Key Takeaways
- Athletes.org, representing 5,000 college athletes across all sports and divisions, has released what is believed to be the first collective bargaining agreement draft for college sports
- The 35-page, four-year proposal includes revenue sharing templates, NIL payment restructuring, eligibility limits, and agent certification requirements
- Major implementation challenges remain: athletes would need employee classification, no clear bargaining counterpart exists, and NCAA leadership has historically opposed the approach
- Growing number of athletic directors, including officials from North Carolina, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, are publicly supporting collective bargaining as a viable solution
- FBS football alone includes more than 11,500 scholarship players, highlighting the scale gap between Athletes.org’s current membership and full representation needs
Breaking New Ground in College Sports Labor Relations
Athletes.org has spent the better part of a year developing what founder Jim Cavale calls a framework for “private conversations” to become public. The organization released a 35-page collective bargaining agreement draft on December 8, 2025, designed to address ongoing legal battles and regulatory uncertainty in college athletics.
“This takes a lot of private conversations public and is the start of a conversation with more stakeholders from athletes to schools and in between,” Cavale told Sports Business Journal. “It’s not the final word. It’s the start of a conversation.”
The proposal represents the first formal CBA framework in college sports history, arriving as the industry faces mounting antitrust challenges and failed congressional relief efforts. The SCORE Act, which aimed to provide limited antitrust exemption and codify portions of the House settlement, was shelved last week amid significant pushback.
What’s in the Proposed Agreement
The four-year proposal centers on football but includes language applicable to other sports. Key provisions include:
Revenue sharing structure: A templated agreement for all schools with sport-specific percentages based on pro rata revenue per sport. Compensation caps and minimum spending floors would be determined annually by conference and sport.
NIL and fair market value: The proposal would eliminate limitations on third-party NIL payments and remove the College Sports Commission’s fair market value review system, replacing it with cap circumvention mechanisms similar to professional leagues.
Eligibility framework: Athletes would have a maximum of five years of eligibility from enrollment, with age limits to be negotiated. The agreement includes per-sport, per-position caps on compensation for incoming freshmen and first-year athletes within the revenue share system.
Agent standards: An agent certification process requiring exams and background checks would be established.
Transfer and health protections: Players could negotiate transfer portal windows and rules. The agreement suggests establishing standards for sports betting policies and health insurance coverage.
According to Athletes.org, the framework emerged from two years of meetings with athletic directors, conference commissioners, team general managers, and coaches. In August, 24 team general managers convened and agreed collective bargaining represented the best solution, according to an organization spokesperson who described many meetings as “private” due to participants’ concerns about public retribution.
The Three Major Roadblocks
Employee classification: Collective bargaining requires participants to be classified as employees under federal labor laws. Athletes would need employee status with some entity, whether a school, conference, NCAA, or newly created organization, absent a broader antitrust exemption.
“The only two ways to avoid antitrust is to get a federal exemption or collectively bargain,” North Carolina AD Bubba Cunningham said. “What I’ve seen in the last five years, and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, we need both.”
Identifying the bargaining counterpart: While Athletes.org positions itself to represent players, no central organization exists with which to negotiate, unlike the NFL-NFLPA structure. The NCAA has stepped back from enforcing athlete compensation rules, delegating power to the new College Sports Commission funded by power conferences.
Athletes.org suggests creating a new enforcement entity to represent “institutions that agree to collectively bargain with their athletes.” Questions remain about whether negotiations would occur with schools, conferences, the NCAA, the College Sports Commission, or another group.
Scale and representation: Athletes.org’s 5,000 members represent a significant but limited portion of college athletics. FBS football alone includes more than 11,500 scholarship players. The organization would need substantially broader participation to claim comprehensive representation.
Shifting Administrative Sentiment
The NCAA and major conferences have consistently opposed collective bargaining because it requires athlete employment status. Leadership has instead pursued congressional antitrust protections that would legalize current business models without player negotiation requirements.
However, a growing number of administrators are reconsidering. Tennessee AD Danny White addressed the employment concern directly: “People dismiss the difficulty of doing this in college because of the state laws and the different political leans of the 50 different states that have college sports. I just don’t think that’s a factor. It’s very easily mitigated with one national employment agency and the fact that we’re afraid of the word ’employment’ is silly.”
Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione stated in Athletes.org’s prepared materials: “AO’s CBA draft may not be perfect today, but it’s one of the first concrete blueprints I’ve seen which integrates the athlete’s side of this paradigm shift.”
Boise State AD Jeramiah Dickey emphasized the urgency: “There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen and we need unity. What does that look like? I’m not completely sure, but how we’ve been doing it, I don’t feel that is a viable option or sustainable at any level.”
Legal and Enforcement Questions
Without employee classification, the enforceability of any CBA remains uncertain. Athletes.org acknowledges that absent formal union status, players wouldn’t receive certain U.S. labor law protections. The organization contends the agreement could still be enforceable “like any other contract.”
Gabe Feldman, director of the sports law program at Tulane, noted the complexity: “It’s more difficult to have a professional sports league when you don’t have uniform rules for each team. The law has basically accepted the need for multi-employer bargaining units. But the question is who is the multi-employer bargaining unit, if there is one? Those are answerable or solvable questions, but they are challenges.”
Brandon Copeland, Athletes.org CEO and 10-year NFL veteran, framed the proposal as a proactive solution: “Everyone knows the current model of college sports is a ticking time bomb. While some still hope Congress will bail out a repeat antitrust offender, we’re focused on creating the one solution that actually works: bringing athletes to the table as real partners with a real say in their future.”
Copeland and NFLPA Public Policy/Staff Counsel Andrew Morris testified against the SCORE Act before the Congressional Black Caucus last week, contributing to the bill’s postponement.
What Happens Next
With congressional relief unlikely in the near term, Athletes.org’s proposal serves as a conversation starter rather than a final framework. Tennessee’s White acknowledged the difficulty while emphasizing the alternative: “[Collective bargaining] is a way for us to structure things that doesn’t ask Congress to change the law or give us some kind of exemption that we’ve been trying to do for like a decade and it hasn’t happened.”
The college sports landscape continues facing legal challenges to compensation rules, eligibility restrictions, and transfer regulations. The Supreme Court’s Alston v. NCAA decision established that NCAA rules face antitrust scrutiny, opening the door to ongoing litigation.
Whether Athletes.org’s proposal gains traction depends on multiple factors: expanding athlete membership significantly, identifying or creating a viable bargaining counterpart, resolving employee classification questions, and securing buy-in from institutions, conferences, and governing bodies that have historically resisted this approach.
For now, the 35-page document represents the first formal attempt to structure athlete representation and negotiation in college sports, placing a concrete framework on the table as stakeholders navigate an increasingly unstable regulatory environment.
photo: Brett Davis-Imagn Images
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