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Last week, the national college sports conversation temporarily shifted to men’s basketball, as longtime Virginia men’s basketball coach Tony Bennett announced his surprising, and abrupt, retirement.

With the season a few weeks away, Bennett said that “I am no longer the best coach to lead this program in this current environment.” The current environment, of course, referring to a world where players aren’t just cashing in on NIL and collective money, but are constantly coming and going.

In his retirement press conference, Bennett said,

And at this point, it’s hard to find many coaches, from the P4s to the mid-majors, who disagree with the bulk of that argument. The NCAA, hamstrung from being able to enforce virtually any NIL related regulation over fear of getting sued, at least tried to do something about the agent problem, rolling out a (voluntary) registry of NIL service providers, meant to at least make it easier for parents and athletes to find quality representation. Few who work in the industry believe the current system of virtually unrelated transfer and agent activity is a net positive for college sports.

But college bargaining has been a red line resisted by the college presidents who dictate NCAA policy. University presidents do not want employment status for college athletes, and you can’t (currently) have a system that collective bargaining, salary caps and the sort of regulation that other stakeholders would prefer without employment.

The House settlement provides some limited regulatory framework for (some) revenue sharing, with a (kind of) salary cap and (maybe?) a third-party enforcement mechanism, but it isn’t a long term solution to any major problem. That’s why the current party line from Indianapolis, and from most conference commissioners, is that Congress needs to get involved.

Here’s Virginia AD Carla Williams, for example, saying,

I understand that this is not a popular position amongst many of my readers. After all, an antitrust exemption may allow the NCAA to essentially codify previous definitions of amateurism, rolling back athlete income and empowerment gains secured over the last few years.

But the more I think about this, the more I’m convinced Williams is actually right…even if I don’t agree with the specific federal action she probably has in mind

I do not like the current status quo for athlete compensation. I think it’s an inefficient system that empowers unscrupulous middlemen. I believe it puts too much pressure to fund the entire industry on the backs of already overstretched fans, and I think it makes it almost impossible to have sound governance between administration, athletes, boosters and families. Is it an improvement over the Bad Old Days, when athletes got no compensation other than what they could secure from booster handshakes or McDonald’s bags? Yes, of course. But that doesn’t make it sound policy.

But absent federal intervention, I don’t see any way for college sports administrators to make a new system that wouldn’t be blown up by state AGs, statehouse lawmakers, antitrust litigation or labor law challenges.

And that includes simply capitulating.

If Charlie Baker were to wake up tomorrow and say, “ah jeez, you’re right. We need to more to an explicitly professionalized model with direct athlete compensation, a collective bargaining agreement, multi-year labor contracts, the works. And the university presidents of every P4 institution agree with me.”, he’d probably win a lot of plaudits on Twitter and amongst Serious Professional College Sports Lawyers.

But I don’t think they’d actually be able to create or enforce this policy alone. I believe they’d need lawmakers to help.

Management, after all, can’t create a union to bargain with. Or at least, not a union worth a damn at the negotiating table. Labor has to create that, and despite the frantic attempts of multiple people to build a labor movement amongst current college athletes…it hasn’t happened yet. Organizing groups have generally had better luck securing membership and commitments from former college athletes…nice to have, for sure, but not as helpful in securing a CBA.

Lawmakers can help labor create a meaningful union or bargaining unit by clarifying exactly who is or is not an employee…or tweaking previous laws to allow for a collective bargaining unit without employment. But since athletes are not currently employees, and presumably some athletes would want/need to be classified as not employees, I don’t see a reasonable path towards the future that Bennett seems to be pushing here without lawmakers. If you want labor peace, Baker, ESPN and university presidents can’t broker it completely alone.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for any specific federal legislation here. Honestly, I think the “fixing college sports bill” is way too complicated to throw in a paragraph or two, 1,000 deep into a Monday newsletter. It’s not exactly a state secret that my biases are generally towards labor, so I wouldn’t want a federal bill to codify the 1988 NCAA handbook into federal legislation or anything, but I am suggestible as to a lot of possible bills.

I’m simply saying that “ehh, screw the NCAA for not acting!” isn’t good for more than just a tweet. The reality, in my professional opinion, is more complicated.

And it’s also fair to point out that the coach (and even administrator) frustration is about more than just money.

I think Dan Wolken of USA TODAY made a good point here in his column about Bennett:

This is exactly what I hear from coaches and administrators myself, not just ADs in P4 leagues making $1.6 million a year…but from coaches and administrators all over DI. The kind of person who decides to work in the athletic department at Gardner-Webb or Weber State or Elon is generally not the sort of person who entered the industry solely for power, money or acclaim...but because they love sports and working in the development of young people. It’s the feeling that they can’t effectively compete or develop that is causing the existential crisis, not the stress of needing to find another $4 million in the ol’ budget.

I think us scribes and fans do the industry a disservice to reduce the complaints of those in the industry as purely the sour grapes of rich guys who don’t want to share anymore. Is there an element of that? I’m sure there is. I’m a naive idealist, sure, but I’m not that naive.

But it’s also because folks with mostly good intentions don’t see a path to do the most rewarding parts of their jobs anymore. I get that pain…I’ve been in job situations like that too.

I just don’t see a way around it without Congress…whether the solution is a rubber-stamping of everything Mark Emmert would have asked for, or a starkly pro-labor pathway to the explicit professionalization of big-time college sports.

We can blame the NCAA for making the wrong moves 20 years ago. But the true control of what happens next in college sports…good or bad…isn’t in Indy. I think it’s in D.C.