Paper No. 15 — Implementation and the Path Forward
How the system transitions from theory to reality—and what must occur for reform to succeed.
“Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.”
— Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 70
A constitutional structure is only useful if it can be implemented.
The same is true of college football reform.
It is one thing to say that major college football needs a new governing structure, a rational calendar, athlete contracts, enforceable compensation rules, regional competition, labor peace, and a better relationship with the rest of college athletics. It is another thing to move from the present disorder into that system without destroying value along the way.
That transition will be difficult.
It will involve institutions with different resources, different legal exposures, different media contracts, different state laws, different athlete populations, and different visions for the sport. It will require schools and conferences to surrender some unilateral freedom in exchange for a more durable national structure. It will require athletes to accept some rules in exchange for representation, compensation, protections, and stability. It will require Congress, courts, media partners, and possibly the NFL to recognize a structure they did not create alone.
But difficulty is not impossibility.
The current system is already changing. The question is whether that change will continue through litigation, improvisation, and private leverage, or whether it can be organized into a transition plan.
Implementation should not be understood as a single event.
It should be understood as a sequence.
Not a perfect sequence. Not a frictionless sequence. But a sequence nonetheless.
I. The First Principle: Do Not Build the New System on Emergency Rules
College football has spent years responding to crisis with temporary arrangements.
A court decision produces an interim policy. A state law produces a waiver. A settlement produces a compliance office. A conference dispute produces a scheduling compromise. A media negotiation produces a postseason adjustment. A transfer problem produces another exception.
Some emergency measures are unavoidable.
But emergency rules should not become the architecture of the sport.
The danger is that each temporary fix creates reliance interests. Schools hire staff around it. Athletes sign contracts under it. Collectives adapt to it. Conferences negotiate around it. Media partners build schedules around it. By the time anyone tries to replace the temporary rule, it has become part of the system.
That is how drift becomes governance.
The first implementation principle should therefore be simple: temporary rules must be identified as temporary, tied to transition periods, and replaced by permanent structures on a defined timetable.
A sport cannot govern itself through indefinite emergency.
II. Establish the Football Governing Body First
The first major step should be the creation of a separate governing body for major college football.
This body should not simply be a renamed NCAA committee or an informal conference alliance. It should be a defined institution with authority over the football-specific issues that the current structure cannot handle coherently.
Its jurisdiction should include:
membership standards;
scheduling principles;
roster rules;
athlete contract rules;
transfer windows;
compensation structures;
enforcement procedures;
health and safety standards;
postseason format;
media-rights coordination;
dispute resolution;
and coordination with the NCAA, Congress, and professional football where necessary.
This body need not administer every detail of every sport. It should not attempt to govern all of college athletics. Its purpose would be narrower and more realistic: to govern major college football as the distinct economic and legal enterprise it has become.
The governing body would likely begin not as a fully sovereign authority, but as a voluntary compact among institutions with shared incentives. Its authority would become meaningful only as it became tied to the things schools actually need: postseason access, media participation, scheduling agreements, athlete-contract recognition, and eventually federal legal protection.
In other words, the new structure would not begin with abstract power.
It would acquire authority through participation conditions.
The initial members would likely include the schools and conferences participating at the highest level of the sport. But membership should not be merely a matter of brand power. It should be tied to defined obligations.
Schools that participate in the top football structure should be required to meet standards for athlete compensation, health care, insurance, academic support, financial transparency, scheduling, roster management, and support for broader athletic obligations.
A new governing body should not be a club formed only to capture revenue.
It should be a compact formed to assume responsibility.
III. Define Membership and Competitive Tiers
The new system cannot work unless it defines who is in it.
That does not mean college football needs a closed league modeled on the NFL. It does mean the sport needs clearer membership standards for the highest level of competition.
At present, the top of college football is both formally broad and practically stratified. Many schools share the same subdivision label while operating with vastly different budgets, facilities, media value, recruiting reach, roster economics, and competitive expectations.
That fiction creates confusion.
