departments from the ground up.
College sports have changed a lot over the past few decades, and while the support structure that keeps college athletics moving has done its best to keep pace, it has been a struggle. For that reason, it’s time to take a wide look at the role of athletic departments at a school, and some of the changes they could make to make the system more sustainable for all involved.
A few small problems that such a revamp could address:
- Lack of oversight within athletic departments
When Michigan retained outside counsel to investigate its athletic department in December, it cast an unflattering light on the sheer number of scandals the Wolverines had courted in recent years, from basketball to football to hockey. It exposed a philosophical issue with both on- and off-field implications in college athletics’ age of commercialism: When the chips are down, who, precisely, are athletic departments answerable to? “Unlike conventional business, athletic departments have no owners or boards or shareholders to enforce spending controls,” Sally Jenkins of The Atlantic wrote in November. Independent athletic oversight boards, in some form or fashion, could shrink the distance between higher education and the fiefdoms of college sports—nipping both dark-money expenditures and departmental misbehavior in the bud. These boards would consist of legal and administrative figures with no university ties, and would act as ombudsmen outside of conventional reporting structures.
- Lack of diversity in coaching
In football in particular, this is one of the sport’s most durable issues, with roots dating back to the age of Jim Crow. Just 13 FBS coaches are Black, and as Brent Schrotenboer of USA Today pointed out Tuesday, only one of the 13 plies his trade in the Big Ten or SEC (Maryland’s Mike Locksley, a potential hot-seat candidate for 2026). With institutional hostility to diversity the order of the day in the United States—and no central body to attack the problem like the NFL—this will take coordinated, multigenerational effort. A potential starting point: a diversity-oriented accelerator program in the vein of the one the NFL deployed before watering it down in 2025.
Michigan coach Sherrone Moore’s catastrophic exit surfaced a problem that has dogged college sports at an accelerating rate this century: the poor mental health of many coaches, and the poor infrastructure in place to support them. In an NCAA study undertaken in the spring of 2022, a staggering 40% of coaches surveyed reported feeling mentally exhausted “constantly” or “most every day.” Consider that the poster child for mental-health awareness among college football coaches—ex-Boise State and Washington boss Chris Petersen—has never looked back en route to a 7-year-old TV career. Maybe it’s a fool’s errand to try and save a hundred hypercompetitive millionaires from themselves, and solutions that could actually make a difference seem like nonstarters (required minimum annual time off from work, for instance). Even talking about the problem and establishing something in the vein of a mandatory mental health–centric coaching summit, though, is a victory relative to the stifling silence college sports’ grind affords. — Patrick Andres
Addressing the modern gambling environment and its effect on college sports
Problem: Legalized gambling has broken contain and the results on college athletics have been plainly bad.
Solution: Ban all prop bets. Ban all advertising.
Legalized sports gambling became everyone’s problem much faster than expected. Before they made gambling legal, I was a proponent for legalization. I am someone who enjoys betting on sports, sometimes because I think I have an edge, most of the time because it can be fun to gamble. But however many years we are into the DraftKings era, it’s pretty clear that we have gone too far.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think gambling on sports should be legal. I just don’t think it should be this legal, especially with regard to college athletics. And as the commissioner of college sports for a day, I am here to solve the issue.
The easiest, most no-brainer change we can make—a ban on prop bets, in-game bets and player specific bets for college athletics. There’s an argument that these bets should be banned at the pro level as well, but I am unfortunately just the commissioner of college sports for today, and not the All-Powerful American Sports Czar, so we’re sticking to college for now.
Banning prop bets would immediately cut down on the vitriol being thrown at college athletes from fans who are mad about losing a bet. Teams win and lose as a team, but when someone has an eight-leg parlay that they lose because one player rushed for 59 yards instead of 60 yards, that bettor, if they have an unhealthy relationship with the internet (and come on, it’s 2026) knows exactly who to DM on Instagram, X or LinkedIn so they can say awful things to the student-athlete they believe responsible for their failure to hit on 100/1 odds.
How easy would such a policy be to implement? Well, it’s already the case in many states. I live in Pennsylvania, and am not allowed to bet on individual players to score touchdowns in college football, and there is active legislation in several other states moving in the same direction.
Beyond helping to protect student-athletes from the dregs of online society, such a ban would also eliminate a ton of risk involved with players being asked to fix outcomes by outside parties. It is far harder to fix a game where your team loses by seven points or fewer than it is to ensure that an individual player scores seven points or fewer.
Additionally, as commissioner for a day, I would ban all advertisements for sports betting across college athletics. I could make a moral argument here, but in truth, the biggest reason to eliminate them is that they are simply annoying and oversaturated. Kevin Hart has plenty of time to shill me same game parlays on NFL Sundays, he doesn’t need my Saturdays, too. — Tyler Lauletta
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