3rd-parties could soon issue Kentucky driver's licenses but concern for long lines remains
KENTUCKY (FOX 56) — Anyone who's had to visit a driver licensing office anytime lately had good odds to also face a long wait.
As the legislative session begins to conclude, a little relief made it to the finish line, but some lawmakers see a missed opportunity to fix the problem.
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'It is so frustrating. It's so maddening. I get emails all the time,' Sen. Lindsey Tichenor (R-Smithfield) told FOX 56.Before 2022, Kentuckians could get a driver's license in any of Kentucky's 120 counties. The change to a regional system was prompted by the federal REAL ID Act to improve security. However, the reduction to only 34 regional locations to get a license has naturally led to longer wait times. And requirements this year for both a vision screening and REAL ID are increasing the foot traffic.'It can be quite infuriating when you take your day, and you end up waiting in line all day long and you still don't get into the building. And you may have an appointment. And you may not have an appointment, but they are just bogged down,' Tichenor said.
Sen. Tichenor was one of several lawmakers who filed proposals this year to cut down on the wait. House Bill 518 would have returned a clerk model. Tichenor's Senate Bill 166 would have brought a regional office to counties with a population of 50 thousand or more.
'I think that would have opened up five new centers, if I'm correct, which really would help it a tremendous amount,' Tichenor said.
Read more of the latest Kentucky news
Neither of those bills passed; however, a provision was included in Senate Bill 43 allowing third parties like AAA to also be able to issue licenses. As of Tuesday afternoon, the bill was still awaiting action from Gov. Andy Beshear.
'Now they won't be able to do testing or permitting, but they'll be able to do the renewals and be able to do the REAL ID,' Tichenor explained.
However, Tichenor said she does not expect an immediate impact and believes that it will require the flexibility of a budget session next year to pay for opening more driver licensing offices.
Tichenor said she is also hopeful that by next year a Kentucky State Police pilot program for pop-up licensing can expand. But until then, she encourages trying to renew online with the proper vision paperwork or seeking out a passport card to satisfy REAL ID requirements if someone is unable to make the time for a lengthy office wait.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Atlantic
28 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Where Is Barack Obama?
Last month, while Donald Trump was in the Middle East being gifted a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar, Barack Obama headed off on his own foreign excursion: a trip to Norway, in a much smaller and more tasteful jet, to visit the summer estate of his old friend King Harald V. Together, they would savor the genteel glories of Bygdøyveien in May. They chewed over global affairs and the freshest local salmon, which had been smoked on the premises and seasoned with herbs from the royal garden. Trump has begun his second term with a continuous spree of democracy-shaking, economy-quaking, norm-obliterating action. And Obama, true to form, has remained carefully above it all. He picks his spots, which seldom involve Trump. In March, he celebrated the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act and posted his annual NCAA basketball brackets. In April, he sent out an Easter message and mourned the death of the pope. In May, he welcomed His Holiness Pope Leo XIV ('a fellow Chicagoan') and sent prayers to Joe Biden following his prostate-cancer diagnosis. No matter how brazen Trump becomes, the most effective communicator in the Democratic Party continues to opt for minimal communication. His 'audacity of hope' presidency has given way to the fierce lethargy of semi-retirement. Obama occasionally dips into politics with brief and unmemorable statements, or sporadic fundraising emails (subject: 'Barack Obama wants to meet you. Yes you.'). He praised his law-school alma mater, Harvard, for 'rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt' by the White House 'to stifle academic freedom.' He criticized a Republican bill that would threaten health care for millions. He touted a liberal judge who was running for a crucial seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. When called upon, he can still deliver a top-notch campaign spiel, donor pitch, convention