Senate expected to pass Protect College Sports Act to grant NCAA antitrust protection this week

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The Senate is expected to vote as soon as Thursday on the Protect College Sports Act, a bill that would grant the NCAA sweeping antitrust protections that restore its ability to enforce eligibility and other rules eroded by a patchwork of court rulings and state laws in recent years.

"My best guess is by the end of this week, we'll have a final vote," Sen. Eric Schmitt — a Missouri Republican, who cosponsored the bill — said.

The bill comes as the current college sports landscape — with unlimited transfers and unenforceable regulations on eligibility and payments for name, image and likeness — has drawn widespread criticism.

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Henry E. Youngs, president of the Olathe NAACP Chapter, said the situation has grown unmanageable.

“I think there should be some national rules governing it, because it's getting out of hand,” he said. “... I'm not into a lot of regulation, but there should be something that says this is the way it should be. Now, how do you do that is what we're all talking about right now.”

Legal experts argue there are only two viable paths forward: federal antitrust legislation, like the Protect College Sports Act, or declaring student-athletes to be employees, which would allow collective bargaining but could be difficult to implement at public universities. It also raises the question of how to segment bargaining units.

"Even if you thought that was the right path, we have to deal with what's possible,” Schmitt said. “There's a lot of practical implications involved in that, so what we tried to do was build on the House Settlement, where student-athletes were at the table and negotiated a groundbreaking revenue-sharing agreement," Schmitt said.

The Protect College Sports Act includes provisions that codify the NCAA’s five-year eligibility window.

It would also allow student-athletes to transfer once without sitting out, or if a coach leaves the program, while guaranteeing health insurance while on scholarship and for five years after exhausting eligibility.

The bill actually increases the revenue-sharing pool established under the House Settlement, pegged at roughly $21.6 million. Member schools could also share an additional $22.5 million in revenue with athletes enrolled for at least a year through newly created retention funds.

Another $5 million in revenue could be dedicated to non-revenue-generating sports, but schools must meet graduation-rate and academic-progress benchmarks to use those additional revenue-sharing streams.

Other items include rules on outside NIL agreements, restrictions on in-season coach movement, and creating a congressional commission on college sports.

"It's this kind of mix of things that is really important for college athletics and will allow the sports to thrive for decades,” Schmitt said. “If we don't do something, you're just going to see continued chaos.”

Youngs said he believes the legislation treats athletes fairly, though he acknowledged that fairness is subjective.

"The way it is proposed now, fair is sort of a term that depends on who's looking at it, isn't it?” he said. “I think it's OK, and I don't think nothing can ever be totally fair to everyone involved.”

Schmitt said, for too long, athletes were unable to share in the spoils of a multi-billion dollar industry, but a landscape with no rules enforcement isn’t tenable either.

"Even a decade or so ago the pendulum was swung way too far in the wrong direction,” he said. “You could never move ... and you couldn't be compensated for your name, image, and likeness. ... That was wrong. But where we're at now, there are no rules, and there's no league, there's no organization that can truly operate that way.”

If the Senate passes the bill, it still needs to clear the House before it reaches the president's desk.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

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