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

The Senate passed a bill Monday night that would bring new rules to college sports covering a wide range of issues including how schools pay their players, what those players can and cannot go to court to fight, and how many transfers players can make. The 77-22 votes sends the The Protect College Sports Act to the House, where supporters are hoping the large margin and bipartisan nature of the bill will give it momentum to pass before the end of the year. Among the key provisions:

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 is designed to bring many of the third-party name, image and likeness payments from “associated entities” affiliated with the schools under the new cap.

The bill offers the NCAA some protection against lawsuits in several areas, most notably on 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 bill limits sports agents to receiving a maximum of 5% of an athlete's endorsement contract.

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, a move that could cut down on some of the chaos and expenses created by the constant need to recruit and pay players out of 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. An amendment proposed by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., that would have restricted coaching salaries to $5 million per year lost on a largely party line vote.

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. 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. Also, $5 million of each school's new retention pool would be devoted to women's and Olympic sports.

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 20 teams and adds other measures to prevent the creation of a breakaway “superleague.” The number went up from 19 to 20 after a voice vote for an amendment offered by Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla.

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