WASHINGTON, D.C. — This week, the college sports industry enters one of the most exciting stretches of its calendar.
In Oklahoma City, a national champion will be crowned at the Women’s College World Series in a title bout pitting rivals Texas and Texas Tech. At eight different on-campus super regional sites, baseball parks will be teeming with fans as a trip to Omaha is on the line.
And on Capitol Hill, inside a marble-walled committee room, with the future of college athletics at stake, a much different game is set to be played: the political one.
Former Alabama coach Nick Saban, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua and Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould headline a lineup of witnesses testifying in a hearing before members of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday morning — perhaps the most significant of the more than a dozen hearings held here since 2020.
At the center of what’s supposed to be a more than two-hour affair is a newly introduced bill from Sens. Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell intended to reform the college athletics industry. The “Protect College Sports Act” is the most comprehensive, bipartisan college sports legislation produced during the NCAA’s seven-year lobbying effort — and it’s a bill that many believe has the best chance to pass among those introduced.
For instance, in speaking last week to Big 12 athletic directors, NCAA president Charlie Baker put its odds of passage at “50-50,” according to administrators present for his session.
The legislation feels as if it’s on a fast track.
Wednesday’s hearing comes only one week after the bill’s announcement. Tentative plans are already being made for the next step in the process — a “markup” — to come as soon as next week, where committee members make and approve suggestive changes to legislative language.
From there, if enough support exists, the bill may find itself up for debate and a vote on the U.S. Senate floor before lawmakers break for their annual, month-long summer recess in August. It needs 60 votes in the Senate to pass, meaning seven Democrats must support the bill (Cantwell, co-sponsor Chris Coons and five more) before it advances for a similar process in a Republican-led House.
But as college sports stakeholders descend here for Wednesday’s hearing, questions over the bill linger and concerns over its language loom.
Last week, for instance, leaders of the National Urban League and several college players associations held a call with Cantwell herself — a more than hour-long session in which many expressed criticism over legislation that may limit athlete movement and decrease compensation.
Meanwhile, leaders at the Big Ten and SEC have mostly remained silent — a signal of two conferences holding guarded and even skeptical views of a bill that seems to limit their future ability to merge or expand and opens a path, though it’s voluntary, to pool FBS media rights.
Even leaders at the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, though “grateful” for the lawmakers’ efforts, expressed their own “concerns” in a letter sent to senators on Monday.
Is anyone happy?
“Everyone mad is a sign that it has a chance,” quipped one college stakeholder with political experience. “Everyone having something not to like means it’s a good compromise.”
What are the problems?
While the bill’s concepts targeting the Big Ten and SEC stole headlines last week — no more expansion, no super league-style merge and a path to pool TV rights (which the two leagues are adamantly against) — there are more serious issues with the legislation, said college stakeholders, many of whom were granted anonymity to speak freely about the bill.
In its letter to lawmakers on Monday, the USOPC points to one of the issues: protections in the bill for women and Olympic sports are only triggered if enough schools agree to pool their media rights.
If you are confused, it’s OK.
A large piece of this legislation permits FBS conferences to break antitrust and collusion laws by consolidating and selling their media rights. In theory, the consolidation of rights will generate more revenue than is produced by the current piecemeal method: single leagues selling their rights individually. At least 75% of FBS, or 104 teams, must agree to the provision to trigger the antitrust protection and allow for the pooling of rights.
The SEC and Big Ten and Notre Dame — 35 schools total — can form a voting bloc to prevent such pooling of rights if they do not opt into the concept.
Plenty of concepts in the bill are triggered only if rights are pooled, including the provision intended to protect women and Olympic sports. The provision requires schools to maintain their scholarship and roster funding for those sports programs — as long as rights are pooled.
“As currently drafted, the legislation ties minimum scholarships and roster requirements to voluntary participation in the media rights collective,” USOPC officials wrote to lawmakers. “Without actual guardrails in place, continued budgetary pressures could create uncertainty around long-term roster and scholarship opportunities for non-revenue sports programs, impacting pathways for current and future Team USA athletes.”
There are other lingering questions.
The bill grants narrow antitrust protections for the NCAA to enforce the one-time transfer policy, a five-year eligibility standard and a codification of House settlement terms intended to provide stricter enforcement of the athlete revenue-share cap.
This is a very key difference from the failed SCORE Act, which paved the way for the NCAA and conferences to establish rules while also granting them the legal protection to enforce those rules. The Protect College Sports Act grants the NCAA protection to enforce the rules as written in the legislation.
