Without Big Ten and SEC support, Congress' Protect College Sports bill is in peril
CHICAGO — At Big Ten football media days here, within the downtown Hilton hotel, an elaborate room exists, named after the SS Normandie.
Among the room’s concrete columns and carpeted grand staircase, a plaque details the fate of the French ocean liner: It sank at its pier in New York Harbor in 1942 after catching fire, capsizing and finally resting half-submerged at the bottom of the Hudson River.
Is the Protect College Sports Act sinking too?
As of Wednesday evening, officials from the Big Ten and SEC had not delivered to congressional lawmakers their position on a piece of legislation intended to regulate the college sports industry. And without their support, the bill faces steep odds of passage through the U.S. Congress as time ticks away.
The act intends to regulate the industry by limiting transfer movement, raising and enforcing a new compensation cap, and standardizing five years of player eligibility.
League officials have been in intense negotiations with senators and their staff members on revisions to the legislation that may garner their support.
Conference leadership did not meet an original deadline set by lawmakers — 9 a.m. Wednesday — and instead the two sides spent most of Tuesday night and Wednesday embroiled in discussions over several provisions in the bill.
At the center of the talks is the conferences’ desire to close a cap circumvention loophole to prohibit schools from exceeding the revenue-share cap by using “associated entities,” such as corporate sponsors and multimedia rights partners, to redirect athletic department funds to their rosters. College administrators say that an adjustment to the provision is essential to provide a stricter cap as the latest version of the bill raises the athlete revenue-share cap from $21.3 million to $48.8 million — a move that, while aligning more with the current market, must be paired with a hard cap.
“We can’t create a new floor,” Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork told Yahoo Sports from Big Ten football media days on Wednesday. “We need a ceiling.”
According to the most recent additions, the bill creates a $22.5 million retention pool for schools to use on retaining athletes in addition to the $21.3 million original cap, plus $5 million to be spent only on women athletes.
In a revised bill that the conferences received on Tuesday, Big Ten and SEC leaders believe that the associated entities provision was not strong enough to prevent continued cap circumvention. Conference executives also want to broaden the state preemption section, which, they believe, doesn’t provide them enough antitrust protection.
As of Wednesday evening, conference leaders say they received unfinished language around the associated entity provision and were waiting for more formal text to assure that the loophole was closed.
The Big Ten and SEC held calls with their presidents around noon ET on Wednesday to brief them on updated negotiations. More calls were planned for the evening, but, in the absence of final language, no action or vote was scheduled.
In fact, the Big Ten canceled its presidents call scheduled for 7 p.m.
Negotiations between the two parties — the SEC/Big Ten and co-authors of the bill, Sens. Ted Cruz, Maria Cantwell and Eric Schmitt — have turned somewhat divisive. In fact, a Senate staff member released a terse statement to a small group of reporters on Wednesday after the leagues missed the 9 a.m. deadline, saying that lawmakers made “major concessions” overnight Tuesday and that they need “an answer” from the leagues.
The statement noted the tight timeline. Senators are attempting to bring the legislation to the floor of the Senate for a vote next week – the last week that senators are in session before a month-long recess starts Aug. 7. The legislation faces longer odds of passage if it does not reach the floor before the recess.
Many believe that Majority Leader John Thune must file for cloture by Thursday for the legislation to move to the Senate floor by next week.
“At this point, with every passing minute, odds are slimmer that we can move the bill before the August recess,” the Senate staff member said in the statement. “We’ve been working night and day to make the revisions they said they needed.”
Not everyone agrees that including most or all of associated NIL deals into the cap is the right move.
Some athlete deals through associated entities are kosher endorsement and commercial contracts and shouldn’t be counted against the cap, said Cole Gahagan, the president and CEO of Learfield, the multimedia rights partner of dozens of FBS universities. Learfield, as well as its competitor Playfy, hold schools intellectual property rights and sell those rights to sponsors. Those sponsors often strike deals with athletes – some through a redirection of funds; others through true deal-making with a program’s best players.
“Our industry certainly needs additional structure, but we can’t toss the baby with the bath water,” Gahagan said. “We work with over 12,000 brands from Eugene to Athens, and all over the globe. If Learfield is prohibited or even obstructed from doing deals on behalf of student athletes, it will represent a significant setback for those athletes. Zero doubt about it.”
But administrators believe a strict cap – rolling in most or all of the associated NIL deals – is imperative to establishing a more equitable system of compensation within the industry.
If Congress doesn’t pass a revised bill, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said on Tuesday that the next solution for bringing regulation to the industry is striking a compromise with the other power leagues over changes to the College Sports Commission (Plan B) and the athlete revenue-share cap, which is far below the current compensation market. If a compromise isn’t reached, a self-governance model (Plan C) is necessary, Petitti suggested, where leagues create and enforce their own rules.
However, that “doesn’t mean you’re not going to play anybody else,” he said. In fact, Big Ten athletic directors gathered here in person on Wednesday, Day 2 of the league’s football media days, where Plan B and C were discussed.
Neither path is preferred over Congressional legislation.
“It would be a bit of a stopgap,” Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman said. “OK, let’s do this for two or three years while we continue to work out the kinks of a more national solution. I don’t think doing it conference by conference promises a lot of longevity.”
SEC officials have seriously discussed for months now a self-governing model as a way to enforce rules and evade antitrust scrutiny with a smaller group of programs (16 schools vs. the 350-plus in Division I). But some attorneys believe that the leagues still hold market power and may not escape all legal challenges.
“It’s not our first option,” Iowa athletic director Beth Goetz said. “When you’re in a competitive environment, it’s really hard to execute self regulation and enforcement. How do you navigate those waters?”
At SEC football media days last week, commissioner Greg Sankey said any self-governance model would feature a league enforcing penalties on its own members, something he described as “very” difficult.
Petitti echoed that here this week.
“There’s no easy path,” he said.
Will the Protect College Sports Act end up on the ocean floor?
