The Protect College 'Administrators' Act, Part Next

Technically, the legislation aimed at providing stability to college sports is halfway to becoming law. In practical terms, however, it may be much further from the finish line. The Protect College Sports Act passed the Senate last week by a 77-22 margin, which nearly qualifies as a landslide in today’s polarized Congress. Now it must pass the House of Representatives, no small feat among the larger, more diverse legislative body. 

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said he thinks the House will reconvene in the coming days to take up and pass the legislation, though Speaker/weasel Mike Johnson, the Republican from Louisiana, sent representatives home early last month until after the November mid-term elections and said himself that reconvening is unlikely. 

One Democrat House staff member told Yahoo Sports college snoop Ross Dellenger, “That bill is dead.” Another told him, “We have no intention to return to take up this bill before the mid-term elections.” The contentiousness appears to be both procedural and personal, with a heaping helping of disapproval of the bill itself. The House doesn’t routinely rubber-stamp legislation passed by the Senate, and one Congressional expert told Dellenger that there are plenty of House members cheesed off at Cruz for holding up House-passed legislation in the Senate. Some are also peeved that several proposals from a similar, House-authored bill called the SCORE Act that couldn’t garner enough support for a floor vote aren’t included in the PCSA. 

If House members do indeed take up the Senate’s bill, they could and likely would insert changes and amendments that the Senate would have to sign off on before final approval. Meanwhile, Democrats hold out hope of taking control of the House in November, so why would they reconvene under the current slim Republican majority? Also, there’s the optics of reps assembling to take up college sports legislation while ignoring issues such as the war with Iran, tariffs, inflation, foreign policy and any number of more pressing matters. And then there’s the bill itself. 

The PCSA purports to create Federal, uniform guardrails and guidance amid the shifting landscape of athlete payment and movement. Instead, it’s likely to give back, or curtail, many of the benefits and freedoms athletes won in numerous court cases over the past couple decades and return control to the suits and administrators. The biggest gift is granting the NCAA an antitrust exemption, a shield against action or lawsuits brought on behalf of athletes or schools. Because yes, by all means we should greenlight the restaurateur with a track record of health code violations and salmonella outbreaks to open another eatery. 

The NCAA fought tooth-and-nail for years to uphold amateurism as its foundation, while schools and conferences and coaches made tens of millions of dollars, and conference realignment caused its own brand of upheaval. Courts regularly struck down NCAA limits and opened the door for athletes to earn money and to transfer more freely in search of both money and playing time. The PCSA, as currently worded, would create a strictly regulated revenue-share salary cap; would limit athlete transfer policy (one transfer without penalty); create a five-year eligibility limit for athletes; create an agent registry with a five-percent maximum fee; limit conference expansion; create a path for Football Bowl Subdivision conferences to pool media rights; prohibit coaches who leave before a season ends from performing duties at their new school (the so-called Lane Kiffin Rule). 

Proponents of the bill say these measures will replace the patchwork of state legislation and bring stability to a sporting landscape that’s become chaotic, as well as expensive. Critics point to the questionable wisdom of Federal oversight of college sports – for example, see Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt’s gaffealicious inability to differentiate between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, while attempting to grill former prosecutor Jack Smith. Critics also take issue with the potential limitation of athletes’ freedom and earning potential, and rewarding the NCAA with renewed powers after decades of feckless and shortsighted management. 

Though there’s bipartisan support of the bill (50 Republicans and 27 Democrats approved) there’s also bipartisan opposition. The 58-member Congressional Black Caucus, a group of Democrats, opposed the SCORE Act, as did a sizeable number of the 30-member, conservative GOP Freedom Caucus – albeit for different reasons. The CBC has already come out publicly against the current legislation. As Dellenger pointed out, both the Congressional Black Caucus and Freedom Caucus have members on the powerful House Rules Committee, which must approve any legislation for it to reach the floor for a full vote. If the bill doesn’t pass before the end of the calendar year, it goes back to square one and must be re-submitted and re-approved by both chambers. 

Even if the PCSA passes and President Trump signs it into law, which he’s said he’ll do, it won’t magically and immediately transform college sports. Expect any number of legal challenges related to salary caps, earning caps, transfer limits, agent fee limits, Title IX considerations and pre-emption of state laws on eligibility and NIL payments to athletes over Tenth Amendment concerns, which states that the Federal government only has the powers granted to it by the U.S. Constitution and that the states have power over everything else; the Framers were notably silent on college athletics.