But if those policies need changing, will college administrators need to return to Congress to fight for legislative amendments and gain the approval of both congressional chambers? At least several college officials believe that’s the case, though it’s not clear.
The bill provides a right for players to pursue legal challenges (private right of action) if they feel as if the NCAA is violating the act. That includes such issues as transfer and eligibility — a concerning notion for some within college athletics who believe this paves a path for continued legal battles.
Congressional staff members describe the private-right-of-action provision as a necessary protection item for athletes in a compromise that Cantwell made to grant the limited antitrust powers.
But perhaps the most interesting and notable concerns are raised from those outside of college athletics. Leaders from several players association movements expressed public criticism of a bill that many believe limits athlete movement (transfer rule) and will decrease athlete compensation (hard cap).
In the most sharp criticism, Ramogi Huma, executive director of the National College Players Association, released a statement describing the legislation as a “Trojan Horse Attack on college athletes’ rights.”
An outspoken Democrat, Sen. Chris Murphy said the bill goes too far in “protecting” college sports leaders and “limiting” the athletes. But others, like Republican congressmen Brett Guthrie and Tim Walberg, believe it doesn’t go far enough: The bill, they say, should prohibit athletes from being deemed employees.
Lastly, some within college athletics — and in Congress, too — believe the NCAA should not be the entity to possess the antitrust powers. In fact, the legislation creates a committee to study future governance in college sports — a possible outlet for NCAA reform.
“There’s one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on,” one congressman said recently. “They both hate the NCAA.”
Who likes the bill?
On Sunday, commissioners from the Big 12, ACC and American sent letters to congressional lawmakers supportive of the legislation. In fact, over the last several days, multiple conference commissioners, university presidents and board of trustees members signed supportive letters.
However, it is clear that most of those are not affiliated with the two richest conferences in the country.
Aside from some cautious comments last week from SEC commissioner Greg Sankey at his league’s annual spring meetings, the commissioners of the Big Ten and SEC have not truly expressed a public position of their conferences.
As it turns out, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, in his letter, did not take an exact position but expressed “continued collaboration” with lawmakers as his league reviews the bill. After all, would every ACC program commit to a bill that prevents the SEC or Big Ten from expanding? Many of those schools are seeking such an invitation (two of them, Clemson and Florida State, sued the league, which resulted in the creation of more concrete exit fees).
Other letters have been sent to lawmakers, too.
A separate letter was sent as part of Cody Campbell’s “Saving College Sports” movement. Of the 85 listed signatories, only four of them held affiliations in an active leadership role with SEC or Big Ten schools (board members from LSU, Michigan and Penn State; and LSU’s president).
However, LSU president Wade Rousse told Yahoo Sports that he did not authorize his signature to be included in the letter — a revelation that came hours after the document landed in Senate staff inboxes.
The letter included signatures from 15 of the 16 Big 12 presidents and/or chancellors, another four ACC presidents and two dozen active members of their school’s board of trustees or regents — all but three of those outside of the SEC and Big Ten.
If you’re noticing a trend, you’d be right.
There is a divide emerging more than ever between those in the Big Ten and SEC and everyone else. The financial gap between those two conferences and the ACC and Big 12 grows by the year, rooted in valuable league television deals exacerbated by the consolidation of the biggest brands during conference realignment. Estimates project that the two leagues will distance themselves by as much as $40 million per school in the coming years.
In his brief comments on the bill last week during annual league meetings, Sankey addressed the bill’s language targeting his conference.
“If someone chooses to write legislation that focuses on us because we’ve done things so well, I look forward to learning that explanation,” he said.
At least one of the bill’s authors has explained herself.
“Obviously, we’re trying to make sure that nobody runs away with the eyeballs or a certain amount of revenue and hijacks the rest of the system, leaving it shortchanged,” Cantwell told Yahoo Sports last week, a clear nod toward the SEC and Big Ten’s growing revenue gap.
Said one Senate aide on the bill’s intent as it relates to the two conferences: “The success of the SEC and Big Ten has created an incredibly uneven playing field for everyone else.”
Are battle lines being drawn? Does the bill need the SEC and Big Ten’s support to pass?
There is one key person that seems to be in favor of the legislation: the president of the United States.
In response to a request for comment from Yahoo Sports, a White House official said, “President Trump has been relentless in his effort to protect and preserve college sports. He has called upon Congress, many times, to advance legislation that delivers meaningful, permanent reforms. The White House is reviewing the proposed bipartisan legislation but it appears that the legislation is moving the conversation on these important issues forward.”