The so called “Protect College Sports Act” protects only the schools, coaches and administrators. It’s a ripoff for the players and the taxpayers. The bill passed the U.S. Senate last night, but is likely to die in the House, as well it should.
Here’s what this awful legislation would do:
Revenue Sharing & NIL: It increases the direct revenue-sharing cap for schools from roughly $21 million to $49 million while cracking down on above-market-value Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals and third-party collectives.
This NIL stuff is the root of the problem. The schools want to hide behind this sham because they cling to this hollow notion of the “student-athlete.” So they pretend that the players aren’t being paid to play, but rather for use of their name, image and likeness. They created this fantasy because they think the “student-athlete” myth is at the heart of marketing college sports. But it isn’t. When a quarterback drops back do you ask what his grade point average is? No, you wonder what his completion rate is. And college sports continue to get more popular and lucrative even as players are finally getting some piece of the pie they bake. Nobody cares if these athletes are also students.
Let’s just be honest. Players are being paid to play the game and they should get their fair share of all that revenue.
And in what is probably the most hypocritical aspect of a galling bill, it would limit players’ agents’ fees to 5% of the NIL deal to “protect” them from being “exploited.” Seriously? Schools have been exploiting the players for about a century, stealing their labor and exposing them to lifelong injuries while they enriched coaches, AD’s, administrators and a never ending trough of television execs, food and beverage vendors and more who leeched off the players’ work. But, oh, now they want to protect the players from being exploited. Foxes. Chicken coops.
Transfers & Eligibility: It limits athletes to one free transfer (subsequent transfers would require sitting out a year) and sets a strict five-year eligibility cap.
Fans’ biggest gripe with this new era is frequent transfers. They can’t get to know the players and watch their development. Fair enough. The obvious answer is contracts. Players could negotiate contracts of one to four years in exchange for payment, just like the pros. Floors and ceilings would be set by an umbrella contract negotiated with a players union so that competitive balance would be maintained — again just like the pros. This works great for the NFL, but the schools don’t like it because they’d have to admit that their players are university employees, which they clearly are. They work 40 hour weeks, easily.
And why only the five years of eligibility? I don’t see any reason why a player who doesn’t make it in the NFL shouldn’t be able to return to play in college, whether he’s graduated or not. Could you end up with 30-year old players in college football? Sure, why not? Again, let’s not let the “student-athlete” myth get in the way of what works. The only thing fans care about is whether their team wins or loses. Nobody ever asks whether a player has graduated or not.
Antitrust Protection: It grants limited antitrust exemptions to the NCAA and a newly created College Sports Commission to legally enforce transfer limits, academic standards, and compensation caps.
This is a terrible idea because it puts all the power in the hands of the schools. A much better and fairer system is the NFL-like format that I suggest above. And let’s get rid of academic standards altogether. These have long been a joke. Every one of the 34 transfers into the Badger football program this last year was admitted to the university, no questions asked. Every one was academically eligible? Really?
Health & Safety Mandates: It requires Division I schools to provide medical coverage for sports-related injuries, establish independent safety officers, and mandate protocols for brain injuries and heat exertion.
This is fine, though the bill’s critics say that the details come up short. And why does this just apply to Division I schools?
Protection for Women’s and Olympic Sports: It mandates that schools maintain roster spots and funding at 2024–2025 levels for non-revenue and women’s sports.
Don’t imagine there’s some high-mindedness behind this. It’s important to the U.S. Olympic Committee that schools keep churning out athletes for their own billion dollar business. Let them pay for athlete development themselves. And why should the guys in football and men’s basketball, who are actually earning all the revenue that supports all the other programs, have to subsidize them?
In the big picture Congress should have nothing to do with any of this in the first place. The NCAA and the powerhouse schools could figure this out tomorrow if they’d just drop the ludicrous notion of the “student-athlete” and be honest about what this is. It’s a billion dollar industry fueled by highly skilled athletes who deserve to be paid a fair wage for their services.
What the schools really want is that antitrust exemption because, if they try to enforce these unfair rules without it, they’ll get sued and lose — as they should.
In the end, you can’t hold back the free market. What the schools want is to build a dam to hold back the pressure of billions of dollars. It won’t work. What’s likely to happen eventually is that this will become a wildly successful pro-model. Division I football will evolve into about 30 to 40 teams (just like all the pro leagues) with a players union and contracts. And, just like the NFL, they’ll print money because the fans will love it.
What this bill doesn’t deal with is the biggest issue of all: taxpayer and student subsidies of sports. Almost every school rips off their students or the state taxpayers to support college sports. In fact, the state of Wisconsin last year shamefully forked over $14 million a year to UW athletics. There will be more where that came from.
If Congress really wanted to do something worthwhile they’d put an end to that. End the subsidies right now. Make college sports pay their own way. They can afford it.
