Alex ScarboroughNov 10, 2026, 09:51 AM ETCloseCovers the SEC.Joined ESPN in 2012.Graduate of Auburn University.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsThe University of Tennessee men’s basketball team released a collective bargaining term sheet Tuesday, a result of negotiations with the school’s athletic administration, that includes a salary cap and spending floor, eligibility and transfer rules and cap circumvention enforcement.The document, which is not a signed CBA and won’t have any impact on how Tennessee’s players are paid or treated moving forward, is the first of its kind in college athletics and is meant to show what an agreement between athletes and a university can look like.The basketball team elected Tyler Lundblade, Campbell Duncan and DeWayne Brown II to be player representatives and work with the college sports players association Athletes.Org and negotiate with the athletic department to complete the mock-trial exercise. Several rounds of discussions took place in August and September with the deal agreed to on Oct. 1.”We know what we want and how we want to move forward,” said Brown, a freshman for the 11th-ranked Volunteers. “Working through the collective bargaining process has been great and I hope it’s just a steppingstone for more college athletes to replicate our process with their own schools.”Tennessee athletic director Danny White and AO executive director Brandon Copeland both told ESPN that to be effective, an actual collective bargaining agreement in the future would have to be negotiated between a larger group of schools and players rather that one athletic department and its athletes. White and Copeland both said they feel that collective bargaining is the only sustainable route to stability in college sports.”There will be people who say this would never work or that college athletes aren’t mature enough or don’t care, this shows they do care,” Copeland said.
“They’re strong enough and mature enough to have these discussions with their university.”Copeland said the term sheet could be used as a model for a future negotiation for a conference-wide collective bargaining agreement or an agreement among all power conferences. White told ESPN he did not know how many schools should be involved in a future agreement with athletes.Athletes.Org is one of a few groups working to organize college athletes with an aim toward eventually forming a players’ union. At the moment, college athletes cannot bargain as a union because they are not viewed as employees of their schools. Critics of their efforts say that unionization in college sports is not possible for several reasons, including laws in some states that block employees of public institutions from collective bargaining.
White has proposed creating a private company to act as the centralized employer of college athletes to help avoid those state laws.The hypothetical term sheet proposes to replace revenue share and university-affiliate NIL contracts with a universal services agreement with payments to begin at the date of enrollment or first practice.The proposed spending floor contains two options: Spend 89% of the average annual salary cap over the agreed four-year window or negotiate a percentage of the athletic department budget to be established during the official collective bargaining negotiation. The deal would also include freshman pay scale similar to the rookie wage scale in professional sports and a minimum compensation that covers cost of attendance.Under cap circumvention enforcement terms, the university, athletes, coaches and associated entities would all be subject to penalties. No specific dollar figure for the cap was included in the term sheet.The term sheet also includes language regarding eligibility, transfer portal windows and tampering penalties. The portal would open later — not until at least one week after the national championship.
And declaring for a professional league would result in the end of an athlete’s college eligibility.Also included in the agreement: a so-called “dead” period that doesn’t require athletic activities, creating more time to spend with family and to pursue academics and other opportunities; mental health resources; post-eligibility medical insurance that covers athletics-related injuries for at least two years after an athlete’s playing career; a grievance and arbitration process; agent certification and compensation; and a fine schedule to be established through collective bargaining.The term sheet states that the CBA would cover an initial four-year window with renewal negotiations permitted up to two years before expiration.Some athletic directors, including Tennessee’s Danny White, have suggested that collective bargaining as an alternative to seeking federal legislation in order to create clearer regulations in college athletics.”We’re paying them to play sports,” White said. “We’re doing that because we lost several court cases that said we’re violating antitrust law by not doing so. We need to accept our legal reality. By not accepting it, we’ve created this system that’s the most inefficient way I can think of for building rosters and organizing this thing.”The Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act in September, but midterm elections have altered the political landscape and thrown the future of the legislation in doubt as it still needs to pass the House.In July, Stanford football players formed a campus chapter of the College Football Players Association, making the Cardinal the first team to partner with the organization, which aims to eventually unionize college athletes.
A group of more than 100 women’s basketball players also signed union authorization cards to be represented by the United College Athletes Association in August, and their players at Oregon State filed a petition with the state labor board to be recognized as employees.Information from ESPN’s Dan Murphy and The Associated Press was used in this report.
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