After another week of frustrating setbacks, at the end of a frustrating year trying to bring stability to their industry, a growing number of college athletic directors say they are interested in exploring a once-unthinkable option: collective bargaining with their players.

Dozens of athletic directors will gather in Las Vegas over the next few days for an annual conference. They had hoped to be raising toasts to the U.S. House of Representatives. But for the second time in three months, House members balked last week at voting on a bill that would give the NCAA protection from antitrust lawsuits and employment threats. So instead, they will be greeted by one of the Strip’s specialties: the cold-slap realization of needing a better plan.

“I’m not sure I can sit back today and say I’m really proud of what we’ve become,” Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey told ESPN late last week. “There is a solution. We just have to work together to find it, and maybe collective bargaining is it.”

Athletic directors see only two paths to a future in which the college sports industry can enforce rules and defend them in court: Either Congress grants them an exemption from antitrust laws, or they collectively bargain with athletes. As Dickey said, and others have echoed quietly in the past several days, it has become irresponsible to continue to hope for an antitrust bailout without at least fully kicking the tires on the other option.

“If Congress ends up solving it for us, and it ends up being a healthy solution I’ll be the first one to do cartwheels down the street,” said Tennessee athletic director Danny White when speaking to ESPN about his interest in collective bargaining months ago. “But what are the chances they get it right when the NCAA couldn’t even get it right? We should be solving it ourselves.”

Some athletic directors thought they had solved their era of relative lawlessness back in July. The NCAA and its schools agreed to pay $2.8 billion in the House settlement to purchase a very expensive set of guardrails meant to put a cap on how much teams could spend to acquire players. The schools also agreed to fund the College Sports Commission, a new agency created by the settlement to police those restrictions.

But without an antitrust exemption, any school or player who doesn’t like a punishment they receive for bursting through those guardrails can file a lawsuit and give themselves a pretty good chance of wiggling out of a penalty. The CSC’s plan — crafted largely by leaders of the Power 4 conferences — to enforce those rules without an antitrust exemption was to get all their schools to sign a promise that they wouldn’t file any such lawsuits. On the same day that Congress’ attempt crumbled last week, seven state attorneys general angrily encouraged their schools not to sign the CSC’s proposed agreement.

In the wake of the attorneys general’s opposition, a loose deadline to sign the agreement came and went, with many schools declining to participate. So, college football is steamrolling toward another transfer portal season without any sheriff that has the legal backing to police how teams spend money on building their rosters.

That’s why college sports fans have heard head football coaches like Lane Kiffin openly describe how they negotiated for the biggest player payroll possible in a system where all teams are supposed to be capped at the same $20.5 million limit. Right now, the rules aren’t real. The stability promised as part of the House settlement doesn’t appear to be imminent. Meanwhile, the tab for potential damages in future antitrust lawsuits continues to grow larger with each passing day.

Collective bargaining isn’t easy, either. Under the current law, players would need to be employees to negotiate a legally binding deal. The NCAA and most campus leaders are adamantly opposed to turning athletes into employees for several reasons, including the added costs and infrastructure it would require.

The industry would need to make tough decisions about which college athletes should be able to bargain and how to divide them into logical groups. Should the players be divided by conference? Should all football players negotiate together? What entity would sit across from them at the bargaining table?

On Monday, Athletes.Org, a group that has been working for two years to become college sports’ version of a players’ union, published a 35-page proposal for what an agreement might look like. Their goal was to show it is possible to answer the thorny, in-the-weeds questions that have led many leaders in college sports to quickly dismiss collective bargaining as a viable option.

Multiple athletic directors and a sitting university president are taking the proposal seriously — a milestone for one of the several upstart entities working to gain credibility as a representative for college athletes. Syracuse chancellor and president Kent Syverud said Monday that he has long felt the best way forward for college sports is a negotiation where athletes have “a real collective voice in setting the rules.”

“[This template] is an important step toward that kind of partnership-based framework,” he said in a statement released with AO’s plan. “… I’m encouraged to see this conversation happening more openly, so everyone can fully understand what’s at stake.”

White, the Tennessee athletic director, has also spent years working with lawyers to craft a collective bargaining option. In his plan, the top brands in college football would form a single private company, which could then employ players. He says that would provide a solution in states where employees of public institutions are not legally allowed to unionize.

“I don’t understand why everyone’s so afraid of employment status,” White said. “We have kids all over our campus that have jobs. … We have kids in our athletic department that are also students here that work in our equipment room, and they have employee status. How that became a dirty word, I don’t get it.”

White said athletes could be split into groups by sport to negotiate for a percentage of the revenue they help to generate.

The result could be expensive for schools. Then again, paying lawyers and lobbyists isn’t cheap either. The NCAA and the four power conferences combined to spend more than $9 million on lobbyists between 2021 and 2024, the latest year where public data is available. That’s a relatively small figure compared to the fees and penalties they could face if they continue to lose antitrust cases in federal court.

