BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry called for federal intervention to reform college football, saying the current system is a “complete mess” that threatens the future of college athletics.
In a statement posted to social media Wednesday, Landry said he learned about problems in college football operations during his involvement with LSU’s recent football program activities. He said the sport needs centralized governance and federal legislation to address what he called a national crisis.
Current system ‘no longer makes sense’
Landry said the problem is not that college football rules are complicated, but that they no longer make sense. He cited Name, Image, and Likeness policies as creating “unsustainable bidding wars and constant roster churn” without national standards.
The governor also criticized the recruiting calendar, saying it forces teams to make coaching and roster decisions during tight in-season windows. He said schools that lose coaches late in the season may have only days to find replacements before recruits sign and players enter the transfer portal.
“This compressed timeline is what causes schools to pay huge buyouts and poach other schools’ coaches before the season is over,” Landry said.
Proposed solutions
Landry proposed centralized governance that would preserve conference structures while creating national standards. He said this would allow officials to set rules for when players sign, when they can transfer, how coaches move, and establish spending caps.
The governor said the system should require academic support, financial literacy training, and extended degree assistance for student-athletes.
Landry also called for unified media rights negotiations, saying college football delivers roughly twice the audience of the NBA but generates only about half the media revenue. He said centralization would create revenue that could be distributed proportionally across conferences.
Historical comparison
Landry compared the current situation to college football’s crisis more than a century ago, when President Theodore Roosevelt intervened after players were dying on the field. He said Roosevelt brought university leaders to the White House and told them to clean up the game or risk losing it.
“Today, the threat is not physical safety of the players, but the fiscal sanity of college sports,” Landry said.
The governor called on President-elect Trump to help bring schools together and put college football on a stable path, saying Trump “understands business, loves competition, and is not afraid of a fight.”
Landry said college athletics is losing billions of dollars each year, with taxpayers ultimately bearing the cost.
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