Breaking down the college sports act: A salary cap, a 'Lane Kiffin rule' and a superleague ban

The Senate took a key step this week toward passing a bill that would radically change college sports by instituting rules that would cover a wide range of the multibillion-dollar industry, including how colleges pay their players and what those players can and cannot go to court to fight.

Senators voted 74-24 to close debate on The Protect College Sports Act, bringing it closer to a vote in that chamber. If it passes there, it would go to the House. Among the key provisions of the proposal:

The bill would put into law the revenue sharing that was negotiated under terms of the House settlement , which allows schools to share up to 22% of certain revenue with athletes. This year, that amounts to $21.58 million per school. It also would add a $27.5 million “retention pool” that can be used to keep current players on the roster and could diminish the amount of third-party name, image and likeness payments.

The bill offers the NCAA some protection against lawsuits in several areas, most notably eligibility issues that have landed the governing body in court dozens of times over the past year. Most recently, the lawsuits are coming from players who graduated high school in 2022 and were denied a fifth year of college eligibility under a new rule that kicks in for the Class of ’23.

The legislation is intended to preempt state laws, many of which were passed over the past five years to regulate NIL within state borders, that conflict with the guidelines set by the national law. Exactly how this plays out could be subject to litigation.

The bill would generally limit athletes to one “free” transfer without having to sit out a season, in a move that could cut down on some of the chaos created by the transfer portal. Athletes went to court in recent years to win the right to transfer without penalty.

The bill would prohibit coaches from leaving one school for another during the season.

In a rewrite of a 1961 law that prohibited this, the legislation would give college athletic conferences the option of pooling their media rights in an effort to generate more revenue to fund their sports. The powerful Southeastern and Big Ten conferences don’t agree it would make more money and have resisted this effort.

The bill would require most schools to maintain the same number of Olympic-sport programs as they had in the 2024-25 school year for at least nine years.

The measure would provide federal funding for broadband and media infrastructure at historically Black college and university programs.

The bill would also prohibit conferences from expanding beyond 19 teams and adds other measures to prevent the creation of a breakaway “superleague.”