They cant do so because they have no legal standing to do so They cannot gain that legal standing until athletes consent to be governed The easiest way to do that is through a CBA The route the NCAA prefers is through congressional intervention. Their hope is to draw enough attention to cases with big schools who share their ideology as a means to get those states to get on board in Congress It hasn't worked, due to many reasons, and they're running out of time for that strategy to even be feasible. Pretty much every state south of West Virginia has a senate seat coming up for election. But 12 of those 15 races are currently more in favor of the NCAAs stance than player unionization. So losing any of those races means the NCAAs path to codification through the government is all but over. They have about 11 months to try and push something through, but with a lot of more important things happening every day (as well as their lobbying arm being one of the more inept ones), it is looking less and less likely they get anything done