Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - LEGISLATIVE BOMBSHELL: Possible New Rules Could REDEFINE College Sports & Kansas Jayhawks Athletics

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

Sweeping NCAA reforms could reshape the future of Kansas Jayhawks athletics. Will new rules on transfers, NIL deals, and media rights restore balance—or drive a deeper rift between football powerhouses like the Big Ten and SEC and the rest of college sports? Derek Johnson examines how a proposed Senate bill may impact KU and the broader collegiate landscape, including limits on athlete transfers, the five-year eligibility rule, and the end of third-party NIL deals. Major topics include the potential for revenue-sharing “Super Leagues,” the Lane Kiffin rule for coaches, and revived regional rivalries. With legal protections for players and Olympic sports at stake, could this legislation revitalize traditional matchups and create parity, or will power conferences block change? Don’t miss this essential breakdown of college athletics’ high-stakes crossroads. Everydayer ClubIf you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub   Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Indeed Listeners of this show get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to help give your job the premium placement it deserves at http://Indeed.com/podcast   RugietGet 15% off your treatment → https://rugiet.com/lockedonnhlRugiet. Performance medicine for men. FanDuel Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now new customers can bet just five dollars and get one-hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets if your first bet wins. Visit https://FANDUEL.COM to get started — Play Your Game.   FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Some gigantic changes could be coming to college athletics. You are locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on podcast network, your team every day. What's going on, Derek Johnson, with another episode of Locked on Jayhawks. We're going to be breaking down some of the possible sweeping changes that could completely change collegiate sports and things for KU, along with other colleges moving forward. We're going to break that down on today's bonus episode of the show.

Let me just start here by saying that this legislation that the government, basically the Senate, is trying to pass about college sports. I'm skeptical just from a standpoint of one. It has to actually happen. It has to get voted on. It has to get passed. It has to get voted through. It has to withstand being sued. There's a lot that has to go into this, right?

And there have been other potential things. things that were going to be brought to the floor that weren't. So I'm a little skeptical what's going to happen if it is going to be enforceable, all that stuff, right? But let's say it does. This is very interesting how this could change the sport affecting Kansas and all these other schools, right? So let's break down some of the notable parts of this bill that could be worked through Senate here. It enables administrators to enforce policies related to movement by permitting only one transfer before a player must miss the season of eligibility. So basically you get one free transfer and then after that you have to sit out a year,

which I think, you know, I think if you polled a lot of fans, that would be probably the most popular approach. I'm sure a lot of fans too are like, hey, if the coaches can leave as many, then they can leave as many, right? And then I'm sure there's some people where it's like, I just don't think they should, I think anytime they transfer, right? So that's probably the middle ground between the two. a second or more transfers are permitted under certain conditions, though, such as the head coach leaving or the elimination of an athlete's sport, which I think those are good caveats to have, right, to where, you know, let's say you do transfer your first time and then the second school you go to, their coach gets fired.

Well, you committed to play for that coach. You should be able to leave freely. So I do think that's a good one. I would like for them to add on that, like, you should be able to just go if you're a graduate, like that adds to the idea. of like, you know, you get something for graduating, which you probably should. But nonetheless, that's at least a positive there, right? And that could be a good thing for Kansas from the perspective of like you look at, I mean, Lance Leipold's already had good retention, but you look at like Bill Self, for instance,

who the retention has kind of gone out the window a little bit of late. Maybe that would help from KU's perspective, right? It also would establish a five-year eligibility length for college athletes and prohibits professional athletes, even those having competed internationally from participating in college sports if they've earned compensation in their pro careers beyond prize money. I do like that they have the beyond prize money because that would, if you don't have the beyond prize money, then anybody who was like an Olympian and won like a gold medal, you couldn't have that to play. And I just think that's silly and stupid.

