UNITED STATES – JANUARY 04: College Football: Rose Bowl, Texas QB Vince Young (10) in action, scoring game winning touchdown in final 19 seconds during BCS Championship game vs USC, Pasadena, CA 1/4/2006 (Photo by Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images) (SetNumber: X74781 TK1 R25)
Sports Illustrated via Getty Images
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is in government, and here’s here to help. Get it? With Ronald Reagan no longer with us, hopefully Cruz’s Senate colleagues do. Or perhaps Cruz’s constituents in college football-mad Texas will save Cruz from himself and his Protect Sports Act of 2026. Which requires a look back in time.
O’Bannon v. NCAA, the landmark court case that reversed the NCAA’s ban on compensating athletes for their name, image, and likeness (NIL), was a solution in search of a problem. Former UCLA basketball star in Ed O’Bannon had to know this. Evidence supporting this claim can be found in the story of Lew Alcindor, aka Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
While at UCLA, Alcindor nearly transferred to Michigan and Michigan State, among other universities. This is according to Scott Howard-Cooper’s excellent 2024 book (my review, here) about UCLA basketball during the John Wooden years, Kingdom of Fire.
Howard-Cooper is clear that Alcindor wasn’t happy at UCLA for a variety of reasons, but a significant problem was money. Howard-Cooper’s book reported that Michigan and Michigan’s State’s boosters were ready and willing to pave a gold-plated path to Ann Arbor and East Lansing respectively.
Enter UCLA booster Sam Gilbert. He took care of Alcindor, along with teammate Lucius Allen. Transfer talk ended. Post-UCLA, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recalled that “once the money thing got worked out, I never gave another thought to leaving UCLA.” Well, yes.
It’s a reminder that the paying of players didn’t follow O’Bannon v. NCAA, rather it was longstanding. And it wasn’t just compensation. College football and basketball players have for decades enjoyed facilities that shamed those in the NFL and NBA, and as former Clemson AD Dan Radakovich indicated, they were long afforded a lifetime to complete their degree if they chose to. All that, plus diploma or not they left the schools with rolodexes that every other kid on campus would have given anything for.
Implied in O’Bannon v. NCAA was exploitation of athletes that was nothing of the sort. If anything, and as evidenced by how many “can’t miss” recruits missed big over the years, the exploitation was of the universities by the athletes.
The aftermath of O’Bannon v. NCAA implied that formerly exploited athletes were suddenly free to get what they didn’t have before. Nonsense. Money always found the talent. The difference was that athletes were suddenly free agents, free to move from school-to-school, and back even, at their choosing.
Cruz wants to fix the free-for-all, which is the problem. With government, the solutions invariably worsen the problem. Cruz’s legislation would restrict athletes and coaches from pursuing better opportunities mid-season. No thanks. If we ignore how this suffocates labor freedom, the incentive remains for athletes and coaches to stick with one school given the compensation advantages of building a brand within one place. Law is excess here.
Cruz’s Protect College Sports Act also empowers the federal government to control schedules and the placement of “traditional rivalries” on the schedules. It’s dangerous. College football didn’t become a multi-billion-dollar industry based on a central, federal plan, rather it became what it became based on tradition existing as its life, and college football’s powers-that-be acting on the previous truth.
None of this is to defend what college football has become. Anecdotally, it’s hard to find a college football or basketball fan who likes what both have become in the aftermath of O’Bannon v. NCAA. What government touches, including its courts, it generally breaks.
By extension, how foolish to hand Ted Cruz and the federal government the power to centrally plan fixes. It’s a rushed path to much worse, and must be stopped.