Ted Cruz has an NCAA reform bill getting a committee vote in Congress today. The bill deals with a lot of thing, from a limited anti-trust exemption to a strict five years of eligibility time, to limits on transferring and limits on poaching coaches. Some of it is actually good stuff and is worth looking at- I know, a shock from Congress and Cruz specifically. It’s also an inadequate bill and one that will not fix the real problems that student athletes need fixed, and fans want to see fixed.

Let’s be honest, everyone is behind the curve. The fans, the writers, the legislators, everyone. We’re talking about the conferences and their next moves, and honestly that’s great, but it’s not where things are going. Even within the Big Ten, SEC, and even ACC, there are echelons in college football. Do Ohio State and Michigan need the Big Ten, or could they honestly just take Washington, Oregon, USC, UCLA, and Penn State do whatever they want? Do Texas, Alabama, and Georgia need the SEC, or could they grab Oklahoma, LSU, Texas A&M, Auburn, Tennessee, and Florida and do whatever they want? I don’t know why Notre Dame hasn’t sat down with Florida State, Miami, Clemson, Georgia Tech, UNC, and Virginia and built something other than the ACC? At the last television negotiation, many of these schools saw enlarged power conferences as the way to make money. There’s no real necessity for them to do that again. Sure, if it’s the best deal they will, but if it’s not? Money for 15-20 programs will drive the next version of college football as is. Nothing less, nothing more.

What the NCAA needs is something it’s behavior doesn’t really deserve- power and control. There are few organizations I can think of in sports who have shown less character and values than the NCAA, I guess maybe FIFA and the NFL. However, the only way to stop the push towards a true “super conference” run by a few institutions is for the NCAA to receive a strong anti-trust exemption that would give them all the leverage in asserting rules over the members. Anything short of that won’t stop talk from member conferences like the SEC of taking their ball and going home. It also won’t stop member institutions from valuing football dollars over literally everything else and killing off rivalries and lesser revenue sports in the pursuit of those dollars. Basically a weak NCAA continues the progression we’re under, towards a lawless world where 20 programs control the money and set the rules. It is, in a word, chaos.

What fans want isn’t so hard, they want most of what they had for a century, with a logical playoff system that makes sense. They want their old rivalries, they want conferences that make some geographic sense, and a playoff system that values getting the best teams in over conference payouts, ESPN’s monetary interests, and television ratings. This bill might limitedly preserve some of those things. It won’t hold up super long though.

My big concern is that Congress is more worried about things like limiting the NIL than they are about preserving sanity within the sport. It’s not lost on me that Cruz represents Texas, a state with two SEC super powers that are probably happy with the direction things are going. Texas, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma basically fled to the SEC for the larger payouts, and left other major institutions in the state to play in lesser conferences and fall behind. I have no doubt at all that Florida State and Clemson are salivating to do that, and it seems obvious to me that Miami and North Carolina wouldn’t mind either.

The NCAA needs the kind of power the “big four” professional sports have right now. They need to be able to negotiate television deals, to set playoff rules that don’t favor two conferences and an independent over everyone else, and have a level of control over conference re-alignment. This bill will improve their hand, but it won’t give them that.

So yes, I think it’s a good bill. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think Ted Cruz did a good job. I don’t think good is quite good enough, and I think maybe we’re missing the bigger point here. Do I think it’s good to limit Lane Kiffin to waiting until the season is over to jump ship and take a big pay day from another school? Yeah, I do. I’m not sure Congress needs to settle that though. They definitely have a legitimate role in regulating college sports (it is absolutely interstate commerce). I just am not sure they know what the real problems are that require a Congressional fix.