No one really knows. Yet.
When I first began working on this project in January, before Tennessee’s investigation and the preliminary injunction, the NIL landscape was a lot different than it is today.
Today, in terms of NIL, the NCAA is essentially powerless. The only enforcement regulations are state NIL laws.
Associate AD Tyler Johnson thinks that the NCAA could be on its way out the door of college sports.
“Prior to [the NCAA’s investigation leak on Tennessee], I would have said, personally, the NCAA doesn’t exist at the Division 1 level in five years,” Johnson said. “On [January 30th, 2024], I think gasoline got thrown on the fire. I don’t know what this will look like in 18 months, it’s moving that fast.
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Johnson also said that college sports could be moving towards the concept of a “super conference.”
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The “super conference” is the idea of all the schools in the country banding together, signing their own television contract deals, and throwing out all conference labels. There would be no more Southeastern Conference, Big 10, or Atlantic Coast Conference – just one, super conference.
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The talk of the super conference is not new at all.
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It was initially proposed in 1959 by a University of Pittsburgh athletic director, and then again in 1990. But people did not start to take the discussion seriously until the early 2010s, when widespread frustration towards the NCAA started to take root.
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“The super conference talk has been going on for 10 plus years,” Johnson said. “Right when you saw some other changes come out, legislation, coaches, schools, athletes getting fed up, and then when you started to see class-action lawsuits, like student-athletes against the NCAA, I think it moved the needle on the discussions a little bit more, and since NIL, it’s really opened up the discussions.”
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Johnson believes that the events of this year, like the PAC-12 falling apart and its schools merging with other conferences, proves that people are not afraid of change in college sports.
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“What we’ve seen across the country, with the demise of the PAC-12 and changes in the Big 10, and everyone else moving around within the Big 12 as well, that people aren’t afraid to change conferences and schools, so who’s to say that a number of universities get together, for example, the conferences, and say, hey, let’s break away from the NCAA, let’s do the super conference,” Johnson said.
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The recent conference realignments were decided solely with college football in mind.
The truth is that college sports went corporate in 1998 when the Bowl Championship Series went into effect. Many sports experts believe that this realignment is simply the next positive step forward in college sports.
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Take Fox analyst Joel Klatt's take on the situation, for example. Klatt argues that in the future, the realignments will actually improve the fan experience.
Caleb Jarreau agrees with Tyler Johnson on where college sports are going and goes even further to propose a few new interesting points.
“I feel like it’s definitely trending that way [towards the super conference],” Jarreau said. “In the next 18 months, I don’t know, but in the long run, I feel like the NCAA will be no more. I don’t know what that means – does it mean a super conference with Greg Sankey leading it, does it mean conferences joining together – I feel like ideally, football would be separate.”
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On the idea of football being separate, Jarreau argues this in terms of the PAC-12 dissolving. The PAC-12 fell apart wholly for the sake of football, but Jarreau notes how negative an impact that this has on other sports.
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“Stanford and UCLA swimmers, for example, now have to fly to Rutgers to compete, like that’s not fair to them, volleyball players have to do the same thing,” Jarreau argued. “Those sports are not revenue sports, so the school is just hemorrhaging money for these athletes to fly across the country when they can compete against a school thirty minutes away.
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“So, I feel like if football is separated, that solves a lot of issues, but you also run into the problem of football supports the athletic department. There’s a ton of issues around that that haven’t been solved, still aren’t solved,” Jarreau added.
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He also proposed the idea that current Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey could potentially lead the super conference looming on the horizon.
Jarreau also proposed the idea that current Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey could potentially lead the super conference looming on the horizon.
In his role as commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, the biggest and most profitable conference in the country, Greg Sankey is one of the most powerful people in the sports community.
Sankey has been at the center of the super conference discussions in the last several years. With the 2025 addition of the University of Texas and University of Oklahoma to the SEC, Sankey believes that the SEC is already a super conference.
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Sankey is also one of the main architects of the controversial 12-team college football playoff that is moving closer to becoming reality.
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Sankey also serves as cochair of the NCAA Transformation Committee, which is tasked with helping the NCAA evolve in the current rapidly changing college athletics landscape.
Greg Sankey's involvement in the changing atmosphere of college sports supports the idea that, if a super conference is going to happen, he would be a big part of it.
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“It’s a real, relevant, and potential thing, you just don’t know what that timeline looks like, but I think it happens sooner rather than later as of [the NCAA’s leak on its investigation into Tennessee].”
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As controversial as it is and for as many disputes as it has caused, no one believes NIL is going anywhere.
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“Honestly it could go either way,” Tennessee compliance officer Mallory Feigl said. “It could turn into something like what we see in the pros, or it could become more regulated.”
The one indisputable fact is that college athletics have been permanently changed.
“College athletics has evolved,” Caleb Jarreau said. “When the NCAA was founded in 1905, they weren’t thinking about signing a $25 million TV contract and the players are going to get $0. But now, in 2024, you’re signing TV contracts, players want money, and they didn’t think about that in 1905.”
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And it does not look like anything will be slowing down any time soon.
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Some arguments in the NIL debate center around the ethics behind college athletes making millions of dollars, but Tyler Johnson does not think that this is necessarily a problem.
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“I don’t think there should be limits,” Johnson said. “It is always surprising, that you’re going to pay this person a lot of money and they haven’t taken one snap, you know, you always scratch your head on that one.”
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Most recently, as of April 4th, NCAA president Charlie Baker proposed allowing colleges to pay athletes for the use of their NIL. On April 17th, the NCAA Division I Council met and adopted a rule that would now allow schools to have the ability to help connect athletes with NIL opportunities.
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A huge chunk of the NCAA’s problem with NIL is their lack of control over collectives. Because these are third parties, the NCAA cannot exert any influence, but if these collectives were brought in-house, the NCAA could exert more control over how much athletes are being paid.
As of February, the UT board of trustees approved the first step for nonprofit foundation for Tennessee athletics.
The NCAA’s new policies do not alleviate the current legal troubles it is still facing though.
The preliminary injunction still limits the NCAA’s sphere of control and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
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“We are thrilled to welcome Reggie Bush back to the Heisman family in recognition of his collegiate accomplishments,” Michael Comerford, President of The Heisman Trophy Trust said in a statement. “We considered the enormous changes in college athletics over the last several years in deciding that now is the right time to reinstate the trophy for Reggie. We are so happy to welcome him back.”
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The Heisman Trust's decision to reinstate Bush largely hinged on the changing landscape of NIL. After observing the current state of college athletics, where compensating athletes on name, image, and likeness is now a common practice, the Trust felt that the time was right to return the well-earned trophy to Bush.
Could there potentially be more reparations provided to athletes and institutions for past amateurism violations in the future? Only time will tell.
Caleb Jarreau summed up the current situation succinctly: “With it changing all the time I honestly couldn’t say where we’ll be in a year.”
At the end of the day, no one knows exactly what is going to happen. NIL as we know it today could change completely by tomorrow, let alone one year from now.
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