This would have an effect if it were to go into play right away and people weren't grandfathered in like Paulumbia, wouldn't, I don't believe, be eligible anymore for KU. It would probably hurt more school or more than it would hurt Kansas. But if you establish the five-year, you know, eligibility length, and you grandfather ran the players who could get a fifth year this upcoming year, then all of a sudden there's more centers available to where you could kind of make something work. So I don't know. I'm kind of at a point where like, if you want to do the five-year eligibility thing, then like,

let's just do it. It seems like that's the way things are kind of going. going one way or another. It also codifies portions of the NCAA's house settlement by granting legal protection to the NCAA and college sports commission to enforce strict standards and prohibiting third party NIL deals. So that one becomes interesting too because right now, the whole third party NIL deal thing, it feels like that's not really holding things up a lot. Like, I'm sure there's there's plenty of deals that have gotten denied or I don't know, up where they were delayed or something, but like you look at the amount of schools that are like

the rumors of certain schools spending $30 million on basketball rosters, the rumors of certain schools in football spending 40 maybe and $50 million on rosters this year. That is clearly going above and beyond the rev share cap, right? So clearly there's a lot of NIL deals in there, which if you actually have an enforceable kind of third party thing, does it prevent that sort of thing from happening. And that might be a good thing if you're just looking at the mirror of Kansas, right? Because Kansas clearly doesn't have the same pockets, at least while they're building the stadium as some of the other top teams in the sport.

There's much more to get to. So we'll break it all down and more, including the potential of, would there be a super league? What they're not? We'll get to all that next. This episode is brought to you by Indeed, workplace chaos, deadline stacking up, inbox overflowing, and the one position you have to fill is still sitting open.

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You can join our everyday or club where you can get the ad-free version of the show at Lockedonjahawks. That is locked onjahawks.supercast.com. Okay. More from this potential bill that they're trying to pass in the Senate to kind of, I don't know, give power back to somebody to govern college sports as we've become kind of the Wild West here. It remains mostly neutral on athlete employment, leaving open as possibility for athletes to eventually be deemed employees and or collective bargaining.

I think that's where we need to go, is be able to collective bargain. We can come up with certain things. That's how you would get to the point where you would have salaries, for instance, where you would be able to give players contracts where you'd say, hey, we're going to give you a two-year contract, right? Or we're going to give you a team option or a player option or have buyouts where if the little guys getting all their kids taken away, they're getting some money out of it too to replenish the roster because they did such a good job scouting from the get-go. That's probably the best way to go about this. And so that does leave it open, which is a good thing. The act prevents any league earning more than $1 billion in revenue on its 20, 25 tax

returns from merging or consolidating with another conference. Now, that one becomes interesting because it's very pointed at the two big conferences, Big Ten and SEC, right? Because there's only two leagues that earn that amount of revenue, the Big Ten and the SEC, right? So if it seems like it's pointed at those, it absolutely is, right? Because I think this act also would basically, it prevents those conferences is from breaking away and saying we're going to create a super league like we're going to be the new thing right um and this is also interesting too as it pertains to that the bill offers leagues the ability it's only an option so it's just the ability to pool their media rights in an effort to generate more revenue at a financially stressed time by the way you can read more about this it's all in a

yahoo article about everything that goes into it but um again Like the pooling of rights becomes very interesting because if you're the SEC and the Big Ten, you probably don't want this because in theory it's going to bring you down. But it's going to bring other people up. And so you think about it from professional sport. Like the NFL pools their rights. The MLB does not pool their rights. They have all these different, you know, local broadcasts. But I think that's something that in the new CBA, they're trying to do the NBA, I believe, pulls their rights together.

basically it allows you to as one big unit you would just say college football we are selling our stuff to this this and this and it it spreads the pie around in a way but here's the interesting part about that a minimum threshold of 75% of the 138 fbs schools must be reached to collectively pool rights this is the interesting part of that if you basically take out the Big Ten and SEC schools. If everybody else voted yes, it barely clears like 75% voting. So in theory,

the Big Ten and SEC, everybody could vote no and everybody else in the country could vote yes. What's the likelihood of that? I have no idea. And you could pull your rights together by that standpoint. I hope that's the way it goes. Because if you do decide to pull rights together, that basically means everybody's in it for each other.

