NCAA picked a pointless fight with Tennessee when it needs real solutions | Estes

Amateurism in college sports is dead. Has been for a while.

Someone, evidently, still needs to tell the NCAA.

Your move, Clifton Corker.

The latest example of college sports’ inability to manage itself is that Corker, a federal judge in Greeneville, Tennessee, is having to do it for them. He’s deciding whether the NCAA will be allowed to enforce its rules regarding the use of name, image and likeness benefits in recruiting against the University of Tennessee or other schools.

Even if Corker sides with the NCAA for now, it’ll likely be a temporary victory. Because, as a general rule, courtrooms in a capitalist society won’t be OK with non-negotiated restrictions on what their citizens can earn.

Collective bargaining should be the starting point for the NCAA’s efforts, rather than pointless legal fights to delay outcomes that have long felt preordained. NCAA leaders need real solutions. They won’t find any in Greeneville.

But there they were, and here I am, looking east and rolling my eyes.

I’m already tired of Tennessee’s legal wrangling with the NCAA.

More so, I’m fed up with the whole mess that is college football right now.

“It’s broken right now,” Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea said recently in an appearance on SiriusXM. “I don’t think anyone who’s being honest about it can say anything else. It’s just we’re in a really tough moment. This is, to me, the chaos that ultimately gives way to order.”

No one wants to watch the cow being slaughtered, and that’s what it is like to pay close attention to college football these days. It’s exhausting. Easier to just close your eyes and think about those tasty tailgate hamburgers in the fall.

Yet nonsensical conference realignment is killing rivalries and the transfer portal is making teams unrecognizable and paying the necessary new transfers and recruits is legal once they arrive, but – ah ah ah – not beforehand.

ESTES: Conference realignment is killing what makes college football special

What started with Tennessee being investigated for possible allegations – standard NCAA enforcement stuff – has become something far more wide-reaching than whether quarterback Nico Iamaleava is going to be eligible this fall or the Vols can go to a bowl game.

For UT, those reasons were why Tuesday’s hearing was important in the short term. But if you’re the NCAA, what’s going to get resolved in the long term? Does anyone think other schools would be content to sit there and suffer what has befallen Tennessee?

For other teams’ fans, Tennessee’s situation has placed them in the odd position of supporting the NCAA toughening the rules on those scoundrels in Knoxville, but you know, don’t enforce them in my direction. They’d be pretty sure, after all, that their school’s collective has been recruiting with NIL, too, since collectives were essentially created for that purpose.

Everyone thought it was legal. Because it was legal.

Tennessee has taken on this fight with enthusiasm. It sees what we all see – that all the NCAA did was put up a speed limit sign and then check footage from months and years before to write speeding tickets. Doesn’t work that way.

That’s how you end up with a judge in Greeneville faced with a ruling that could reverberate nationally – even as it ultimately won’t create any solutions.

Nothing will get fixed and college coaches like yLea – the ones who stick it out rather than opting for the pros – will continue to reference the “chaos” that has ensnared a sport that’s too beloved to be in such peril.

“Whether it’s teams or conferences or coaches, everybody kinds of feels separated right now,” Lea told SiriusXM. “This is a time where we need to come together and create solutions. I think we’re past the point of patchwork, kind of putting Band-Aids over this. I think there’s going to have to be big-picture decisions made, and I think that’s where the conversations are going.”

College football is changing, but it isn’t going away.

Looking ahead is easier than looking back. Because when you look back, you remember that the NCAA – and the schools that make up its membership – had an opportunity long ago to figure this out and get ahead of impending changes like NIL. They failed to do so.

Now it’s Clifton Corker’s turn.

And the rest of us wait until we just get to enjoy college football again.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: NCAA picked a pointless fight in Tennessee when it needs real solutions