speech, or eulogy. Beyond that, Obama pops in with summer and year-end book, music, and film recommendations. He recently highlighted a few articles about AI and retweeted a promotional spot for Air Force Elite: Thunderbirds, a new Netflix documentary from his and Michelle's production company. (Michelle also has a fashion book coming out later this year: 'a celebration of confidence, identity, and authenticity,' she calls it.) Apparently, Barack is a devoted listener of The Ringer 's Bill Simmons Podcast, or so he told Jimmy Kimmel over dinner. In normal times, no one would deny Obama these diversions. He performed the world's most stressful job for eight years, served his country, made his history, and deserved to kick back and do the usual ex-president things: start a foundation, build a library, make unspeakable amounts of money. But the inevitable Trump-era counterpoint is that these are not normal times. And Obama's detachment feels jarringly incongruous with the desperation of his longtime admirers—even more so given Trump's assaults on what Obama achieved in office. It would be one thing if Obama had disappeared after leaving the White House, maybe taking up painting like George W. Bush. The problem is that Obama still very much has a public profile—one that screams comfort and nonchalance at a time when so many other Americans are terrified. 'There are many grandmas and Rachel Maddow viewers who have been more vocal in this moment than Barack Obama has,' Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Institute, told me. 'It is heartbreaking,' he added, 'to see him sacrificing that megaphone when nobody else quite has it.' People who have worked with Obama since he left office say that he is extremely judicious about when he weighs in. 'We try to preserve his voice so that when he does speak, it has impact,' Eric Schultz, a close adviser to Obama in his post-presidency, told me. 'There is a dilution factor that we're very aware of.' 'The thing you don't want to do is, you don't want to regularize him,' former Attorney General Eric Holder, a close Obama friend and collaborator, told me. When I asked Holder what he meant by 'regularize,' he explained that there was a danger of turning Obama into just another hack commentator—' Tuesdays With Barack, or something like that,' Holder said. Like many of Obama's confidants, Holder bristles at suggestions that the former president has somehow deserted the Trump opposition. 'Should he do more? Everybody can have their opinions,' Holder said. 'The one thing that always kind of pisses me off is when people say he's not out there, or that he's not doing things, that he's just retired and we never hear from him. If you fucking look, folks, you would see that he's out there.' From the April 2016 issue: The Obama doctrine Obama's aides also say that he is loath to overshadow the next generation of Democratic leaders. They emphasize that he spends a great deal of time speaking privately with candidates and officials who seek his advice. But unfortunately for Democrats, they have not found their next fresh generational sensation since Obama was elected 17 years ago (Joe Biden obviously doesn't count). Until a new leader emerges, Obama could certainly take on a more vocal role without 'regularizing' himself in the lowlands of Trump-era politics. Obama remains the most popular Democrat alive at a time of historic unpopularity for his party. Unlike Biden, he appears not to have lost a step, or three. Unlike with Bill Clinton, his voice remains strong and his baggage minimal. Unlike both Biden and Clinton, he is relatively young and has a large constituency of Americans who still want to hear from him, including Black Americans, young voters, and other longtime Democratic blocs that gravitated toward Trump in November. 'Should Obama get out and do more? Yes, please,' Tracy Sefl, a Democratic media consultant in Chicago, told me. 'Help us,' she added. 