This week, NCAA President Charlie Baker confirmed what many in college athletics have long suspected, but few thought would be said out loud: When it comes to athlete compensation and NIL enforcement, the NCAA is stepping aside. The real power now belongs to the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, and Big 12.
If the House v. NCAA settlement is approved by Judge Claudia Wilken, it won’t just mark the end of amateurism as a legal construct. It may mark the beginning of the end of the NCAA’s role as the governing body of Division I athletics altogether.
Let’s not mince words here: Charlie Baker is admitting the NCAA will no longer be the entity responsible for enforcing the most contentious—and important—set of policies in college sports. The much-hyped College Sports Commission, a new enforcement body created by the Power Four conferences, will now oversee:
Revenue-sharing caps for athletes (starting at $20.5 million per school)
NIL deal oversight through a Deloitte-built platform called “NIL Go”
Adjudication of whether NIL deals are market-value endorsements or simply pay-for-play in disguise
The NCAA, meanwhile, will continue to handle things like academic eligibility, championships, in-game rules, and sports betting regulation. It’ll also pay out billions in back damages to athletes who were denied NIL opportunities before 2021.
In short, the NCAA will handle the parts of the job that are expensive, bureaucratic, and generally not the reason schools get sued.
A Shrinking Role for a Shrinking Authority
For all practical purposes, the NCAA’s enforcement arm is being amputated and replaced by a commission designed and governed by the very conferences that benefit most from a streamlined, less litigated, and more profitable athlete compensation system.
This new commission won’t report to Indianapolis. It will answer to the revenue engines of college football. It will be judge, jury, and (presumably) executioner when it comes to enforcing cap violations and NIL irregularities. The NCAA won’t even pick the CEO—someone, somewhere in the Power Four ranks will.
That’s a staggering shift in governance—and it raises one simple but unavoidable question:
What, exactly, is the NCAA doing at the Division I level anymore?
It’s not just about enforcement. It’s about legitimacy. If the NCAA no longer creates or enforces the rules that define athlete compensation, arguably the single most important issue in college athletics today, then what function does it serve that the Power Four can’t replicate on their own?
Is it just a glorified event management company for March Madness?
The NCAA, Now a Legal Shield?
To understand how we got here, you have to understand the legal and financial terrain. The NCAA has been hammered in court repeatedly—O’Bannon, Alston, House, and others—all for enforcing rules that limited athlete compensation. So now, in a bid to survive the House lawsuit without a $12 billion court judgment, the NCAA is shifting that liability away from itself.
Let the Power Four conferences own the salary cap and NIL policing mechanisms. Let them take the next round of antitrust lawsuits. Let them try to wrangle compliance from collectives and coaches and boosters.
And they know it’s going to be messy. A memo circulated to member schools by the Power Four explicitly prohibits them from suing their own conference over the terms of the settlement—a clear sign of how shaky this arrangement is. As sports attorney Darren Heitner put it:
“General consensus is that it’s a sh*tshow—and going to keep me busy.”
Indeed.
A Governance Vacuum
To be clear, the NCAA didn’t always do a great job of enforcement. But they were at least the entity that tried to govern the system. This new model—where the wealthiest schools create their own rules and enforce them with internal tools—has all the makings of a fox-guards-the-henhouse scenario.
What happens when an SEC school violates the cap but is also funding the commission overseeing the punishment? What checks exist when the very conferences that profit most from the new model are left to self-police?
There’s a real risk here that we aren’t creating a more just, transparent, or enforceable system—we’re simply creating a more profitable one for the biggest brands.
So, What Now?
The Power Four will now handle the thing that has historically driven policy fights, legal battles, and public scrutiny: how much athletes get paid. And they will do it not because they’ve earned the public’s trust, or built a regulatory infrastructure—but because the NCAA could no longer bear the cost of leading.
If this arrangement stands, the NCAA will be relegated to handling the logistics of a few championships, doling out March Madness revenue, and keeping academic spreadsheets tidy.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’re watching, in real time, the NCAA's quiet exit from the center stage of college sports. If so, it’s worth asking:
Why keep the NCAA around at the Division I level at all?
Because unless it can meaningfully govern or enforce anything of consequence, the NCAA may soon be little more than a logo, a bank account, and a reminder of a system that no longer exists.