A more honest system would define competitive tiers based on objective criteria, including:
financial commitment to football;
athlete compensation capacity;
stadium and facility standards;
scholarship or roster investment;
medical and insurance commitments;
compliance capacity;
scheduling obligations;
media participation;
and support for broader institutional responsibilities.
The highest tier should be open in principle but demanding in practice.
Schools should be able to enter if they meet the standards. They should be able to remain if they continue meeting them. They should be able to step down if the obligations no longer fit their institutional mission.
This would be healthier than the current system, where schools are often trapped between aspiration and reality.
A defined tier structure would also make playoff access, scheduling, revenue distribution, and athlete compensation easier to govern. Rules can be more coherent when they apply to institutions operating under comparable obligations.
The goal is not exclusion for its own sake.
The goal is honesty.
IV. Create a Transition Charter
Before permanent rules are adopted, the new football structure should operate under a transition charter.
That charter would function as the bridge between the current system and the final constitution.
It should identify:
the governing body’s temporary authority;
the participating institutions;
the transition period;
the issues to be resolved before full implementation;
the interim compensation rules;
the interim transfer rules;
the enforcement process;
the athlete-representation process;
the relationship to existing conference contracts;
the treatment of existing athlete agreements;
the initial calendar;
and the deadlines for permanent rules.
The transition charter should be public.
That matters.
One of the current system’s legitimacy problems is that too much governance appears to happen through private bargaining, leaked proposals, emergency waivers, and opaque enforcement decisions. A transition charter would not solve every problem, but it would give schools, athletes, fans, media partners, and policymakers a visible map.
The charter should also include sunset provisions.
If interim rules do not expire, they will become permanent by inertia. The transition period should be long enough to avoid chaos but short enough to prevent another decade of temporary governance.
Two to three years may be the right range.
Longer than that, and the transition risks becoming the new disorder.
V. Build Athlete Representation Before Relying on Restraints
The new system should not begin by imposing a full set of restraints and then asking athletes to accept them later.
That sequence would repeat the mistake of the old model.
If the sport wants enforceable rules on compensation, transfers, roster obligations, postseason participation, NIL review, health protections, or dispute resolution, it needs an athlete-representation mechanism early in the transition.
This does not necessarily require a fully mature professional-style union on day one.
But it does require something real.
At minimum, the transition should establish:
a football-specific athlete representative body;
a process for selecting or certifying representatives;
access to independent legal and financial advice;
a defined role in approving rules that restrain athlete rights;
a grievance process;
protection against retaliation;
and a path toward more formal bargaining if federal law permits or requires it.
That representative structure must also be independent enough to be credible. It cannot be selected, funded, or controlled entirely by the institutions whose rules it is asked to approve. However designed, it must include a recognized selection process, access to independent counsel, financial independence, and authority to withhold consent from rules that materially affect athlete compensation, movement, health, or discipline.
This is not merely about fairness.
It is about enforceability.
A compensation cap without athlete consent is a target. NIL enforcement without athlete participation is a grievance. Transfer limits without representation are litigation risk. Postseason obligations without negotiated protections invite conflict.
The goal is not simply to avoid a strike or organized refusal to play.
The goal is to create a system in which conflict can be resolved through governance before it becomes crisis.
Labor peace cannot be assumed.
It has to be built.
VI. Grandfather Existing Rights and Contracts
A transition plan must account for existing commitments.
Athletes may already have NIL deals, revenue-sharing expectations, transfer decisions, scholarship arrangements, insurance policies, or school-specific promises. Schools may have conference obligations, media contracts, donor commitments, coaching contracts, facility debt, and state-law compliance obligations. Conferences may have grant-of-rights agreements, scheduling contracts, bowl relationships, and playoff commitments.
Ignoring those realities would create unnecessary litigation and political resistance.
The transition should therefore include a grandfathering framework.
Existing athlete agreements should generally be honored unless they violate clearly defined minimum standards or involve fraud, coercion, or improper circumvention. Existing media and conference contracts should be respected where possible, but future agreements should be made subject to the new football governance structure.
