Karate’s difficulty for “sport” recognition

I wrote before how TKD should be a college sport officially through the NCAA. I do not feel the same way about Karate, yet.
The problem you have with karate is the variation in the style itself, then the rules variations between styles and leagues. There are many fundamental differences in the styles and techniques in karate that you do not find in the types of Taekwondo. Olympic taekwondo sparring is pretty universal and comes in just one variety. Karate kumite ranges in where contact is allowed, how much contact, and how much actual martial arts skill exists.
Karate tournaments range from scoring systems that are pretty full contact (I’m a fan) to systems where majority of the “good” fighters might as well be acrobats that just practice leaping and tapping. Even the college systems I’ve seen in person (North East Collegiate Karate Conference) that have a chance at organizing schools for good competition that might grow, have one fatal flaw: there is no way to validate schools entries. I fought in that particular system and our team came into second against a Boston Dojo where the head instructor was a part time student at a local university so he fielded a team. Nice people, but the intent wasn’t meant.
So how do you fix it? I don’t know, start with a mutually agreed upon sparring system between different styles of karate, then as students accept that as “normal” and the way things should be, those rules could move up to a college stage, then maybe olympic or vice versa. Next would be to require any “college” leagues to only allow full time students to compete, and enstate some formal referree training.
So, as I am not an expert on all things martial arts, I strive to start a discussion and draw out what others think on topic I find interesting or even important. Thanks for your thoughts.