Renck & File: CU’s Deion Sanders wants salary cap, but what college sports really need is CBA

The seismic shifts rumbling through college athletics have left a trail of chaos, confusion, and increasingly, calls for radical reform. Amidst the swirling debates over Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and the unfettered transfer portal, Colorado Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders recently weighed in with a seemingly straightforward solution: a salary cap. While Sanders' desire for some semblance of financial order is understandable in an era where roster construction feels more like free agency than collegiate competition, his proposed remedy, a simple cap, fundamentally misses the mark. What college sports truly require is a comprehensive Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), a framework far more complex but infinitely more capable of addressing the multifaceted issues plaguing the NCAA.

The current landscape is a Wild West of unregulated spending and unprecedented player movement. The NCAA's long-held amateurism model has been shattered, not by a single blow, but by a thousand cuts driven by court rulings and the sheer economic force of college football and basketball. NIL was intended to allow athletes to profit from their personal brands, but without guardrails, it has morphed into a thinly veiled pay-for-play system, often incentivizing transfers and creating vast disparities between programs with deep-pocketed boosters and those without. A salary cap, in isolation, would merely be a single rule in an otherwise lawless territory. It would address the symptom of escalating player compensation but ignore the underlying disease of an organization struggling to define its purpose, enforce its rules, and protect its most valuable assets: the student-athletes.

This is where a Collective Bargaining Agreement enters the conversation as the undeniable, albeit challenging, path forward. In professional sports, CBAs are the bedrock of stability, negotiated agreements between player unions and leagues that define everything from minimum salaries, revenue sharing, player benefits, health and safety protocols, and most critically, dispute resolution mechanisms. For college athletics, a CBA would mean formally recognizing athletes as stakeholders with collective bargaining power, negotiating terms of employment (or compensation, if "employment" remains a contentious term), and establishing clear, enforceable rules for NIL, transfers, academic standards, and athlete welfare. Imagine a world where player agents and university athletic departments negotiate a unified set of rules, rather than operating in a fragmented, state-by-state, and often opaque environment. Such an agreement would bring much-needed transparency and structure to athlete compensation, ensuring fairness and preventing the backroom deals that currently undermine the integrity of recruitment.

Undeniably, implementing a CBA in college sports would be a monumental undertaking. The sheer number of institutions, conferences, and diverse sports, coupled with the complex legal implications of classifying athletes as employees, presents a labyrinth of challenges. Who would represent the players? Would it be a single union for all college athletes, or separate entities for different sports or divisions? How would revenue be equitably shared across powerhouse football programs and less profitable Olympic sports? These are not minor hurdles. However, the alternative is a continued descent into an unsustainable model, characterized by constant litigation, competitive imbalance, and a growing sense of disillusionment among fans. A CBA, though time-consuming and requiring immense political will from all parties, offers the only viable route to a stable, equitable, and professionalized future for college athletics, moving beyond the patchwork solutions and wishful thinking that have defined the past decade. It’s not just about capping salaries; it’s about building a sustainable ecosystem.