By Watson Scott Swail, President/CEO & Senior Research Scholar, Educational Policy Institute
Last week, I wrote about the NCAA and the tension between academics and athletics at many of our nation’s colleges and universities. Last night, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly approved the Protect College Sports Act on a bipartisan 77–22 vote. You can read more about the legislation in this New York Times article.
The legislation would establish a national framework for college sports and give the NCAA and its member schools a limited antitrust exemption to enforce certain rules. It would allow athletes to transfer once without sitting out a year and reinforce a five-year eligibility window. It would also codify athletes’ right to earn compensation from their name, image, and likeness; regulate revenue sharing and direct payments by schools; cap agents’ fees at 5 percent; protect scholarships; and require Division I schools to cover sports-related medical costs during an athlete’s participation and for five years afterward. To discourage further conference realignment, the bill would cap membership in the four major conferences at 20 schools. Senators also considered an amendment that would have capped coaching salaries at $5 million and restricted coaching moves, but it failed 52–47.
Although the bill drew substantial bipartisan support, it also faced opposition from both Republicans and Democrats. Critics argue that it would return too much authority to the NCAA, weaken athletes’ bargaining power, and impose restrictions that could fall especially hard on Black athletes. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that “colleges and the conferences and the boosters flooded this place,” pointing to the influence of the institutions that stand to benefit from the measure. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) objected to federal intervention more broadly: “The people who oversee the post office now want to run college sports. What could go wrong?” Yet the current system is plainly unstable, and the NCAA has shown that it cannot fix the problem on its own. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of the bill’s sponsors, made that case directly: “It would be nice if college sports could somehow magically fix itself, but this is a matter of law, federal law, and it is only Congress that can fix it.”
I believe that this bill begins to address some of the disorder the NCAA has allowed to develop over the years—but it is only a beginning. Its passage also highlights how difficult it is to reach agreement on the underlying problems facing colleges and college sports programs: athlete compensation, institutional control, competitive balance, and the proper role of the federal government. The measure now moves to the House, which is not expected to return until after the November midterm elections. Its prospects there are uncertain, and any House changes would require another Senate vote. With the NCAA, major conferences, athlete advocates, and other interested groups pressing their cases on Capitol Hill, the Senate’s decisive vote may prove to be the start of the debate rather than its conclusion.
