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the BigAmateurism monologues

the BigAmateurism monologues

By: Richard Ford
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A series of events over the last 18 months—some unforeseeable—have created a perfect storm that will change college sports forever. The NCAA's bait and switch campaign in Congress on name, image, and likeness, a historic case in the US Supreme Court, COVID, race-based social unrest, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (and the ascent of Amy Coney Barrett,) the Georgia special elections, and more have conspired to make this era perhaps the most consequential in the history of American sports. In this perfect storm, nothing is as it appears to the public. The NCAA and powerful conferences have marshaled some of the most powerful corporate, legal, public relations, media, and political forces in the world to wage war against a small group of elite revenue-producing athletes—overwhelmingly African American—who threaten to disrupt the NCAA cartel in the 15 billion-dollar-a-year college sports industry. The NCAA is one bill in Congress and one Supreme Court decision away from achieving the Iron Throne of college sports regulation. If that happens, the athletes whose talents underwrite the entire industry will have no recourse in federal courts to challenge the NCAA's amateurism-based compensation limits and state legislatures will be powerless to pass laws that protect athletes' basic economic liberties. Join former Duke basketball player, attorney, academician, and athletes' rights advocate Richard Ford as he dissects the NCAA's war against revenue-producing athletes and the institutions, interests, decision-makers, and motives behind it. Social Sciences
Episodes
  • NCAA v NC State: A Due Process Train Wreck

    NCAA v NC State: A Due Process Train Wreck
    May 31 2026
    The NCAA’s infractions and enforcement action against NC State arising from the basketball-related criminal cases in the Southern District of New York makes a mockery of basic principles of due process. From its inception, the NCAA Committee on Infractions (COI) relied upon newly created investigative and adjudicatory principles adopted in August 2018 by the NCAA’s Commission on College Basketball (CCB) recommendations. The CCB never intended these new tools to be utilized in the “old” COI process. Instead, the CCB recommended that these tools be available only to independent adjudicators in high-stakes NCAA infractions cases. Indeed, the very purpose of the CCB’s recommendations for a fundamental overhaul of the old infractions system to include a new, separate, independent track for adjudications of high-stakes cases was to mitigate obvious conflicts of interests in the old COI process. NCAA insiders control the old process, including the COI pool of adjudicators and in-house NCAA enforcement staff. In the NC State case, the NCAA ran the entire case through the old process while relying on the evidentiary shortcuts intended for the new process. Then, just a week before a COI panel was projected to hear the case, the COI administrator responsible for managing all infractions cases arising from the basketball-related criminal cases referred the NC State case to the new, ostensibly independent process. NC State reluctantly acceded to the referral but protested substantial due process irregularities. This episode provides a timeline of relevant events in the NC State case, from the beginning of the FBI’s investigation in 2015 on the criminal side, through the NCAA infractions process, and a hearing conducted last month by an Independent Accountability Resolution Panel (IARP). The NC State case is the first-ever to be heard by an IARP. The panel will issue a public opinion at some point. This infractions case has important implications beyond the due process concerns raised by NC State. The NC State case was substantially complete before (1) the US Supreme Court’s Alston decision; (2) the NCAA’s failed attempts in Congress to obtain federal protections and immunities from liability or scrutiny in its exercise of regulatory authority; and (3) the NCAA’s self-inflicted name, image, and likeness debacle. The predicate for the entire NCAA infraction and enforcement process is the principle of amateurism. That principle is now in existential jeopardy. The NC State decision will provide important insight into how the NCAA views the viability of amateurism and whether it can use amateurism as the basis for penalizing alleged violations of amateurism-based NCAA rules.
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    43 mins
  • Who are the Five Most Influential NCAA Insiders?

    Who are the Five Most Influential NCAA Insiders?
    May 31 2026
    From the beginning of the early 20th century, one central question has plagued the voluntary regulation of college sports: who is in charge? If you were to pose that question to twenty in-system stakeholders/decision-makers, you might y get twenty different answers. The NCAA regulatory and decision-making process is notoriously opaque. Its defining feature is a lack of clear accountability. After the Commission on College Basketball’s report in April 2018, Commission chair Condoleezza Rice lamented that college sports decision-making resembled a circular firing squad where no one is accountable. Yet a careful examination of the composition of the NCAA’s most consequential governing boards and committees reveals that a small handful of NCAA insiders wield extraordinary power. These decision-makers operate as an invisible star chamber with influence across the board/committee spectrum. While this dysfunctional component of the college sports regulatory model is nothing new, the current star chamber suggests an imbalance of power among the Power 5 conferences. This episode looks at the composition of the current—post-Alston, post-NCAA constitutional makeover, post-NIL market—NCAA governance structure and identifies five key decision-makers and their crucial roles.
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    1 hr
  • The Federal NIL Police

    The Federal NIL Police
    Oct 21 2025
    An element of the NCAA’s and Power 5’s quest for preemption is the claimed need for a national enforcement entity. In 2019 and through 2020, the NCAA argued that it—and it alone— should serve that role if Congress federalizes the NIL market. Now, with the NCAA’s diminishing relevance as a national regulator, NCAA and Power 5 lawyers, lobbyists, and advocates like Linda Livingstone call for a “truly independent” federal enforcement entity. This vague, appealing characterization is yet another NCAA/Power 5 smokescreen. This episode analyzes the legislative proposals Big 12 lobbyists are promoting in Congress behind closed doors and the structure of the “independent” entities responsible for regulation and enforcement in a federalized NIL marketplace.
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    1 hr and 2 mins
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