'We're sinking over here.' Obama's conspicuous scarcity while Trump inflicts such damage isn't just a bad look. It's a dereliction of the message that he built his career on. When Obama first ran for president in 2008, his former life as a community organizer was central to his message. His campaign was not merely for him, but for civic action itself—the idea of Americans being invested in their own change. Throughout his time in the White House, he emphasized that 'citizen' was his most important title. After he left office in 2017, Obama said that he would work to inspire and develop the next cohort of leaders, which is essentially the mission of his foundation. It would seem a contradiction for him to say that he's devoting much of his post-presidency to promoting civic engagement when he himself seems so disengaged. To some degree, patience with Obama began wearing thin when he was still in office. His approval ratings sagged partway through his second term (before rebounding at the end). The rollout of the Affordable Care Act in 2013 was a fiasco, and the midterm elections of 2014 were a massacre. Obama looked powerless as Republicans in Congress ensured that he would pass no major legislation in his second term and blocked his nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. 'Obama, out,' the president said in the denouement of his last comedy routine at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, in 2016. In Obama lore, this mic-drop moment would instantly become famous—and prophetic. After Trump's first victory, Obama tried to reassure supporters that this was merely a setback. 'I don't believe in apocalyptic—until the apocalypse comes,' he said in an interview with The New Yorker. Insofar as Obama talked about how he imagined his post-presidency, he was inclined to disengage from day-to-day politics. At a press conference in November 2016, Obama said that he planned to 'take Michelle on vacation, get some rest, spend time with my girls, and do some writing, do some thinking.' He promised to give Trump the chance to do his job 'without somebody popping off in every instance.' But in that same press conference, he also allowed that if something arose that raised 'core questions about our values and our ideals, and if I think that it's necessary or helpful for me to defend those ideals, then I'll examine it when it comes.' That happened almost immediately. A few days after vowing in his inaugural address to end the 'American carnage' that he was inheriting, Trump signed an executive order banning foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The so-called Muslim travel ban would quickly be blocked by the courts, but not before sowing chaos at U.S. points of entry. Obama put out a brief statement through a spokesperson ('the president fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion'), and went on vacation. Trump's early onslaught made clear that Obama's ex-presidency would prove far more complicated than previous ones. And Obama's taste for glamorous settings and famous company—Richard Branson, David Geffen, George Clooney—made for a grating contrast with the turmoil back home. 'Just tone it down with the kitesurfing pictures,' John Oliver, the host of HBO's Last Week Tonight, said of Obama in an interview with Seth Meyers less than a month after the president left office. 'America is on fire,' Oliver added. 'I know that people accused him of being out of touch with the American people during his presidency. I'm not sure he's ever been more out of touch than he is now.' Oliver's spasm foreshadowed a rolling annoyance that continued as Trump's presidency wore on: that Obama was squandering his power and influence. 'Oh, Obama is still tweeting good tweets. That's very nice of him,' the anti-Trump writer Drew Magary wrote in a Medium column titled 'Where the Hell Is Barack Obama?' in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. 'I'm sick of Obama staying above the fray while that fray is swallowing us whole.' Obama did insert himself in the 2024 election, reportedly taking an aggressive behind-the-scenes role last summer in trying to nudge Biden out of the race. He delivered a showstopper speech at the Democratic National Convention and campaigned several times for Kamala Harris in the fall. But among longtime Obama admirers I've spoken with, frustration with the former president has built since Trump returned to office. While campaigning for Harris last year, Obama framed the stakes of the election in terms of a looming catastrophe. 'These aren't ordinary times, and these are not ordinary elections,' he said at a campaign stop in Pittsburgh. Yet now that the impact is unfolding in the most pernicious ways, Obama seems to be resuming his ordinary chill and same old bits. Green, of the Progressive Change Institute, told me that when Obama put out his March Madness picks this year, he texted Schultz, the Obama adviser. 'Have I missed him speaking up in other places recently?' Green asked him. 