The college sports world is buzzing about the newly proposed college sports commission, but not everyone’s buying the hype. While officials show off revolutionary changes coming to NCAA enforcement, prominent insiders are calling it nothing more than window dressing.
CBS Sports analyst Tom Fornelli delivered a scathing assessment that’s got college football fans talking. His brutal takedown suggests the much-anticipated reform might be nothing more than surface-level changes to a fundamentally broken system.
Insider Tom Fornelli Breaks Down Why The College Sports Commission Won’t Solve Anything
During a recent episode of the “Cover Three” podcast, analyst Tom Fornelli didn’t hold back his criticism of the College Sports Commission, which was proposed several weeks ago by U.S. President Donald Trump in an effort to fix current problems surrounding the transfer portal and NIL deals.
“It’s just the NCAA, you change NCAA to ‘CSC’, you change NCAA president to ‘CSC CEO.’ Other than that, it’s the same damn thing” Fornelli stated.
“What the NCAA does comes up with rules — rules that everybody agrees to follow, and then when you don’t follow them, you know you get punished. The ‘CSC’ is going to come up with a bunch of rules that everybody agrees to follow, and when you don’t follow them, you are going to get punished. It’s a rebranding. That’s it,” He further stated.
The timing of Fornelli’s criticism comes as the College Sports Commission prepares to take over enforcement duties from the NCAA following the House v. NCAA settlement. The new body will oversee NIL regulations and revenue-sharing agreements with unprecedented authority through a CEO reporting to the Power Four conference commissioners.
Fornelli went even further, suggesting the entire endeavor represents an “empty gesture to appease somebody important, who kind of said that he thinks that this is what college football needs. So just to make sure that person doesn’t get angry at them and start tweeting in all caps about it, they’re going to do it.”
Nick Saban, who was reportedly tapped to lead the commission, has expressed his own doubts. According to Fornelli, “even Nick Saban, who was supposed to be the president of this new ‘CSC’, is like, ‘Huh? What?’ I don’t think there should be a commission. I don’t even think this should exist, but apparently he’s going to be in charge.”
His harsh assessment crystallizes growing skepticism among college sports insiders who’ve watched previous reform attempts fail to address fundamental structural problems.
With the CSC set to begin operations on July 1, 2025, the college football world awaits whether this represents a genuine transformation or merely another rebranding exercise.
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