Right now we have a world where the conferences are competing against each other, right? They're competing against each other for much. money for TV rights, for spots in the postseason. If you get the media rights pulled together, there is no more of this having, it's just everybody is, you know, rising tide raises all ships or whatever the saying is to where everybody benefits. And then you have no more reason to have these super conferences. You can go back to having geographically inclined divisions and conferences because everybody's in it together. So let's do what is actually best for the college sport fan,

for the health of the college sports and for regionality. So that would be the most ideal thing would happen is pooling the rights together. I'm skeptical to happen, but that would be pretty cool if it did. All right, we got a little bit more to get to here. There's a lot going into this bill. And honestly, I think most of this would actually be really good things for the college games. Let's continue on with that next. Welcome back into Lockdown, Jayhawks.

Don't forget, you can join the everyday air club, locked on Jayhawks. Dot supercast.com. This one's interesting, as we're talking the new potential rules that could get passed in the government. We'll see if it actually. happens and if so when it would be enacted but how about the lane kiffin rule which would make it illegal for coaches to leave their teams before the season concludes and schools cannot hire coaches before season concludes um again the lane kiffin rule right because that got all sticky with everything

with now would things just be done back channeled similar to how they are in the transfer portal how like you know guys are probably talking or agents are talking to coaches in january and february or guardians are talking in january february right that's probably how it would work but But I guess that's healthier than it like officially happening and just causing mayhem like it did at Ole Miss. Introduces a medical trust for lower resource athletic departments. That's a good thing because that would be the worst possible thing that like you're a lower resource athletic department and then you just get sued out the wazoo because you have some medical thing, right? Creates a commission to study the pooling of rights and long term governance of college sports. Do we really need to create a commission to study that?

Can we just like acknowledge that the pooling of rights and the long term governance? like having an actual like president or commissioner or whatever would probably be a good thing like do we need to actually study that can we just come to the conclusion it would be a good thing preserves access to local communities by requiring the broadcasts of local teams are not behind a paywall and require schools maintain scholarship roster levels for olympic sports based on three year period of funding each of these concepts is only triggered if rights are pooled so again this goes into the idea of would the rights be pulled and all that stuff but that would basically be protecting the Olympic sports which is obviously important. You've seen a lot of schools cut some of these different sports, which if it continues the way it's going, that's how it's going to go. And that'll be certainly unfortunate with all this. And then features a private right of action for athletes to file a legal claim if they do not believe the law is being adhered to. So they do still have some protection for the players if schools are, you know, or conferences or whatever are kind of going about this. And then the last one here, and this goes back to the idea of the health of college sports, I think for the long term, right?

I think right now you're in a world where the quote unquote health of the college world, so many of these athletic directors or conferences are seeing it as how can we make the most money right now? And that is the health of our sport. But in reality, the long-term health of the sport, I think a lot of it comes down to the regionality, the rivalries. That's why people got into college sports. You know, the difference between an eight and four season and a seven, five season in football,

it really ain't that much. But the difference between beating your rival and not beating your rival, that season, that's what you remember, right? And so it reestablishes regional rivalries by requiring some schools to restart rivalry games if they compete in a conference without three or more of their top 10 most played opponents. But again, the concept is only triggered if rights are pooled. So it seems like they're continuing to be like, you should, you should pull the rights. You should pull the rights and all this cool thing and this cool thing and this cool thing. But again, the big 10 and SEC are probably going to be like, nah, we're fine. We're making our own money. We don't need to be with all you other

guys. I hope that they can come to, first of all, I do hope this passes. I think it would add some structure and reorganization back to where, honestly, we kind of need it. And then I hope they pull the rights together. And I'm skeptical that the Big Ten and SEC would go down without a fight and let that happen. But I do think for the rooting interest, for what I want for making college sports more like they probably should be, I think it'd be in the best interest. interest of the fan, so to speak, right? Maybe if you're not a fan of the Big Tenor SEC because you're like, well, we have it better than these other schools.

Why would we want it that way, right? Well, too bad. Okay. All right, that'll do for this episode of Lockdown Jayhawks. So we'll have plenty more KU baseball content coming at you. I just wanted to share some of this recent news. You can find us anywhere at your podcast, including on our YouTube page. See you next time with Locked on Jayhawks.