'He did not respond to that.' (Schultz confirmed to me that he ignored the message but vowed to be 'more responsive to Adam Green's texts in the future.') Being a former president is inherently tricky: The role is ill-defined, and peripheral by definition. Part of the trickiness is how an ex-president can remain relevant, if he wants to. This is especially so given the current president. 'I don't know that anybody is relevant in the Trump era,' Mark Updegrove, a presidential historian and head of the LBJ Foundation, told me. Updegrove, who wrote a book called Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House, said that Trump has succeeded in creating a reality in which every president who came before is suspect. 'All the standard rules of being an ex-president are no longer applicable,' he said. Still, Obama never presented himself as a 'standard rules' leader. This was the idea that his political rise was predicated on—that change required bold, against-the-grain thinking and uncomfortable action. Clearly, Obama still views himself this way, or at least still wants to be perceived this way. (A few years ago, he hosted a podcast with Bruce Springsteen called Renegades.) From the July 1973 issue: The last days of the president Stepping into the current political melee would not be an easy or comfortable role for Obama. He represents a figure of the past, which seems more and more like the ancient past as the Trump era crushes on. He is a notably long-view guy, who has spent a great deal of time composing a meticulous account of his own narrative. 'We're part of a long-running story,' Obama said in 2014. 'We just try to get our paragraph right.' Or thousands of paragraphs, in his case: The first installment of Obama's presidential memoir, A Promised Land, covered 768 pages and 29 hours of audio. No release date has been set for the second volume. But this might be one of those times for Obama to take a break from the long arc of the moral universe and tend to the immediate crisis. Several Democrats I've spoken with said they wish that Obama would stop worrying so much about the 'dilution factor.' While Democrats struggle to find their next phenom, Obama could be their interim boss. He could engage regularly, pointing out Trump's latest abuses. He did so earlier this spring, during an onstage conversation at Hamilton College. He was thoughtful, funny, and sounded genuinely aghast, even angry. He could do these public dialogues much more often, and even make them thematic. Focus on Trump's serial violations of the Constitution one week (recall that Obama once taught constitutional law), the latest instance of Trump's naked corruption the next. Blast out the most scathing lines on social media. Yes, it might trigger Trump, and create more attention than Obama evidently wants. But Trump has shown that ubiquity can be a superpower, just as Biden showed that obscurity can be ruinous. People would notice. Democrats love nothing more than to hold up Obama as their monument to Republican bad faith. Can you imagine if Obama did this? some Democrat will inevitably say whenever Trump does something tacky, cruel, or blatantly unethical (usually before breakfast). Obama could lean into this hypocrisy—tape recurring five-minute video clips highlighting Trump's latest scurrilous act and title the series 'Can You Imagine If I Did This?' Or another idea—an admittedly far-fetched one. Trump has decreed that a massive military parade be held through the streets of Washington on June 14. This will ostensibly celebrate the Army's 250th anniversary, but it also happens to fall on Trump's 79th birthday. The parade will cost an estimated $45 million, including $16 million in damage to the streets. (Can you imagine if Obama did this?) The spectacle cries out for counterprogramming. Obama could hold his own event, in Washington or somewhere nearby. It would get tons of attention and drive Trump crazy, especially if it draws a bigger crowd. Better yet, make it a parade, or 'citizen's march,' something that builds momentum as it goes, the former president and community organizer leading on foot. This would be the renegade move. Few things would fire up Democrats like a head-to-head matchup between Trump and Obama. If nothing else, it would be fun to contemplate while Democrats keep casting about for their long-delayed future. 'The party needs new rising stars, and they need the room to figure out how to meet this moment, just like Obama figured out how to meet the moment 20 years ago,' Jon Favreau, a co-host of Pod Save America and former director of speechwriting for the 44th president, told me. 'Unless, of course, Trump tries to run for a third term, in which case I'll be begging Obama to come out of retirement.'
