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NBA teams are now playing exhibition games in China, but players are prohibited by the NBA from speaking to the press at any time during the tour. Far from sports bringing two nations together, instead it is inflaming the tensions.
A federal court in California is bringing down American higher education, and most people have no idea it’s happening. A few years ago, a class action lawsuit on behalf of college athletes resulted in a court-approved settlement of $2.8 billion dollars to be paid out by colleges and the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) — including a whopping $750 million dollars to the lawyers alone. This is known as the “House settlement,” and it’s a financial burden that is rippling through campuses across the country. Programs are being cut. Enrollment is falling. Colleges are closing.
This major blow wasn’t the result of legislation or a vote, but the result of one federal judge in California deciding that college athletes deserved compensation going back to 2016. The case is on appeal in the 9th Circuit Court, but the damage is very real and spreading fast. Last year alone, 28 colleges went out of business. Over the past eight years, more than 100 have closed. The Huron Consulting Group estimates that roughly a quarter of all private nonprofit colleges could be forced to close or merge within the next decade.
For more than a century, college sports worked precisely because they kept money out of it. Students played for the love of the game. Walk-ons — kids who showed up, tried out, and earned a spot on the roster — were part of the fabric of college life. The movie “Rudy,” widely considered one of the greatest sports films ever made, captured that spirit perfectly. That model attracted students, inspired alumni donations, and gave millions of young people a reason to pursue a college education.
Today, Congress is considering the misnamed Protect College Sports Act, which would actually mandate the opposite of what worked. It would lock in player compensation, limit roster sizes to make walk-ons harder, and even prohibiting the SEC and Big Ten from expanding or merging. Federal micromanagement of private sports conferences is something this country has never seen before.
Though President Trump has endorsed the new college sports legislation, he said in March that he’d like to go back to what we had and ram it through a court. His instincts then are exactly right. The amateur model worked, but one activist judge in California broke it. Congress and the Trump administration now have an opportunity to fix it.
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