Unfortunately, we’ve gotten to a point where, for college athletics, it’s not a joke. And, if you’re not terrified, you should at least be heartily pissed off.

You can pick your target of who to be pissed at, but for once, governmental incompetence isn't the biggest enemy. It's our old nemesis, the NCAA.

We’re on the verge of disaster, and that disaster could come today. The House v. NCAA case has to be settled by the end of the day, and there’s still no resolution on what to do about roster limits. If a deal isn’t reached, this suit will go to trial and instead of paying $2.8 billion, the NCAA and member schools could pay anywhere between $4 billion and $12 billion. The latter would be devastating.

But, here comes the government to save us!

The U.S. Senate’s Commerce Committee, led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R-please don’t come to any of our games) is looking at ways to come up with an NIL standard — but that not only has to get out of committee, it needs a similar bill to pass the House, then they meet in conference and pass a modified bill from the ones they both passed and then it goes to the president for signing.

If you watched the Electric Company, you already know that.

And now President Trump looks like he’s getting involved.

After talking with Nick Saban last weekend before he gave the commencement address at the University of Alabama, Trump is reportedly considering the creation of a presidential commission looking at the current shape of college athletics. This group will not only review the ever-present NIL issue, but rogue boosters (honestly, I’m not sure such a thing even exists anymore), movement through the transfer portal and the application of Title IX to revenue-sharing.

That is a lot. And I can guarantee two things: no concrete solutions will be developed anytime in the near future — likely not even before the end of Trump’s term — and, even if I’m wrong on the timeframe, Democrats won’t vote for it just because Trump will invariably take credit for it.

And this isn’t taking a partisan side; this is a sad statement on what Washington has become. If the roles were reversed, the same thing would happen.

The best case scenario would be for something to be decided without government intervention — if there was a governing body that could bring all sides together and work through the problem.

Oh yes, that’s the NCAA’s job.

And this is the point where we all throw our heads back and laugh. Ruefully.

The NCAA abdicated its responsibility to college athletics a long time ago, and that’s not news to anyone. But it should be increasingly infuriating. In one lawsuit after another, the NCAA’s defense was a haughty, “Because we say so”. That, of course, did not work.

So what did the NCAA do to adjust and adapt to a new era in college athletics? Nothing.

The group negotiating the House v. NCAA are representatives of the Power 4 conferences and the NCAA, when it should be the NCAA’s job to do it themselves. But they’ve been dragged along kicking and screaming.

A $12 billion settlement would destroy the NCAA and seriously wound college athletics as a whole, but the utter lack of urgency shown by college sports’ ruling body is shocking — even for the NCAA.

It doesn’t take much to get the sense that the NCAA doesn’t care anymore. They’re not getting their way, which is absolute control over student-athletes, so they’re just going to sulk. If there’s a settlement, the NCAA won’t exist in its current form anyway, so why bother?

That really leaves the Power 4 as the only parties with a vested interest in getting this done, and they can’t agree on a path forward. Talk about rudderless.

So we have the Senate Commerce Committee saying, “We got this.” Now we have the president saying he’s got this. And we have the NCAA saying, “Whatevs.”

I don’t know what hell looks like, but if you’re a fan of college athletics, this has to be close to it.