Chris Del Conte stresses need for adapt-or-die mindset in college sports, says NCAA is ‘not the problem’

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As the college athletics landscape continues to evolve, eligibility and the House settlement remain front and center. With so much uncertainty, Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte stressed the need to “adapt or die,” but also argued the NCAA isn’t to blame.

Del Conte walked through the changes in college sports as NIL and revenue-share continue to become more important. He said evolution has been paramount throughout history and used the arrival of Title IX in 1972 to show that. It created opportunities for women to participate in collegiate athletics, but schools had to adjust accordingly as scholarship limits went into place.

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Of course, the NCAA is also seeking help from Capitol Hill to help with the new era, though the SCORE Act still has not reached the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Del Conte pointed to the number of different state NIL laws as an issue in college sports, which is why he said the NCAA isn’t to blame.

“Why we’re asking for a narrow antitrust exemption and the SCORE Act to pass is because everyone wants to preserve what they know and they’re afraid of the unknown,” Del Conte said on ESPN Radio. “There’s 39 different state laws now operating intercollegiate athletics. I will say this – the NCAA is not the problem. We are the NCAA. We wrote the rules, we enforce the rules and when we break the rules, we lawyer up to fight the rules we wrote. And it looks like the NCAA is inept. They’re not inept. We’re the ones that wrote them. We can’t govern ourselves under the rules that were set.