Congressional Bill Announced for College Sports

#1
Delmar

Delmar

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#1
Surprised that nobody posted this but a bipartisan bill to regain some semblance of control of college sports was announced this morning. Would grant “limited” antitrust exemption whatever that means. Lots of detail in the article. Would expect lawsuits immediately if it goes through especially on coaching salary limits. Please merge if this has already been posted.

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Bipartisan 'Protect College Sports Act' proposes salary cap for players, antitrust protection, NIL regulation

After several delays, the Cantwell-Cruz bill was formally introduced on Wednesday morning
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#2
#2
A potentially stabilizing bill that would begin to address the problems the powers in "college" athletics don't want to address. I wouldn't mind seeing a little more focus on the extravagance and excess, (since they're colleges supposedly operating to promote the collegiate mission), but it's a start.

I agree that lawsuits would definitely come though. They will most certainly come. A lot of hangers-on have found ways to insert or attach themselves to college athletics and dip their hands in trough. They won't take those hands out quietly.
 
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#7
#7
Limited Anti-Trust exemptions and capping player salaries will simply give someone with deep pockets incentive to create a feeder league to the NFL unaffiliated with college football. Are blue chip high school players going to play college football with salary caps and hard money ceilings, or be tempted for a bigger payday as a porfessional. Signing Day could be competing with a draft that resembles the old Major League Baseball draft with 30-40 rounds and high school players featuring heavily in the mix. The NFL owners might create the league themselves. They might have learned something from the NFL Europe venture.

This law could hamstring college football. It'll be difficult to fix CFB with so many competing interests trying to maximize income.
 
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#8
#8
Illinoisvolfan2 said:
It’s a shame the NCAA can’t come up with some common sense guidelines, but NCAA and common sense in the same sentence rarely, if ever, leads to anything
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The NCAA has tried guidelines and tried to rein in transfers and tried to limit NIL.

States like TN, meaning schools like UT, have sued them for trying.
 
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#9
#9
SpookyAction said:
Limited Anti-Trust exemptions and capping player salaries will simply give someone with deep pockets incentive to create a feeder league to the NFL unaffiliated with college football. Are blue chip high school players going to play college football with salary caps and hard money ceilings, or be tempted for a bigger payday as a porfessional.
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That's fine though. Actually, that'd even be better than anything people could do now. Let the ones who want to play professionally after high school go play for the feeder league. By all means. Go for it. Let the ones who play for colleges, who have more incentive to value the attendance and the scholarship, let them be the ones who play for schools. That's great. That removes so much of the off-the-books pressures distorting the sport today.

The idiotic amount of money being blown around right now comes in large part because everyone's scared to be "left behind" by the handful of programs and boosters yanking it into the corporate pro-sports ditch. If that fear is suddenly addressed by a pro feeder league taking the incentives off the table? Whole new world. It could even potentially address some of the monopoly assertions used to browbeat college athletics into submission, since anyone unhappy with the college arrangement could try out and pursue the feeder league.

So by all means. Sign me up for that. I don't need UT to have the "best" players in the world. I don't go to games to see the best players play the best. I go to games to see Tennessee beat our rivals and our foes into the dirt. I just need Tennessee to have players who are competitive with the top level talent of the sport. So. Feeder league. Sign me up.
 
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#10
#10
People won't like it but Congress doing a limited antitrust needs to be done in order to get some balance.
Need contracts, collectives/booster go away.
NIL was marketing thing but now it's morphed into pay for play. NIL from businesses can still be a thing but they need to be legit. No different that an athlete that has agent that goes out and get them shoe deals and there are expectations that come with it
Nobody is paying a a HS kid that hasn't already made national attention or not associated with someone famous a million dollars to advertise for them
 
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#11
#11
SpookyAction said:
Limited Anti-Trust exemptions and capping player salaries will simply give someone with deep pockets incentive to create a feeder league to the NFL unaffiliated with college football. Are blue chip high school players going to play college football with salary caps and hard money ceilings, or be tempted for a bigger payday as a porfessional. Signing Day could be competing with a draft that resembles the old Major League Baseball draft with 30-40 rounds and high school players featuring heavily in the mix. The NFL owners might create the league themselves. They might have learned something from the NFL Europe venture.

This law could hamstring college football. It'll be difficult to fix CFB with so many competing interests trying to maximize income.
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I don't think so. As we've seen with upstart pro leagues, there's not much money in it. Getting there first, which colleges have done with massive TV contracts, is what matters.

All the "other leagues" will face big headwinds fighting against the huge TV contracts the SEC and B1G already have in place. There is no way the conferences will "share the wealth" by letting good talent be showcased in another league.

The NBA and ABA lesson is pretty much the blueprint for how the NBA let an upstart league get traction and then had to merge with them.

People like Sankey are well aware that they would need to be ruthless and minimize the footprint and talent in any upstart league.
 
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#13
#13
Illinoisvolfan2 said:
It’s a shame the NCAA can’t come up with some common sense guidelines, but NCAA and common sense in the same sentence rarely, if ever, leads to anything
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It’s actually a contradiction in terms and always has been. It’s a big reason we’re in this mess, not that I hold out any hope of Congress not making a big problem even worse.
 
