Why the NCAA (and ourselves) Should Stop Blaming the Final Straw: NIL, Self-Awareness, and Systems Thinking
Imagine you’re on the verge of a breakthrough in your career, personal life, or even a fitness goal, but something derails you—a mistake, a challenge, or even just bad luck. It’s easy to look at that single moment and think, “That’s where it all went wrong.”
But what if the real problem is everything that came much earlier in the process?
And, more fruitfully, what if better awareness (of both yourself, and your situation) could prevent problems from happening in the first place?
When I work with leaders, I aim to help them keep moving forward in whatever situation they’re in, so they’re not getting stuck or ruminating on the past. But at the same time, I also encourage them to increase their awareness of both themselves (self-awareness) and their situation (situational-awareness).
This isn’t just a personal challenge—it’s a universal one. And it plays out on a massive scale in organizations, systems, and even sports. Take the NCAA and the debate around Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) for example.
(If you haven’t been paying attention to NIL and want to know more? Read this. But you don’t need to for this article.)
For decades, the NCAA avoided paying athletes under the guise of protecting the purity of amateur sports. A noble gesture I once subscribed to. But when athletes like my 2006 Olympic teammate Jeremy Bloom lost their NCAA eligibility via outrageous rationale, highlighted in this LA Times piece, Court Rejects Bloom in Endorsement Dispute, my perspective began to shift.
When the NCAA's NIL policy was finally implemented in 2021, many college athletics leaders viewed it as a significant challenge—and make no mistake, it is. Prior to its enactment, I engaged in numerous discussions on this topic with NCAA athletic directors and fellow U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) board members. They warned it would destroy Olympic sports, funneling all resources into football and basketball. And, in some ways, those warnings are coming true.
But the real issue to me wasn’t NIL, the “final straw” that broke the camel’s back—it was the decades of unchecked spending on unnecessary luxuries, driven by a relentless arms race to outbuild and outshine competitors, in a non-spending-capped environment of dishonesty and disillusionment. Or, “the rest of the straw”.
This isn’t just about college sports; it’s about life. The NCAA and its leaders ignored systemic issues and focused only on the “final straw.” How often do we do the same in our own lives?
The Danger of Ignoring Root Causes
When challenges arise, it’s easy to look at the most recent event and assign blame. Missed a deadline? You might blame an unexpected email. Lost focus during a presentation? Maybe it’s the last-minute prep. But often, these moments are just symptoms of larger issues—an overloaded schedule, poor preparation habits, or a lack of clarity about your goals.
In the NCAA’s case, the lack of self-awareness and situational awareness led to years of overspending and mismanagement. Instead of addressing these systemic problems, leaders focused on blaming what they called the "final straw"—NIL. But the reality is that without addressing the root causes, any system, whether it’s a sports organization or your personal goals, will inevitably face a breaking point.
Why Goals Aren’t Enough
Here’s where things get personal: Setting goals is essential, but goals without self-awareness and situational awareness are like a GPS with bad directions. If you don’t understand where you’re starting from, you’re likely to go off course—or worse, never start at all.
The NCAA had a clear goal: to maintain the integrity of college athletics while supporting student-athletes. But they ignored the warning signs and built a system that couldn’t sustain itself. They focused on short-term wins (like shiny new stadiums and gaudy training facilities when 50% of the cost would suffice, more on this below) without considering long-term consequences.
For individuals, this might look like setting an ambitious career goal but ignoring the habits, mindset, or environment needed to achieve it. Maybe you want to run a marathon, but you’re not addressing the fact that you only sleep five hours a night. Or you aim for a promotion without acknowledging that your communication skills need work.
Self-Awareness: Your Secret Weapon
The first step to achieving any goal is self-awareness. You have to ask yourself the tough questions:
What’s holding me back? (Hint: It’s not always what you think.)
Am I clear about my priorities, or am I chasing shiny distractions?
What patterns in my behavior or decisions keep derailing me?
In the NCAA’s case, they could have asked: "Are we spending in ways that truly serve our athletes and goals?"
For individuals, it might be: "Am I spending my time, energy, and focus on the things that matter most?"
Situational Awareness: The Big-Picture Perspective
Once you’re clear on yourself, it’s time to look outward. Situational awareness is about understanding the environment and circumstances you’re operating in. Are there systemic issues that you need to navigate or adapt to? Are there opportunities you’re missing because you’re focused on the wrong thing?
For example, Olympic sports in the NCAA relied heavily on the revenue generated by football and basketball. Leaders could have recognized this dependency and made incremental changes—like capping unnecessary spending—to create a more sustainable system. Instead, they ignored the broader picture until the courts forced their hand.
In fact, every other major sports domain - the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, etc - have a cap on their largest regular expenditure—player salaries. NCAA Athletic Departments, without needing to pay athletes, regularly spent hundreds of millions of dollars on capital expenditures (i.e.: those giant stadiums and training facilities) without a cap across schools.
This led to an arms race that became the “final straw” for the student-athletes to push back. In the athlete’s minds—If their school could spend $80M on a training facility, surely they could have only spent $50M and disbursed the other $30M to the athletes, right?
In your life, situational awareness might mean recognizing that your team at work is burned out, or that your industry is shifting, and you need to adapt your skills.
The Path Forward: A Recognition and Resolution Process for Yourself
Progress, whether for an organization or an individual, starts with honesty. Just like the NCAA needs to acknowledge and recognize its history of mismanagement before it can move forward, we need to acknowledge our own missteps and blind spots.
To take an honest account of things, I like to use a three-step process, employing the “Three Rs”:
Recognizing the root causes of your challenges.
Reframing failure as feedback.
Recommitting to your goals with a deeper understanding of what’s required to achieve them.
The Goal Isn’t Perfection—It’s Progress
At the end of the day, the goal isn’t to never make mistakes. It’s to learn from them. Whether it’s college sports or your personal journey, the key to progress is knowing your goals, understanding the systems around you, and being honest about what’s working—and what’s not.
The NCAA could have avoided the NIL “crisis” by addressing spending and priorities earlier. They could have opened the door and controlled athlete compensation themselves before the courts mandated it.
Similarly, we can avoid personal “breaking points” by staying self-aware, understanding the big picture, and taking proactive steps toward our goals.
- Steve
