The NCAA broke college sports, through decades of rampant antitrust violations. Now, the NCAA seems to be closing in on getting someone else to fix it.
Per multiple reports, the “Protect College Sports Act” emerged from the Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday, by a vote of 19-9. It is now in position to be cleared for a vote of the full Senate.
The House of Representatives would then take up the issue. If/when the House passes the bill, it will be ready for signature into law by the President.
As noted by Pete Thamel of ESPN, the SEC and Big Ten continue to oppose the act as written. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), one of the sponsors of the bill, dismissed the concerns from the nation’s two most powerful conferences.
“I know my colleagues have concerns about the SEC and Big Ten, but what we did today is say we are not going to let the most powerful and richest conferences dictate to the rest of America what’s going to happen to 500,000 athletes,” Cantwell said, via Sports Business Journal.
Some of those athletes are inevitably going to have their pockets picked. As explained by Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports, one provision of the Protect College Sports Act “may limit the amount of money that athletes are currently receiving, potentially by hundreds of millions of dollars.” This would happen through the closure of an NIL loophole that allows other parties to offer extra money to players.
That’s really what this is all about. The rabbit has the gun, and Elmer Fudd is trying to get it back. They can dress it up with all sorts of fancy-schmancy provisions and wave the Olympic flag and cry about existential threats all they want. The truth remains that the money that used to flow exclusively into the coffers of the colleges is now being partially diverted to the players — and there are only so many dollars to go around.
The players, throughout this process, have had no real voice. They’re not organized or represented. They have no true lobbying function.
Which makes them the easiest target for redistributing wealth in a way that makes it easier for universities that previously got free labor from players to claw back some of what the antitrust reckoning has given them.
