If college sports' leadership sincerely wants to achieve tangible resolutions to its unending problems related to roster stability and NIL compensation, then it needs to be as intentional, creative and collaborative as the University of Tennessee and its athletic director, Danny White.
Tuesday morning brought an interesting dash of news that might one day, many years down the road, prove to be the first action toward a truly professionalized NCAA. Tennessee men's basketball players spent part of their offseason negotiating with UT's athletic department in a mock exercise — that was nevertheless serious in concept — to show how players and third-party representation can bargain with schools to achieve equal rights and a seat at the table in the ever-escalating multibillion-dollar industry that is college sports.
The initiative was a voluntary joint endeavor on behalf of Athletes.org (AO) and "elected player representatives of the University of Tennessee men's basketball team." Athletes.org was established in 2023 and seeks to empower college players amid a time of rapidly shifting rules and regulations across the industry.
It's an important potential example of what collective bargaining could one day look like on a school-by-school level, if federal legislation fails to pass. White, who has been Tennessee's athletic director since 2021, has been outspoken on the pragmatic need for college sports to get to a place where schools and players can meet at the negotiating table and bargain binding deals that work for both sides.
"We take a lot of pride in being extremely athlete-centric, and listening to our players' interests through Athletes.org has shown that sharing perspectives through meaningful dialogue isn't something to be afraid of," Tennessee athletic director Danny White said in a statement. "Collective bargaining is a proven model that works across all of professional sports and, through Athletes.org, athletes can help create a healthy, durable solution for the future of college athletics."
The NCAA has been lobbying Congress throughout the 2020s in search of antitrust protection in order to broadly cap student-athletes' earning potential. The biggest hope for that to pass has been the Protect College Sports Act, which cruised via a 77-22 Senate vote in October. But it needs to get through the House of Representatives, and the expectation now, after the results of the November midterms, is that the PCSA is unlikely to see the floor through a lame-duck session in the House.
If/when the PCSA dies on the vine, that would likely mean a new bill gets introduced at some point in 2027 — and there's no guarantee that TBD bill would eventually become federal law.
What Tennessee and AO are putting forth would eliminate the need for federal legislation. Both parties even released the details of the term sheet between the school and the players. The terms of the deal are not compulsory (and would be illegal from a union standpoint, as things stand now), but the intent is to show that bargaining between players and schools — if not players and conferences, or even players and the NCAA — is an achievable future.
Athletes.org claims the term sheet between UT's players and the organization "provides the model for CBA terms between players and their schools' respective leagues that can be adapted across college sports." Critically, this model would involve player employment outside the purview of Tennessee's athletic department.
The school and AO did not disclose player-by-player compensation specifically, but CBS Sports reported in October that Tennessee is one of 11 schools clearing $20 million in spending on its men's basketball roster for this season. The SEC comfortably ranks first in basketball spending as well. Those figures in men's basketball — let alone the gargantuan spending in football — prove how valuable players' talents are and why they should have a bigger voice in big-picture negotiations.
The amount of exposition in the (mock) term sheet released on Tuesday is impressive and built out around five pillars: Money & Compensation; Player Movement; Health, Wellness & Time Commitment; Rules & Enforcement; and Academic & Support.
"It is not a signed agreement or ratified CBA. Rather, it offers the clearest picture to date of the issues a CBA could address, the accountability mechanisms that could protect athletes and an institution, and what athletes can achieve when they have a direct role in deciding the terms of the industry they power," per Athletes.org.
Tennessee agreed to have three of its players — grad student Tyler Lundblade, junior Campbell Duncan and sophomore DeWayne Brown II — as the reps in the bargaining process. AO said it is also currently running the same experiment with the Volunteers' football program.
"Some people say we're kids, that we're immature or that we don't understand. But we're the ones living this experience, and our opinions matter," Brown said in a statement. "We know what we want and how we want to move forward. Working through the collective bargaining process has been great, and I hope it's just a stepping stone for more college athletes to replicate our process with their own schools."
So much of what's involved here is encouraging, even if this is merely an exercise — with none of the terms binding. Tennessee's players and Tennessee's administration agreed to a neutral arbitrator for the terms of the would-be CBA, which would be a mandatory part of the process to one day make this possible.
The term sheet includes explicit terms: pay-for-play. No workarounds on dangling NIL carrots or, as AO refers to them, "influencer deliverables." Payment starts when players arrive on campus for the ensuing season. Schools will be held accountable, financially, for failing to follow through on their end. This exercise also invoked incentives for winning and an increase in pay for players to return and stay at least two years with the Vols.
The portal stipulation has a twist: 15 days for the window to go in, which is the current rule, but opening it "at least one week after" the NCAA championship game.
Also interesting: a salary floor, meaning every player on the roster (basketball allows for as many as 15) would be afforded a minimum. There is a clause for guaranteed payment despite injury and health insurance that lasts "at least two years of post-eligibility medical coverage for athletics-related injuries, five years for athletes who reach veteran status and lifetime coverage for catastrophic injuries."
Unfortunately, college sports is not close to having collective bargaining as an option in the next few years ... if not for at least a decade. A CBA requires employee status or, shy of that, extremely rigorous and deeply vetted workarounds, such as what was presented in this venture with third-party employee status.
But I'd like to believe that what we saw published on Tuesday will one day be how college sports works for most power-conference programs. My belief is based on conversations with coaches and athletic directors around college sports over the past two years who, increasingly, have said they want to see collective bargaining as the law of the land moving forward. It's not the easiest outcome, but it is the most desired. To get there will take an army of believers from all sides of this issue, and you need proof of concept to create momentum.
Tennessee is the first to get there. It's showing not just the broad parameters, but a blueprint that's begging to be brought to life.
