The NCAA inches closer every day to a tipping point of dramatic overhaul. Years of tectonic shifts around college sports could soon usher in an era its leaders and administrators have long tried to avoid: the treatment of college athletes as employees.
The next milestone could come Tuesday, when the Dartmouth men’s basketball team will vote on whether to form a union. The university is countering by fighting a National Labor Relations Board regional director’s finding that the basketball players are employees and entitled to union representation, but the effort is just one of several concurrent legal battles challenging the bedrock principle of amateurism that the NCAA has long prided itself on maintaining.
Meanwhile, in the past three months federal judges have blocked the NCAA from enforcing rules barring the use of NIL deals in recruiting and rules that require a multiple-time transfer to sit out for a year before competing. Other ongoing lawsuits take aim at the organization and schools themselves for violating federal antitrust law by restricting athlete compensation. An unfavorable ruling in any one of multiple courtrooms across the country could send the NCAA careening into its uncharted new world.
“With these cases that are addressing one rule at a time, it’s…
