When I attended the 1997 NCAA national convention in Nashville a vote was taken to pay players stipends. It only took 28 years to implement, and then only after the U.S. Supreme Court forced the NCAA’s hand.
Now, the Wild West of college sports stands at a defining crossroads. Once, the NCAA was synonymous with collegiate athletics, wielding unquestioned authority over everything from championships to player transfers and eligibility rules.
But the tides have shifted: today the Power 4 conferences — Big Ten, Southeastern Conference (SEC), Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), and Big 12 — form the economic and competitive core of major college sports. Their resources, influence, and challenges have outgrown the outdated, one-size-fits-all NCAA governance model. The time has come for these leagues to take charge of their own future.
The University of Colorado and the other 67 college Power 4 athletic conferences should divorce themselves from the outdated National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
Amateurism, once the hallmark of the NCAA since its formation in 1906, officially died on July 1 of this year. College athletes can now “officially” make money in three ways: scholarships, third-party endorsement contracts, and direct payments from their schools (pay-for-play) with a salary cap of $20.5 million for the academic year 2025-2026.
The NCAA’s bureaucratic structure remains rooted in principles from a different era. Originally formed to oversee amateur athletics and promote student welfare, the NCAA built a rulebook for a world before billion-dollar television deals, player contracts, and the transfer portal. Its governance still attempts to treat Ohio State with a yearly athletic budget of over $250 million as equals to small schools in the BigSky conference like Idaho State with a budget of $15 million, despite vast chasms in budgets, facilities, and visibility.
Modern college athletics have become a high-stakes business. Yet the NCAA’s byzantine committee system ensures critical decisions move at the speed of its slowest members, not its most progressive. The result is gridlock: reforms are watered down or delayed, and the needs of major conferences are subordinated to the lowest common denominator.
The major conferences now command unparalleled resources and attention. According to industry estimates, their media rights alone dwarf most of the NCAA’s aggregate revenues. The Big Ten’s current television contract exceeds $1 billion a year, aligning it more with professional sports leagues than with smaller collegiate conferences.
These conferences fill gigantic stadiums, negotiate national endorsement deals, and make decisions on athlete welfare that have ripple effects across the sports landscape. The profiles and pressures facing these conferences cannot be compared to those in the remainder of the NCAA, which governs hundreds of other schools with dramatically different realities.
The disconnect between NCAA rules and modern reality is most evident in legal battles and compliance chaos. The NCAA fought a losing battle to preserve its definition of amateurism, culminating in the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in NCAA vs. Alston, and later House vs. NCAA which finally opened the door for athlete compensation.
The ensuing NIL (name, image and likeness) marketplace for endorsements has outpaced NCAA regulations, leaving athletes, boosters, and institutions to navigate a landscape with minimal oversight and maximum confusion. There still is no equity with third-party endorsements.
Moreover, the NCAA’s compliance machinery has failed to evolve. Inconsistent rulings, drawn-out investigations, and rules that lag years behind current trends leave both universities and athletes vulnerable. As multi-million-dollar lawsuits pile up and courts increasingly side with athletes’ rights, the Power 4 conferences are left exposed by an organization too big and slow to protect their interests.
NCAA rules, designed for a 1950s version of college sports, can’t handle these new realities. Medical insurance that includes long-term coverage for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), mental health support, Title IX compliance, and even post-career transition programs are emerging as major priorities. Yet NCAA resource-sharing models mean Power 4 schools are often limited in how creatively or aggressively they can invest to meet these needs.
Professional sports leagues like the NFL and NBA show the value of governing bodies tailored to their organizations’ unique needs. Professional leagues set their own revenue models, compliance regulations, and discipline regimes — and adapt quickly when circumstances change. The Power 4 could emulate these models, building something suited to the 21st-century demands of college athletics.
The Power 4’s influence will only grow. Their schools, athletes, alumni, and fans already define the public image of college sports. Clinging to a single governance model that no longer fits undermines athlete welfare, innovation, and the competitive spectacle that makes college sports so beloved.
The NCAA is like the Titanic, a massive, once seemingly unsinkable institution that has long dominated college sports, steering it through decades of tradition and profit. Its rigid structure — built on amateurism and centralized control — mirrors the ship’s outdated design, ill-equipped for modern challenges.
Just as the Titanic’s crew underestimated the iceberg, the NCAA downplayed legal and cultural shifts.
The new NCAA controlled College Sports Commission (CSC) is taking over key functions like revenue-sharing enforcement while also giving large power schools 65% of voting rights.
Now sinking, the NCAA is offloading responsibilities to lifeboats. The athletes, once confined to the bottom deck, are finally getting a seat at the captain’s table, but it’s about to be submerged.
A new self-governing body isn’t just logical — it’s inevitable. The Power 4 conference can unlock creativity, ensure fair competition at the highest level, create equality and drive college athletics into the future.
It’s time for these conferences to take charge, leave the outdated NCAA behind, and acknowledge that college sports are unequivocally a business today that must float on its own.
Jim Martin was an adjunct law professor who taught Sports Law at CU and DU-chaired the University of Colorado committee on athletics for many years and has a passion for public speaking engagements. He can be reached atjimmartinesq@gmail.com.
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