KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County, including Independence. Share your story idea with Tod.
—
College sports fans have learned a lot of new terms in recent years — name, image and likeness rights, or NIL; transfer portal; the House settlement — but the movement toward player freedom and compensation has come at a cost for some fans, who say the ever-shifting rosters make it harder to enjoy.
Brandon Durkes, a KU baseball fan at Friday's NCAA Regional game in Lawrence, believes it has become more difficult to connect with players.
“A little bit — I mean, it's harder to get to know some of the guys, especially in basketball,” Durkes said.
He wasn’t alone in feeling that way.
Brody Sadler, a Kansas State fan from Smith Center, believes the constant roster churn the new era has created makes it harder to “build a relationship” with teams year after year.
"It is kind of destroying the sport a little bit,” Sadler said. “It's making players a little more selfish and kind of getting in their heads a little too much.”
It makes being a fan a little less fun, according to KU fan and graduate Terri Steinman.
"You can't really get into a team anymore because the players are coming and going all the time, and a lot of times they're more into it for themselves," she said.
NCAA rules enforcement has been battered by lawsuit after lawsuit in recent years, leaving a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions in its wake, which some have described as the Wild West with no simple fix.
Mit Winter, a college sports attorney with Kennyhertz Perry, said only two paths exist to restore order.
“One, federal law that gives the NCAA antitrust protection, or you collectively bargain those rules like they do in pro sports," he said.
The latter, which Winter said he would prefer, requires a declaration that student-athletes are school employees, allowing them to unionize and negotiate with schools for the rights that matter most to them.
Winter said there has been some movement toward collective bargaining in recent years, but it is certainly not imminent, which means possible congressional action.
Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced the Protect College Sports Act on Wednesday, which Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) co-sponsored along with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware).
The move comes on the heels of the SCORE Act failing to gain traction in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Winter said the new legislation also faces an uphill fight.
"It's good and bad,” he said of the Protect College Sports Act. “It's good, I would say, just because it does make an attempt to try and address all the different issues that are going on in college athletics right now. But I would also say that makes it potentially bad as well, because it's probably going to have something for everyone — no matter what your view on college athletics, your political affiliation — it's going to have something for everyone to hate.”
The proposed Senate legislation is much more sweeping than the failed House bill.
“I like to tell people that this new Senate bill is the SCORE Act Plus, because it has a lot of the same things as the SCORE Act in it — in terms of antitrust protection for NCAA rules related to transfers, eligibility and athlete compensation, how much the schools can pay the athletes and third-party NIL rules,” Winter said. “But then it goes way beyond those things that are in the SCORE Act, and really almost gets into trying to manage every other aspect of college athletics.”
It seems the only common ground in college sports these days seems to be that the status quo is broken.
“Transferring after one year and free spending by every university, and whoever has the most money gets the best players — there has to be some legislation,” Durkes said.
He is not against players getting paid from the massive revenues college sports generate, but wants some guardrails put in place, which is why some fans welcome congressional action.
"I hate to have a bunch of rules, but it will be something that I think would be helpful on a lot of levels to be able to bring college sports back close to where it was before," Steinman said.
Fans like Aryanna Jessup, a KU fan and Wichita State student from Lawrence, want to feel like the players care about their favorite school.
"If they're going to play there, I think that they should not worry about the money," Jessup said.
Dusty Snethen, another KU baseball fan at Friday's NCAA Regional game, said the connection between fans and players still matters most.
"We're KU fans,” he said. “So, if you want to come here and play for KU, you're welcome. That makes it fun and exciting to be here.”
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI, which was edited and supplemented by the . Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
—
