The former Horned Frog proposes a hard salary cap to level the playing field, but antitrust hurdles and unregulated third-party deals threaten to derail financial reform.
Desmond Bane wants college basketball to establish a spending limit — which is totally fair.
The more important question might be whether the sport actually can.
As we covered earlier this week, the former TCU star and current Chief Basketball Officer believes players deserve to profit from their value, but thinks college basketball needs additional structure around how much programs can spend.
"Whether it's $10 million, $20 million, whatever the number is," Bane told Front Office Sports.
His reasoning was straightforward.
Give donors a defined fundraising target. Give coaches a defined budget. And, ideally, give programs something resembling a level financial playing field.
Turns out, Bane's concern is pretty realistic.
The House settlement already established an annual limit on how much participating schools can directly share with athletes. But third-party NIL compensation remains outside that hard cap.
Those deals aren't completely unregulated.
Third-party NIL agreements worth at least $600 must be reported through NIL Go, while certain deals are evaluated under standards involving a valid business purpose and reasonable compensation.
But legitimate third-party NIL compensation remains uncapped.
Reuters reported this week that while direct school payments are capped, third-party NIL deals remain outside that limit and subject to scrutiny from the College Sports Commission.
That's essentially the problem Bane is describing.
A coach can have a defined school-funded budget without having one definitive number representing all of the money potentially influencing roster construction.
So why doesn't the NCAA simply establish another cap?
Well ... that's where things get complicated.
The NCAA has repeatedly faced antitrust litigation over restrictions on athlete compensation. In NCAA v. Alston, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a ruling preventing the NCAA from enforcing certain restrictions on education-related benefits.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh went further in a concurring opinion, questioning whether the NCAA's remaining compensation rules could survive ordinary antitrust scrutiny and identifying legislation or collective bargaining as possible ways to address the larger issue.
That makes establishing Bane's $10 million or $20 million limit considerably more complicated than simply picking a number.
One potential answer is Congress.
The bipartisan Protect College Sports Act would establish federal rules governing athlete compensation while providing legal protection for certain college-sports regulations.
The legislation failed to receive a Senate vote before lawmakers left for their August recess, but it was placed on the chamber's September calendar.
Another potential path is collective bargaining.
Professional sports leagues commonly use collectively bargained compensation systems, with player unions negotiating economic rules such as salary structures and other employment terms.
College sports isn't there yet.
But movement has started.
Stanford football players recently formed the first active-athlete chapter of the College Football Players Association, which hopes to eventually establish bargaining units on a conference-by-conference basis.
Neither route guarantees college basketball will ever have the exact spending limit Bane wants.
It might never look like $10 million or $20 million.
But his underlying concern holds up.
College sports has established a limit on direct school compensation without establishing one definitive limit on the broader market affecting roster construction.
If college basketball eventually wants one, determining the number might actually be the easy part.