The transition should distinguish between:
existing contracts that must be honored;
existing practices that may continue temporarily;
existing rules that expire at the end of the transition;
and future agreements that must comply with the new system.
This is not glamorous work.
It is essential work.
Reform fails when it ignores reliance.
A serious implementation plan should reduce the number of actors who feel forced to sue simply to preserve expectations created under the old system.
VII. Sequence Compensation Reform Carefully
Compensation reform should be phased.
The sport should not jump from informal NIL chaos to rigid central control overnight. Nor should it preserve a system where every payment is nominally independent while everyone understands that many payments are tied to athletic value.
The transition should begin by separating categories of compensation more clearly.
At minimum, the system should distinguish among:
institutional payments for athletic participation;
NIL and publicity-rights compensation;
third-party commercial endorsements;
group licensing;
postseason or championship compensation;
academic and educational benefits;
health, insurance, and injury protections;
and deferred or post-eligibility benefits.
Those categories should not be treated as interchangeable.
A school payment for athletic participation is different from a local endorsement deal. A group licensing payment is different from a booster inducement. An insurance benefit is different from a salary substitute. A postseason bonus is different from a scholarship.
Clear categories make enforcement more legitimate.
They also make Title IX analysis, tax treatment, budgeting, athlete counseling, and public understanding more manageable.
During the transition, schools should be required to disclose compensation structures in standardized ways. Athletes should receive plain-language contract summaries. Agents and advisors should be registered. Disputes should go to a defined arbitration or grievance process.
The goal is not to eliminate markets.
It is to make the markets governable.
VIII. Create a Real Enforcement System
A new structure will fail if enforcement is either toothless or arbitrary.
The old model often suffered from both problems. Some rules were aggressively enforced in ways that felt disconnected from the realities of the market. Other rules were ignored until public embarrassment forced action. Enforcement was slow, uneven, and often mistrusted.
A reformed system needs a different approach.
Enforcement should be:
prospective where possible;
transparent in procedure;
consistent across institutions;
independent from direct conference control;
respectful of athlete rights;
tied to defined penalties;
supported by written decisions;
governed by conflict-of-interest rules;
subject to reasonable discovery limits;
capable of expedited review during the season;
and subject to appeal.
The enforcement body should not exist merely to punish athletes or schools after the fact. It should also provide guidance, advisory opinions, safe harbors, contract review, and compliance education.
The system should prefer clarity over traps.
If a school, athlete, agent, or collective can ask in advance whether a structure is permissible, fewer disputes will become scandals.
Penalties should be aimed at the actors responsible. Athletes should not automatically bear the cost of institutional or collective misconduct. Schools should not be punished based on vague standards. Collectives and third parties should not be allowed to operate as shadow payroll systems while claiming independence.
The new enforcement system must be credible enough to matter and restrained enough to be trusted.
That balance will be hard.
It is also unavoidable.
IX. Align the Calendar Before Expanding the Postseason
Calendar reform should not be treated as an afterthought.
The season, transfer windows, recruiting periods, academic calendar, conference championships, playoff, bowl games, NFL draft process, and spring practice all interact. When those pieces are designed separately, athletes and institutions absorb the conflict.
The transition should therefore adopt a calendar before locking in the next postseason model.
The following calendar is not the only possible model. It is an illustration of the kind of integrated schedule a reformed system should be capable of producing.
A workable calendar might include:
a regular season beginning earlier in August;
fourteen weeks to play twelve regular-season games;
two open dates for recovery and travel management;
the regular season ending on Thanksgiving weekend;
a protected window for Army-Navy;
a limited and predictable transfer window after the regular season;
playoff quarterfinals in December;
semifinals on January 1, anchored by the Rose and Sugar Bowls;
and a national championship approximately ten days later.
The exact dates can be negotiated.
The principle should not be.
The calendar must be designed as a whole.
A twenty-four-team playoff would move in the opposite direction. It would add games, compress the calendar, dilute the regular season, increase travel and injury burdens, complicate final exams and holidays, and intensify the conflict with transfers and NFL preparation.
