Riley Gaines: College sports is broken – here’s how to fix it

Unless you’ve been surviving nether a rock, you cognize the NCAA is drowning successful problems. And clip and again, it’s managed to onshore connected the incorrect broadside of astir each of them: Name, image, and likeness, the transportation portal, eligibility rules, men competing successful women’s sports. The database grows longer by the day, and enactment continues to autumn short.

Earlier this week, University of Arkansas men’s hoops manager John Calipari spent astir 7 minutes successful a property league laying bare what truthful galore wrong assemblage athletics already know: the strategy is broken. He didn’t mince words. He gave the NCAA immoderate guidance connected however to halt operating arsenic a corrupt sports endeavor ("fugazi" arsenic helium enactment it), truthful assemblage sports tin really service the athletes who marque it possible.

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Head manager John Calipari of the Arkansas Razorbacks talks with a authoritative successful the 2nd fractional against the Queens Royals astatine Bud Walton Arena connected Dec. 16, 2025 successful Fayetteville, Arkansas. (Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)

After the clips went viral, Calipari doubled down connected X, writing, "I volition proceed to usage immoderate power I person to guarantee the wellness and longevity of our game."

I spent 4 years astatine the University of Kentucky portion Calipari coached there, and I tin archer you I person ne'er seen him fired up successful a property league (and helium was known for being fiery). And he’s acold from alone. His outrage is not lone understandable, it’s justified.

Higher acquisition itself is facing a reckoning. Enrollment is slipping. Tuition is exploding. Parents are questioning whether 4 years and six figures are worthy it, particularly arsenic campuses are progressively overtaken by chaos, extremist activism, and administrators much acrophobic with appeasing ideological mobs than educating students.

As backstage companies connection nonstop vocation pipelines and vocational paths committedness existent fiscal upside, assemblage presidents are scrambling to warrant their relevance. Too often, they crook the genu to paid wide protesters who question to teardrop down American institutions, traditions, and Judeo-Christian values alternatively than sphere them.

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Bo Jackson #25 of the Ohio State Buckeyes runs the shot against the Indiana Hoosiers successful the 2025 Big Ten Championship crippled astatine Lucas Oil Stadium connected Dec. 6, 2025 successful Indianapolis, Indiana. (Michael Hickey/Getty Images)

And yet, adjacent now, universities inactive person 1 plus that has agelong unified campuses and inspired nationalist pride: assemblage football.

College shot is the beforehand structure of higher education. It’s the selling limb for our astir recognizable universities. When idiosyncratic says they attended a Power Conference school, nary 1 asks astir their economics department. They inquire astir the shot team, the rivalry games, the playoff picture, oregon whether the starting backmost volition suit up connected Saturday. A winning shot programme drives enrollment, energizes alumni, and fuels backing crossed the full university.

But today, assemblage athletics (especially assemblage football) are connected dangerously unstable ground.

As manager Calipari highlighted, without superior reform, we are staring down the imaginable illness of the assemblage sports exemplary altogether. Why bash I care? 

Because if assemblage athletics fails, women’s sports volition wage the highest price. Title IX protections, Olympic improvement pipelines, and non-revenue women’s programs volition beryllium the archetypal connected the chopping block.

At a infinitesimal erstwhile women’s athletics is already nether attack, the past happening America should bash is let the fiscal instauration of assemblage sports to crumble. Women’s sports merit protection, investment, and respect, not further erosion from a breached strategy that nary longer works.

College shot erstwhile represented the champion of America: grit, competition, community, and the relentless thrust to win. Today, its governing operation is fractured, weak, and unsustainable. Like higher acquisition itself, it desperately needs a reckoning coupled with beardown enactment to present it.

President Trump’s instrumentality to the White House has made 1 happening unmistakably clear: erstwhile America demands strength, helium delivers. His America First docket restored nationalist pride, brought clarity backmost to Washington, and proved that this state does not shy distant from large challenges. That aforesaid bold enactment is precisely what assemblage athletics needs now.

The House colony yet acknowledged what everyone already knows: assemblage athletes merit a just stock of the monolithic worth they assistance create. But it besides exposed an uncomfortable truth; the existent strategy cannot past arsenic is. Division I shot is the economical motor that funds astir each different sport, from way and tract to women’s swimming, gymnastics, and soccer. If shot collapses, the full ecosystem goes with it.

resident Donald Trump (C) greets players aft the coin flip and earlier the commencement of the 126th Army-Navy Game betwixt the Army Black Knights and the Navy Midshipmen astatine M&T Bank Stadium connected Dec. 13, 2025 successful Baltimore, Maryland. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Yet conferences stubbornly cling to a failed media-rights model. Each negotiates alone, leaving billions of dollars connected the table. This is wealth that could enactment student-athletes, women’s programs, and Olympic pipelines for generations to come.

Professional sports solved this occupation decades ago. The NFL and NBA collectively negociate media rights nether antitrust protections provided by Congress done the Sports Broadcasting Act. The result? Competitive balance, monolithic growth, and semipermanent stability.

College shot deserves the aforesaid unity and strength. President Trump and Congress person the authorization to marque it happen.

With expanded antitrust protections, assemblage athletics could negociate media rights collectively, docket marquee matchups that captivate the nation, and make billions successful caller gross to stabilize programs crossed the country. That means much scholarships, stronger women’s sports, and much opportunities for each jock — antheral and pistillate — pursuing the American dream.

This is astir much than football. It’s astir preserving an American instauration that instills discipline, teamwork, religion successful God, hard work, and emotion of country. It’s astir ensuring universities uphold those values alternatively of abandoning them.

President Trump has ne'er been acrophobic to face anemic enactment oregon a failed presumption quo. When the strategy is rigged oregon broken, helium fights to hole it and helium puts America first.

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With his enactment and Congress’s support, we tin reconstruct fairness, support Title IX, support women’s sports, and guarantee that assemblage shot — and collegiate athletics arsenic a full — look stronger, prouder, and much agreed than ever.

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