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#14
#14
SayUWantAreVOLution said:
I don't think so. As we've seen with upstart pro leagues, there's not much money in it. Getting there first, which colleges have done with massive TV contracts, is what matters.

All the "other leagues" will face big headwinds fighting against the huge TV contracts the SEC and B1G already have in place. There is no way the conferences will "share the wealth" by letting good talent be showcased in another league.

The NBA and ABA lesson is pretty much the blueprint for how the NBA let an upstart league get traction and then had to merge with them.

People like Sankey are well aware that they would need to be ruthless and minimize the footprint and talent in any upstart league.
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Yea. I don't think the NFL has any interest in a development league. They already get NFL ready talent from the current format and colleges are paying for it. No reason for the NFL to be involved.

No development league could compete with the fanbase college football has. It's a losing prospect I think.
 
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#16
#16
More info from the SEC/Big 10 perspective. There is a piece of this legislation that would prevent the SEC or Big 10 from acquiring/merging with any other league to form the “super league” that has been discussed. Not sure how that’s going to sit with Sankey. He came out yesterday and said the SEC will not support assigning media rights to a third party (which is also a part of this).

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With the Protect College Sports bill finally in hand, SEC leaders are discussing contingencies

As a bipartisan Senate bill to regulate college athletics gains traction, the SEC is already plotting its own radical roster-building workarounds
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#17
#17
SayUWantAreVOLution said:
The NCAA has tried guidelines and tried to rein in transfers and tried to limit NIL.

States like TN, meaning schools like UT, have sued them for trying.
Click to expand...
Yeah, at this point, I'd take the old NCAA model where it was done under the table and kids stayed in one place for the most part.

Hell, we won a natty with that model.
 
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#18
#18
This Protect College Sports Bill won't pass but even if it does I don't see how it solves the issues raised by the Supreme Court. Looks like election year BS.
There are really just two ways to legally get this under control and neither one is going to happen. Either they get Congress to give the NCAA an anti-trust exemption or they do collective bargaining (unions for players).
The anti-trust exemption would not get past a Democrat filibuster in the Senate. They can't even get the bill the NCAA asked for passed.
You can write executive orders until doomsday, they mean nothing and would get thrown out by the courts.
Once the players are unionized, you can bargain issues like transfer portal and NIL. I'm not saying this would be great, I'm just pointing out that the options are limited. Can imagine the first time the players went out on strike.
 
#20
#20
WBO said:
This Protect College Sports Bill won't pass but even if it does I don't see how it solves the issues raised by the Supreme Court. Looks like election year BS.
There are really just two ways to legally get this under control and neither one is going to happen. Either they get Congress to give the NCAA an anti-trust exemption or they do collective bargaining (unions for players).
The anti-trust exemption would not get past a Democrat filibuster in the Senate. They can't even get the bill the NCAA asked for passed.
You can write executive orders until doomsday, they mean nothing and would get thrown out by the courts.
Once the players are unionized, you can bargain issues like transfer portal and NIL. I'm not saying this would be great, I'm just pointing out that the options are limited. Can imagine the first time the players went out on strike.
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I’m certainly not a legal scholar but I didn’t think they could even get to collective bargaining without first getting an antitrust exemption? Somebody else will need to clarify that one.
 
#22
#22
Why would we want the government involved in college sports? What do they do well? (spending money doesn't count) (The military is good at breaking things and killing people) Anything limiting an employee salary is DOA. It's possible to limit taxpayer money but most coaches are paid from donations. My guess is there are a lot of folks that think taxpayer money pays for everything, which isn't the case. Kind of like Diana DeGette thinks once the rounds are fired out of a magazine, the magazine gets thrown away.
 
#24
#24
woodpusher said:
Plenty of companies that don't have anti-trust exemptions have trade unions.
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Certainly, if they make the players employees and start a pro league a union is fine. The schools and NCAA do not want to revenue share 50--50 with the players as most pro leagues do with the athletes.

It is ALL solved if they'll go pro but then you'll see a draft from HS, probably see college attendance for the employee-players disappear, and likely see players continuing to play until they are 35yo.

As a pro league, it's a pro league.

Only Congress can develop an Antitrust Exemption so that college athletes are legally and specifically NOT employees but can collective bargain like employees.
 
#25
#25
SayUWantAreVOLution said:
Certainly, if they make the players employees and start a pro league a union is fine. The schools and NCAA do not want to revenue share 50--50 with the players as most pro leagues do with the athletes.

It is ALL solved if they'll go pro but then you'll see a draft from HS, probably see college attendance for the employee-players disappear, and likely see players continuing to play until they are 35yo.

As a pro league, it's a pro league.

Only Congress can develop an Antitrust Exemption so that college athletes are legally and specifically NOT employees but can collective bargain like employees.
Click to expand...
Does the Southern Professional Hockey League have an anti-trust exemption? They do (or at least they did) have an age/tenure maximum. I recall Mike Craigen exhausting his eligibility.
 
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