That is not modernization.
It is expansion without discipline.
A reformed system should preserve the regular season as the central asset of college football. The playoff should crown a champion, not consume the sport.
X. Protect Non-Revenue Sports During the Transition
Football separation should not become an excuse to abandon the rest of college athletics.
One of the central arguments for a separate football structure is that football’s economics have become too large and too legally distinct to govern through the same model as every other sport. But that separation should be used to stabilize the broader athletic ecosystem, not strip it for parts.
The transition should include protections for non-revenue sports.
Those protections could include:
defined institutional support obligations;
revenue-sharing or solidarity payments from the football structure;
limits on using football separation to evade broad-based athletics commitments;
scheduling principles that reduce unnecessary travel;
preservation of regional competition where possible;
and transparent reporting on athletic department spending.
Those obligations should not be merely aspirational. They should be conditions of membership, postseason eligibility, and access to media-rights distributions within the new football structure.
This will be politically and legally important.
If football reform is perceived as a way for the richest schools to professionalize football while cutting Olympic sports, women’s sports, or lower-profile men’s sports, it will face intense resistance.
It should face resistance.
A legitimate settlement must recognize that football created many of the pressures now destabilizing college athletics. The solution should not be to protect football alone.
The better model is separation with responsibility.
Football should have the structure it needs.
The rest of college athletics should receive the stability it deserves.
XI. Coordinate With Congress at the Right Time
Congress should not be the first step.
Nor should it be ignored.
The sequencing matters.
The sport should not begin by asking Congress for a blank check. It should first develop the framework Congress is being asked to protect: a defined governing body, a recognized athlete-representation mechanism, minimum health and educational protections, transparent compensation rules, a rational calendar, and a dispute-resolution process.
Congressional engagement may need to begin before the final framework is complete. Legislators, conferences, schools, and athlete representatives will need to understand what forms of legal protection are realistically available.
But final federal protection should come after—not before—the sport has built the structure Congress is being asked to protect.
Only then does federal legislation become defensible.
Congress should be asked to enable a negotiated structure, not to rescue institutions from the consequences of failing to create one.
Federal legislation may be necessary to:
preempt conflicting state laws;
recognize or protect athlete-representation structures;
provide limited antitrust protection for collectively approved rules;
establish minimum athlete protections;
clarify the treatment of certain compensation arrangements;
and protect broad-based athletics obligations.
But legal protection should be conditional.
Institutions should not receive immunity simply because the old model failed. They should receive limited protection only if they build a system that includes athlete representation, transparent governance, enforceable protections, and real dispute resolution.
Congress should bless a settlement.
It should not be asked to invent one.
XII. Coordinate With the NFL Without Becoming the NFL
The NFL should not govern college football.
But the professional pathway should be part of implementation.
The new structure should seek formal channels for coordination with the NFL and NFLPA on issues that affect both systems, including:
draft declaration deadlines;
early-entry procedures;
combine timing;
medical information standards;
insurance;
player education;
all-star events;
agent certification;
and calendar conflicts.
The purpose would not be to make college football subordinate to professional football.
It would be to reduce avoidable conflict.
If the college season, transfer window, playoff, all-star calendar, combine preparation, and draft process are all misaligned, athletes suffer first. Schools and professional teams suffer next. Fans eventually suffer too, because the postseason product becomes entangled with opt-outs, roster uncertainty, and professional preparation.
The NFL will participate only if it sees value in doing so.
That value can be practical: healthier prospects, better information, cleaner evaluation, fewer legal risks, and a more stable developmental environment.
College football should not beg the NFL for governance.
It should invite the NFL into areas where shared infrastructure serves both systems.
XIII. Use Pilot Rules Before Permanent Rules
Not every reform should be made permanent immediately.
Some changes should be tested.
A transition structure could authorize pilot programs for:
transfer windows;
roster limits;
injury reporting standards;
compensation disclosure;
contract templates;
postseason participation rules;
scheduling models;
and athlete grievance procedures.
