Despite all the radical changes in college football, nothing has been more polarizing than the idea of student-athletes turning into employees. That debate even led Senator Ted Cruz to introduce a bill. Now, Ohio State’s president has joined forces with the senator to stop this debacle before there’s nothing left of the “student” in student-athlete.

The senator has been all over the news lately, warning what this move would do to the sports we love: “Clarifying that student athletes are not employees is absolutely critical. Without it, we will see enormous and irreparable damage to college sports,” Cruz told ESPN.

He argues that the whole point of college is to get a degree, not to be a professional staff member. Moreover, he’s worried that unionising athletes will fundamentally break the “student” part of student-athlete.

“From a political perspective, you have labor union bosses that would love to see every college athlete deemed an employee made a member of a union and contributing union dues to elect Democrats,” Cruz said. “It’s terrible for college sports, but I get that there’s some partisan appeal to it.”

A major concern is the financial survival of smaller schools and lesser-known sports. Cruz argues that if every university had to pay athletes a salary with benefits, many would simply have to cut teams like track, swimming, or wrestling to afford it. To fix the chaos, he advocates a federal law treating athletes as non-employees and establishing a unified set of nationwide rules to end inconsistent state laws.

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Ohio State President Ted Carter has backed this stance on The Buckeye Show podcast, saying the current Wild West of sports is simply not sustainable in the long run.

“Well, it’ll be a conversation, for sure, and it may happen, you know, coming out of the White House, for all we know, I mean, there could be a commission put together that will talk about, how does this play out? I’m a big believer that we don’t want to make our athletes employees, because I think ultimately they lose. They lose things like a scholarship. There’ll be much less incentive to graduate and get a degree, which is something that we hold dear.”

This is basically a warning to the 135 FBS schools about the consequences. If no one or no governing body stops this mess, he believes there will be more problems than benefits if athletes become employees or join a union. He also said that if athletes were treated like employees, they might even have to apply and compete for their positions, just like any other regular job. If they do so, it would be demanding to keep the boat afloat after the next three years.

Under the new rules for the 2025–26 season, big schools can share around $20.5 million directly with their players. Ohio State dished out about $18 million of that, and it went to football stars. Carter’s main point is that this should be strictly about NIL (making money off your brand) and not an employment contract (NLI) that turns students into workers.

But as new lawsuits keep coming over contracts and eligibility, many coaches and athletic directors are open to finding a solution. “I’ve always been against this idea of players as employees, but quite frankly, that might be the only way to protect the collegiate model,” Clemson football HC Dabo Swinney said at a news conference in January.

At the end of the day, these guys want a middle ground. They want players to get paid without the university becoming their “employer.” Cruz is trying to get a bipartisan deal done in Congress right now. He’s hoping to save the traditional college experience before courts or new laws change it forever.

They both believe that keeping athletes as students first is the only way to keep all 36 varsity sports alive at schools like OSU. However, the Ohio State president is very optimistic about the Buckeyes’ next season.

Ted Carter is excited about the Buckeyes’ 2026 season

Earlier this week, Carter stated that he “loves what he sees coming around the corner,” especially with how the team was put together in the portal. He’s a big fan of the new strategy to add about 14 new guys who already have at least three years of college ball under their belts and make the team tough enough for another deep playoff run.

Carter is also giving a massive thumbs-up to the coaching staff Ryan Day has assembled. He’s particularly excited about having two former NFL head coaches (Matt Patricia and Arthur Smith) running the offense and defense.

Even though he’s a retired Navy Vice Admiral and a Top Gun graduate, Carter stays away from the front line. He prefers to let the experts do their work. Still, he stays close to the team. He’s especially proud of Coach Day. When Ryan Day bounced back from a few tough years and recently won a national title, Carter called it one of the most storied comebacks in college football history.