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
5 House settlement changes college fans will notice immediately
It's a new dawn in the world of college athletics. On Friday night the long-awaited $2.8 billion House settlement was approved, officially ushering in an era where schools can directly pay players. Immediately after the landmark agreement, a number of new entities and executives emerged to lead college sports into the future. While this is all expected to play out in the coming months and years, there is already A LOT of moving pieces. Advertisement You can read all about what's included in the settlement here, but if you're looking for a quick breakdown of some of the more immediate changes, we've got you covered. Here are the people, terms and regulations you need to know about. The College Sports Commission Jun 4, 2024; Eugene, OR, USA; A NCAA logo flag at Hayward Field. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports Say goodbye to the NCAA's wildly unpopular enforcement and penalty process, and say hello to its replacement: the newly-created College Sports Commission. You're going to be hearing about it a lot when it officially begins operations on July 1, 2025. Here's what the new oversight authority will be in charge of policing, per USA TODAY's Steve Berkowitz: ▶Rules-making. ▶Managing the NIL Go system, an electronic system that athletes will be required to use to report the details of their NIL deals with entities other than their schools. ▶Figuring out how to determine the legitimacy of those deals, and how to deal with appeals by athletes, who — under the settlement — can seek arbitration if they want to challenge a determination that a deal is not legitimate relative to having a 'valid business purpose' and being within 'a reasonable range of compensation.' ▶Forming a new regulatory and enforcement entity that will be led newly named chief executive officer Bryan Seeley. According to the announcement of his hiring on June 6, Seeley "will build out the organization's investigative and enforcement teams and oversee all of its ongoing operations and stakeholder relationships. … Seeley and his team will also be responsible for enforcement of the new rules around revenue sharing, student-athlete third-party name image and likeness (NIL) deals, and roster limits. The Commission will investigate potential rules violations, make factual determinations, issue penalties where appropriate, and participate in the neutral arbitration process set forth in the settlement as necessary." Advertisement Speaking of enforcement, the CSC is expected to resolve any investigations within 45 days — a major shift from the long, drawn out NCAA investigations fans have come to expect. The CSC's CEO can be the judge, jury and executioner here with the ability to impose fines and penalties. College Sports Commission CEO Bryan Seeley For all intents and purposes, Seeley is the new top dog when it comes to college sports compliance. He was hired by the four power conference commissioners (ACC's Jim Phillips, Big Ten's Tony Petitti, Big 12's Brett Yormark and SEC's Greg Sankey). So here's the skinny, per ESPN's Jeff Passan and Pete Thamel: Seeley is MLB's executive vice president, legal & operations, and he brings investigative experience, which will be key in this role. In the post-settlement era, the NCAA will no longer be in charge of the enforcement of most rules. (It will still maintain purview over things like academics, but it will not patrol benefits.) The CSC is the new era's enforcement arm that will have final say in doling out punishments and deciding when rules have been broken. It's one of the most important roles in this new era, as the industry has been craving some type of guidance since the advent of name, imagine and likeness has made the descriptor "wild, wild west" a common one in regard to the generally unregulated college sports industry. In a formal announcement, Seeley's job is described as having to "build out the organization's investigative and enforcement teams and oversee all of its ongoing operations and stakeholder relationships." Per the release: "Seeley and his team will also be responsible for enforcement of the new rules around revenue sharing, student-athlete third-party name image and likeness (NIL) deals, and roster limits." Advertisement Some more quick facts about Seeley: 42 years old Joined MLB as Vice President, Investigations & Deputy General Counsel in 2014 Served as Assistant U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C. from 2006-2014, prosecuting white-collar crimes, fraud and corruption Attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School NIL GO Mar 22, 2025; Birmingham AL, USA; LSU gymnast LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne walks with teammates to a competition area and gestures to fans during Session 2 of the SEC Gymnastics Championship at Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama. LSU won the event to claim the SEC crown. No, this is not the latest streaming service. It's a clearinghouse established by Deloitte to handle number-crunching and maintain compliance between schools, athletes and third parties. It will also fall under the CSC's purview. Per ESPN's Pete Thamel and Jeff Passan: LBi Software and accounting firm Deloitte have been lined up to handle salary cap management and to manage the clearinghouse for NIL. Those NIL deals will be outside of the revenue share directly from schools, and how they are approved has been the focus of much conversation around college