Fresh off a more than two-hour Senate hearing on college athletics, Jack Swarbrick rose from his witness chair within a spacious wood-paneled committee room on Capitol Hill, stretched his legs, chatted with lawmakers and then, in a striking comment from one of the industry’s leading administrators, offered a solution to the vexing issue discussed minutes ago in this very room.

It’s time for college sports, he said, to bargain collectively with athletes.

“It’s a fairly radical notion, but if we could find a way to reach binding agreements with our student-athletes, most of this goes away,” the Notre Dame athletic director said, referring to what industry leaders say is a chaotic compensation system around name, image and likeness (NIL).

“We don’t have a mechanism to [collectively bargain] without them becoming employees. It would require a new mechanism that would recognize the rights of student-athletes to negotiate for the terms and conditions of their participation as athletes without being employees. I think it’s worth considering.”