“I’m not smart enough to say [collective bargaining] is the only answer or the best answer,” Dickey said. “But I think the onus is on us to at least curiously question: How do you set something up that can be sustainable? What currently is happening is not.”

Players and coaches are frustrated with the current system, wanting to negotiate salaries and build rosters with a clear idea of what rules will actually be enforced. Dickey says fans are frustrated as they invest energy and money into their favorite teams without understanding what the future holds. And athletic directors, who want to plan a yearly budget and help direct their employees, are frustrated too.

“It has been very difficult on campus. I can’t emphasize that enough,” White said. “It’s been brutal in a lot of ways. It continues to be as we try to navigate these waters without a clear-cut solution.”

This week White and Dickey won’t be alone in their frustration. They’ll be among a growing group of peers who are pushing to explore a new solution.

South Carolina is finalizing a deal to hire TCU‘s Kendal Briles as the school’s new offensive coordinator, sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel on Monday.

Briles, a longtime offensive coordinator, has been at TCU since 2023, following stints at Arkansas, Florida State, Houston, FAU and Baylor.

A finalist in 2015 for the Broyles Award, given to college football’s top assistant coach, Briles mentored TCU quarterback Josh Hoover, who set a school record last season with 3,949 yards passing with 27 touchdowns and 11 interceptions as the Horned Frogs ranked eighth nationally in passing offense at 312.9 yards a game. This season, Hoover threw for 3,472 yards and 29 TDs with 13 interceptions as TCU averaged 30.8 points per game (44th nationally) and finished 8-4 with an upcoming Alamo Bowl berth against USC.

Briles would replace Mike Shula, who was fired nine games into the season after the Gamecocks scored 14 or fewer points four times during a 3-6 start. Wide receivers coach/passing game coordinator Mike Furrey called plays for the remainder of the season.

Briles spent the first nine years of his career under his father, Art Briles, at Baylor. The Bears’ 2015 and 2016 offenses ranked third and second, respectively, in NCAA history, averaging 616.2 and 618.8 yards per game.

Following Art Briles’ ouster in Waco following a review of Baylor’s handling of sexual assault allegations made against several football players, Kendal Briles became offensive coordinator at FAU in 2017 under Lane Kiffin.

Two days after leading Indiana to its first Big Ten championship in 58 years, Fernando Mendoza was announced as a Heisman Trophy finalist Monday.

Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia, Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love and Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin joined the Hoosiers’ quarterback as the four finalists.

The winner will be revealed Saturday in New York.

Mendoza defeated Sayin and the Buckeyes in the Big Ten championship game Saturday to earn the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff.

Mendoza clinched the victory with a 33-yard strike to Charlie Becker on third down, allowing the Hoosiers to run out the clock in the 13-10 victory to remain unbeaten. Mendoza passed for 222 yards and the go-ahead touchdown in the third quarter, as Indiana knocked off the Buckeyes, who had beaten the Hoosiers 30 consecutive times, dating back to 1988.

“We were never supposed to be in this position,” said Mendoza, the game’s MVP, after the victory, “but now we’re the flipping champs.”

Mendoza — the minus-1200 favorite to win the Heisman, according to DraftKings Sportsbook — will try to make more history this weekend. The Hoosiers have never had a Heisman winner, although running back Anthony Thompson finished runner-up in the voting to Houston quarterback Andre Ware, who is an ESPN college football analyst, in 1989.

Mendoza, a junior, transferred to Indiana from Cal during the offseason.

The Heisman Trophy has been awarded to the nation’s most outstanding college football player since 1935. The top four vote-getters, determined by more than 900 voters, are selected as finalists. The voting panel includes members of the media and former Heisman winners.

Though Vanderbilt didn’t make the playoff, Pavia is having a historical run for the Commodores.

The senior led Vanderbilt to its first 10-win season in school history and set school records with 3,192 passing yards and 27 passing touchdowns.

Love and the Fighting Irish also narrowly missed the playoff, as Miami surged past Notre Dame in the final rankings.

Love scored 21 all-purpose touchdowns, passing Jerome Bettis (1991) for the most in a season in Notre Dame history. Love, a junior, also ended the regular season fourth nationally with 1,372 rushing yards and third with 18 rushing touchdowns, while averaging 6.89 yards per carry.

Though he fell short in the Big Ten championship to Mendoza, Sayin had a spectacular first season starting for the Buckeyes. He ranks second nationally with a QBR of 89.6 and owns the best completion rate (78.4%) in FBS history. Sayin, a sophomore, threw three touchdowns Nov. 29, as the Buckeyes snapped a four-game losing streak to Michigan with a 27-9 victory in Ann Arbor.

Ohio State is the No. 2 seed in the playoff, and like the Hoosiers, will have a first-round bye.