sports. The clearinghouse that Deloitte has established will be known as NIL Go, which will be used to verify whether deals between athletes and boosters or associated entities are for a valid business purpose rather than a recruiting incentive. Whether or not a school opts in to provide NIL payments to athletes, any Division I athletes who signs an NIL deal worth $600 or more will have to go through NIL GO. Salary Cap And Roster Limits Michigan players huddle during warm up ahead of the Rose Bowl game against Alabama at Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 1, 2024. Yep, it's happening in college sports. Schools will start with a $20.5 million cap that's set to increase by four percent annually, with a notable caveat, per Berkowitz: In Years 4, 7 and 10, new baselines would be established based on the defined set of Power Five athletics department revenues. However, under certain circumstances connected to the timing and value of media rights contracts, the plaintiffs' lawyers have two options during the 10-year settlement period to have new baselines set more quickly. Advertisement The settlement was temporarily help up in court by the issue of roster limits, as programs already began cutting walk-ons and other players in anticipation of the salary cap. That was resolved through a "grandfathering" agreement that will delay some roster limits if players were already promised a spot. Per CBS Sports: [U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken] asked attorneys to craft a plan to allow current players to be "grandfathered in" with the new roster limits. The NCAA, power conferences and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit instead offered a compromise: schools have the option to keep current players on their rosters and temporarily exceed new limits until their eligibility expires. The new roster limits were expected to lead to the cutting of nearly 5,000 athletes from teams across the NCAA's 43 sponsored sports. Some sports will increase roster limits compared to previous years, but many will be trimmed despite offering unlimited scholarships within those new thresholds. Football rosters will shrink to 105 players, resulting in schools cutting more than 20 players, though most schools are expected to exceed those limits by grandfathering in current athletes. March 1 Deadline For Non-Power 5 Schools Mar 20, 2025; Wichita, KS, USA; Gonzaga Bulldogs forward Ben Gregg (33) celebrates with guard Ryan Nembhard (0) and guard Nolan Hickman (11) after a play in the first half of a first round men's NCAA Tournament game against the Georgia Bulldogs at Intrust Bank Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images The start of March has now become one of the most crucial days on the sports calendar as non-Power 5 schools will have to declare by then whether or not they are opting into revenue sharing for the following academic year. Per the CSC: All current members of the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC are participating in the new revenue sharing model overseen by the College Sports Commission. Division I schools from other conferences can choose to 'opt in' to revenue sharing and must formally do so by June 15, 2025, at which point a full list of participating schools will be made public. Each year, schools outside of the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC will have the option to opt in to or out of revenue sharing. These schools must notify the NCAA if they will opt in to (or opt out of) revenue sharing for the upcoming academic year by March 1 of each year. In order to opt out, an institution must have fulfilled any relevant obligations to student-athletes and all revenue sharing - or incremental increases in scholarship - must cease. It is important to note that regardless of whether an institution opts in to revenue sharing, all Division I student-athletes will be subject to the new rules and requirements around third-party NIL deals. Advertisement This is a whole new world of college athletics and there's a lot to process here. We'll continue to break down all the developments over the coming months (and years). This article originally appeared on For The Win: 5 House settlement changes college fans will notice immediately
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Yahoo
Even after House v. NCAA settlement, college sports remain broken. But what else is new?
College sports are at an inflection point. Approval of the long-awaited House v. NCAA settlement was finally granted on Friday, a decision set to reshape the future of college sports. And yet, so much of the industry's future is still pinned to Congress and the hopes of federal legislation, all while private equity and 'super league' models circle overhead. President Donald Trump recently considered a commission that would explore the issues facing the NCAA and college athletics, with Nick Saban expected to be involved. Advertisement An enterprise that has long had too many cooks in the kitchen now has all three branches of government and outside financing getting involved. (Wherefore art thou 'stick to sports' crowd?) That's on top of the current power struggle over the future of the College Football Playoff, and the expanding competitive gap between the power conferences and everyone else. All of it underscores just how fractured and dysfunctional college athletics have become, with no quick fixes in sight. But for as dire as all of this might seem, it's not a death rattle, either. College sports are broken and in desperate