Pilot rules should have defined terms, public evaluation criteria, and sunset dates.
Pilot programs affecting athlete compensation, movement, health, discipline, or postseason obligations should also require approval from the athlete representative structure. A transition system should not experiment with athlete rights without athlete consent.
This is especially important because college football is not a laboratory with identical subjects. A rule that works for the richest programs may not work for less wealthy ones. A transfer window that helps roster management may harm academic progress. A compensation disclosure rule that improves transparency may create privacy or competitive concerns. A scheduling model that helps national television may burden athletes with travel.
The system should be humble enough to test.
But it should also be disciplined enough to decide.
Pilot programs should not become a way to avoid permanent choices. They should generate evidence for those choices.
XIV. Establish Dispute Resolution Before the First Major Dispute
Every serious system needs a way to handle conflict.
College football currently resolves too many disputes through public pressure, emergency injunctions, conference politics, NCAA waivers, media leaks, and private bargaining.
That is not sustainable.
A reformed system should create defined dispute-resolution channels before the first major crisis occurs.
Those channels should include:
athlete grievances;
school-conference disputes;
compensation and contract disputes;
eligibility appeals;
enforcement appeals;
media and scheduling disputes;
transfer disputes;
and disputes between the football governing body and member institutions.
Some disputes should go to arbitration. Some should go to independent panels. Some may require expedited review during the season. Some may require public written decisions. Some may need confidentiality to protect athlete privacy.
The important point is that the forum should exist before the conflict.
A system that improvises dispute resolution during crisis will usually favor whoever has the most leverage in the moment.
That is not law.
It is power.
XV. The Implementation Timeline
A realistic transition could proceed in phases.
These phases would not unfold perfectly or entirely sequentially. Some would overlap, and some would require revision as legal, contractual, and political conditions changed. The point is not to pretend implementation can be made clean. The point is to prevent the transition from becoming entirely improvisational.
Phase One: Formation
The major football institutions and conferences agree in principle to form a separate football governing body. They adopt a transition charter, identify participating members, define temporary authority, and begin athlete-representation discussions.
Phase Two: Framework
The new body drafts initial rules on compensation categories, transfer windows, roster management, enforcement, scheduling, and dispute resolution. Athlete representatives participate in the process. Existing contracts and obligations are mapped.
Phase Three: Federal Engagement
Once the framework exists, the sport approaches Congress for targeted enabling legislation. The request is not for blanket immunity, but for limited protection tied to athlete representation, transparency, minimum protections, and national uniformity.
Phase Four: First Operating Cycle
The new system runs its first football season under transition rules. The calendar is adjusted. Compensation disclosures begin. Dispute-resolution processes are tested. Enforcement focuses on guidance and compliance rather than retroactive punishment.
Phase Five: Permanent Constitution
After the transition period, the football governing body adopts permanent rules. Interim policies expire. Pilot programs are either adopted, revised, or abandoned. The system moves from transition to ordinary governance.
This timeline is not the only possible sequence.
But some sequence is necessary.
Without one, the sport will continue mistaking motion for progress.
XVI. Conclusion
Implementation is where reform becomes real.
It is also where reform most often fails.
The temptation will be to announce a new structure before the hard questions are answered. The temptation will be to ask Congress for protection before athletes are represented. The temptation will be to expand the playoff before fixing the calendar. The temptation will be to impose compensation limits before creating labor peace. The temptation will be to preserve old contracts while pretending they do not constrain new governance.
Those temptations should be resisted.
A durable transition requires order: governing body first, transition charter second, athlete representation early, compensation categories clearly defined, calendar alignment before postseason expansion, federal legislation only after a real framework exists, and dispute resolution before crisis.
None of this will be simple.
But the alternative is not simplicity.
The alternative is continuing to rebuild college football through lawsuits, leaks, emergency rules, private leverage, and postseason negotiations that solve one problem by creating another.
The sport has already entered the transition.
The task now is to govern it.