LIBN Op-Ed: How Antitrust Laws Ruined College Football

On January 15, 2026, Long Island Business News published Chris Murray’s opinion piece, “How antirust laws ruined college football.”

Here is the full text.

Everyone who follows college football saw huge changes in the game this year. There is now revenue sharing between the colleges and players, a realignment of conferences, expanded playoffs and no restrictions on players transferring. But most college football fans may not realize these changes arose due to a Supreme Court decision eliminating the restraints on a college player’s ability to make money. Permitting student athletes to receive compensation for their contributions is warranted; however, these changes have diminished the sport’s traditional appeal. Instead of representing their school, college athletes have become free agents, willing to play for the highest bidder.

In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston that the NCAA could not restrict a player’s ability to be paid for the use of his likeness or endorsements and struck down limits on the number of scholarships awarded to players. The Supreme Court expressly held that the NCAA is subject to antitrust limitations and suggested that the limitation on a school paying a player would be illegal also.

Although a few professional sports leagues, like Major League Baseball, are exempt from the antitrust laws, as of now college football is not one. To be expected, lawsuits challenged any restrictions on a player’s ability to be paid by the school they attend, and these lawsuits were consolidated as a class action. This past year, a settlement of the class action was approved.

The settlement has been criticized as merely exchanging one cap—zero—with another cap. This limit on revenue sharing, critics claim, will actually constrain an athlete’s earning capacity and is likely to engender more litigation. At the other extreme, legislation introduced in Congress, called the SCORE Act, would exempt college football from the antitrust laws.

There is a compelling argument to allow college football players to earn money for playing. College football raises millions of dollars for the schools, and the players are at risk of injury, which could prevent them from playing in the NFL. But the NCAA’s actions have made college football just another professional league. Fewer conferences now stretch coast to coast, players can transfer without restrictions, and colleges now compete as to how much money they can pay.