need of reform. And college sports will be just fine. For too long the NCAA was trapped in amber, still trying to operate as a singular, all-encompassing, amateur production, while its most prominent sports and conferences leaned further into a big-money, professionalized business model. Prior court rulings and allowing athletes to earn name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation have chipped away at the old notion, but only after the NCAA got dragged along, kicking and screaming. The organization consistently opted for incremental half measures over effective reform, which is how we swung from full-ride athletic scholarships feeling grossly insufficient to the guardrails getting ripped off via lawless, pay-for-play NIL deals. Yet college sports keep hanging tough, resilient through change and mismanagement. Advertisement The House settlement is the latest example, a $2.8 billion agreement that peels away at the last remaining vestiges of amateurism in collegiate athletics by allowing schools to directly pay athletes, yet fails to solve the industry's biggest underlying issue: The NCAA is still ripe for litigation. To be fair, the House settlement an attempt to find that Goldilocks solution to athlete compensation, as well as revamp the broader governance of college athletics. It improves the status quo, most notably because more athletes will receive a bigger cut of the billions in revenue dollars that college sports generate. It also reflects a shift in posture by the NCAA since Charlie Baker took the reins from Mark Emmert as NCAA president in 2023, and the growing influence of the power conferences. Rather than risking more legal defeats (and financial ruin), the NCAA opted for compromise, bundling a trio of high-profile antitrust lawsuits into one agreement and footing a multi-billion-dollar bill. Except it doesn't change the fact that the NCAA and power conferences are still trying to live in two worlds at once — the old and the new — a luxury that even this pricey settlement can't buy. There are still questions about years of eligibility, collective bargaining, athlete employment status, conflicting state laws, Title IX, third-party NIL deals, and the likelihood of Congressional intervening on any of it. Unless Congress or this presidential commission — which is currently on pause — can drum up some legislative action in relatively short order, the House settlement does little to stop the onslaught of legal challenges that have kneecapped the NCAA's authority, again and again. 'The House settlement started with the goal of the NCAA putting an end to the losses it has taken in these litigations all over the country,' Cal Stein, a sports law lawyer, said in an interview with earlier this year. 'But the great irony is that it's really just going to lead to more lawsuits.' Advertisement This lack of harmony plagues college sports beyond the courtrooms, too. Yes, revenues keep climbing, and that money is a direct result of the continued popularity. But don't mistake it to mean every development has been fan friendly. Dollar signs also funded the Great Consolidation of conference realignment and power conference autonomy, dismantling so much of the regionality and tradition that makes college sports special. As fans continue to suffer lost rivalries and increasingly transient rosters (and whatever happens with the Playoff), it's reasonable to argue that enthusiasm has dipped as a result, at least in some corners. But what is unassailable, by any modern cultural standard, is that college sports remain extremely popular, warts and all. College football is the second most-watched sport in America behind the NFL. Men's basketball recently had its best TV audience since 2017 for a Final Four, featuring four No. 1 seeds from power conferences. Women's basketball has experienced exponential growth in the past few years. Nebraska women's volleyball filled a football stadium with 92,000 fans in 2023, breaking the world record for attendance of a women's sports event. Stanford softball set the sport's all-time attendance record this season. Times change. College sports plow on. There's more change ahead. What a much-needed reset actually looks like for the industry is up for debate, and competing voices can haggle over how to best restructure college sports and what role the NCAA should serve. But the House settlement required years of mountain-moving negotiations and billions of dollars in restitution that will totally upend the industry — only to reiterate more is needed. Advertisement '(The settlement is) not the end of the story,' SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said during a recent panel discussion. 'It is a chapter. It's a necessary chapter.' That's a nice way of saying the current Frankenstein approach isn't gonna cut it, and is merely delaying the inevitable. Until then, history tells us to expect more of the same resiliency from college sports in this post-settlement era … or if the College Football Playoff expands (again) to 16 teams … or if the NCAA Tournament expands to 76 teams … or if the President invokes an executive order … or if some version of the power conferences break away in football to form a super league. One of the few constants in college sports is the ability to prosper in spite of themselves. Though it would be nice if that didn't always have to be the case. This article originally appeared in The Athletic. College Football, Men's College Basketball, Sports Business, Women's College Basketball 2025 The Athletic Media Company
