BIRMINGHAM, Ala. The Protect College Sports Act, recently passed by the U.S. Senate and now before the House, should be renamed the “Protect the Status Quo Act” because it heavily favors the powers that be in college sports. If it becomes law, many fear that hard-earned gains college players fought for will be rolled back, like prices at a big-box department store.
Supporters claim the Act will install needed safeguards on NIL, the transfer portal and other provisions. Critics, including the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus and the AFL-CIO, argue that it is basically anti-athlete.
The Senate passed the bill 77-22 in a late-night session in September. Supporters say it would expand the current revenue-sharing framework created by the 2025 House settlement, create new student-athlete rights and protections, and authorize an HBCU sports media grant program.
More important, the Act would give the NCAA, conferences and universities substantial authority over the rules governing athletes, Star Tribune editorial columnist Haley Taylor Schlitz wrote in her commentary shortly after the Act passed.
“The sweeping bill would establish sweeping federal rules about NIL rights for college athletes and protections for scholarships and health care. Its supporters say they are trying to solve real problems,” she wrote.
Several HBCU conference commissioners signed a letter in support of the Act earlier this year.
“The SWAC has consistently advocated for a uniform national framework to restore order and narrowly tailored protections that allow college sports to make and enforce common sense national rules,” wrote Commissioner Dr. Charles McClelland in a June 10 letter to Congress. “The SWAC supports the Protect College Sports Act. The legislation reflects progress towards securing stability for college sports …”
During a brief sit-down interview with McClelland last week in Birmingham, MSR asked him to comment on the Senate bill’s passage.
“I think our position has been the same from the start. It hasn’t changed,” McClelland said. When we asked a follow-up, he reiterated, “Our position hasn’t changed.”
“It’s much deeper than anybody can imagine,” said Bethune-Cookman Men’s Basketball Coach and Athletic Director Reggie Theus when we asked about the Senate bill. “When you dig and when you strip away all, a lot of the layers, it is still about the haves and have-nots.
“There’s so many layers to this thing,” he pointed out. “The one thing I do believe is that if they can all sit down and talk and negotiate … Otherwise, it’s going to be great for one entity and not so great for the other.”
We agree on this: clearly absent from any discussion is the one entity that should be at the front of the table, the players themselves.
Instead, we hear whining from former coaches like Nick Saban, who built his coaching fortunes for years on the backs of his college football players. We hear from shady politicians such as Sen. Ted Cruz, a bill co-sponsor. The Republican-led 119th Congress is considered the least productive, most closed Congress in modern history, but before they snuck out of D.C., they passed the Protect College Sports Act.
Furthermore, when the current anti-progress U.S. president came out for the bill, a five-alarm bell rang like the old robot in “Lost in Space”: “Danger, danger.”
At The Drake Group’s Oct. 1 webinar, “Beyond the Senate Floor: What’s Next for College Athletics?,” panelists discussed the pros and cons of the Protect College Sports Act, analyzed its provisions and weighed whether the House will follow suit and pass the Senate bill.
Etienne Thomas, the only Black panelist, is a deputy athletics director at North Carolina Central University, a member of the MEAC, one of four Black college conferences supporting the Act (the SIAC and CIAA are the others).
“There has to be that representation as HBCUs. It has to be real representation,” she stressed. “I’m not interested in being invited to represent our conference, our institution, and I vote, and my vote means absolutely nothing.”
Personally, the Protect College Sports Act smells fishy and is too one-sided.
We admit college sports’ landscape is wacky now, but it only became that way once players started getting paid. Mind you, even with the current revenue-sharing model now in its second season, athletes will never reach the same equilibrium in compensation as their coaches, their schools and the conferences they compete in when it comes to real money.
And if Congress and the president start meddling in it, nothing will be solved except making the robber barons happy.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader responses at challman@spokesman-recorder.com.
Copyright © Charles Hallman