The proper role of judges has been on many a mind in recent years. In summer 2020, New York Times resident race scold and professional hysteric Jamelle Bouie penned “Down With Judicial Supremacy!,” a column urging Democrats to challenge “the idea that the courts, and the courts alone, determine constitutional meaning.” In March, the Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson wrote a nearly identical case, lamenting “the fallacious notion that the federal judiciary has the exclusive power of constitutional interpretation.” Both men are opportunists, of course, and dislike mainly the “supremacy” of rulings with which they disagree — note: I’m no different, which is the point. Yet even staunch institutionalists are getting in on the game. In a much-discussed aside in last month’s Trump v. CASA decision, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett zinged fellow Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for “embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

Almost no one has had the energy to carry this quarrel onto the hardwood or gridiron. Nevertheless, the interaction of college sports and judges is already one of the defining athletic narratives of the decade. Later this year or next, the Universities of Miami and Wisconsin will square off in the toughest and least forgiving of competitive arenas: the American judicial system. The question, in part, is whether rival athletic programs may legally induce one another’s players to renege on their contracts. But also at stake is the willingness of judges to play referee as colleges vie for on-field advantage. Should Wisconsin’s tortious interference claim prevail, the threat of lawsuits will likely shape player recruitment for the foreseeable future. One imagines the resultant Sportscenter cliché: “It’s not about the X’s and O’s. It’s about the gavels and robes.”