The Senate Passes the Protect College Sports Act

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The yearslong, multimillion-dollar effort to get Congressional action on college sports passed a historic hurdle Monday night, as the U.S. Senate voted 77-22 to pass the Protect College Sports Act, which could dramatically change the future of the industry by freezing much of the tumult of the last several years.

At least, that’s the plan.

The bill must still pass the House of Representatives, which is not expected to convene until after the midterm elections. Its chances remain to be determined.

But what’s actually in the bill? Everything from transfer restrictions to conference expansion caps to coach-departure limitations to a supposedly harder cap on revenue sharing. There’s also a clause about the date of the football national championship game.

If you haven’t been in the legislative weeds over the past few months, here’s a rundown of key provisions that would become law if the bill passes as it’s currently written.

Limiting conference expansion and a Super League

After the mad rush of conference realignment that reshaped college sports geography a few years ago, this bill would amend the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to freeze some of what’s in place. Conferences that report more than $700 million in revenue (aka the Power 4: the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC) would be limited to 20 members.

Additionally, within the first six years of the bill’s implementation, any team in a Power 4 league wanting to move to another P4 league must first spend three years as an independent. The bill originally listed five years as an independent, but that was lowered to three this week after lobbying from some ACC schools. The cap was also raised from 19 members to 20.

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The return of transfer restrictions

The PCSA would curtail the unlimited transfers currently in place. Undergraduate players would be allowed one free transfer without having to sit out a year, and graduate players would remain free to transfer without limit. This would take the rules back to the short-lived change introduced by the NCAA in 2021, before the courts opened unlimited transfers. All players would still be able to transfer in the event of a head coaching change, the discontinuation of a sport or misconduct-related circumstances.

So while there would no longer be unlimited transfers for everyone, there would still be many paths to transfer, especially in the new world of five years of eligibility, which would also be enshrined as law with the age-based clock. The bill additionally gives the NCAA antitrust protection to enforce transfer rules, including tampering.

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Increasing revenue sharing, while adding a harder cap

The money opened up for athletes by the House v. NCAA settlement (around $21 million this year) would increase by way of a new $22.5 million “retention fund” limit to be used on a school’s current players, plus another $5 million capped pool exclusively for women’s sports and nonrevenue sports, totaling nearly $50 million per year. The retention fund would have academic benchmark requirements.

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