The mistake in the White House college sports roundtable is thinking the system can somehow return to what it was.
But it can’t.
College athletics didn’t break because NIL happened. It broke because media money, conference realignment, and the professionalization of football and basketball fundamentally changed the economics of the system.
What Charlie Baker said is the most honest line of the day:
“The money part has to be part of the conversation and it’s gotta involve the student-athletes.”
That’s the reality.
The old model worked when college sports were a campus activity. Today it’s a multi-billion dollar entertainment business. You can’t run a modern sports economy with 1980s governance structures.
The next phase of college athletics isn’t about “going back.” It’s about building the operating system for a new industry.
Trump asks Charlie Baker if there’s a solution that is “as good as what we had before?”
Baker: “the big thing we all have to remember here is that the way it was before…sports and media played a completely different role in our society…and the money part has to be part of the conversation and it’s gotta involve the student athletes.”