Texas coach Steve Sarkisian is backing one of the biggest ideas inside the Protect College Sports Act: a harder line on revenue sharing.
Speaking Wednesday in Austin, Sarkisian said he has not been tracking the bill’s movement on Capitol Hill closely and is leaning on Texas general manager Brandon Harris and athletic director Chris Del Conte to keep him updated.
"They fill me in," Sarkisian said.
But when asked about the proposal’s updated cap on athlete compensation, Sarkisian made his view clear. The legislation would allow schools to spend roughly $49 million a year on compensating athletes, with $5 million of that set aside for nonrevenue and women’s sports. That figure is well above the current revenue-sharing cap of about $21 million, but unlike today’s system, it would shut down the extra NIL spending from "associated entities" such as third parties and multimedia rights holders.
For Sarkisian, that kind of hard cap sounds like a step toward order.
"I think any time -- I've been saying this all along. I think any time you have structure, it's good," he said.
"We've been operating for the last year, year-and-a-half with very minimal structure, and I just don't think that's healthy, alright. So, I think if this bill goes through and some of these things get streamlined in a sense where it provides structure for all of us, I think that's healthy.
We're not all just kind of living in the wild, wild West."
The bill, first sponsored by Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), covers far more than pay. It would also restrict most athletes to one transfer before graduation, with a second move triggering a season of sitting out unless certain exceptions apply, such as a coaching change.
It would go after conference realignment, too. Schools would have to spend five full years as independents before moving from one Power Four conference to another.
The proposal even includes what amounts to a " Lane Kiffin Rule," aimed at stopping coaches from jumping jobs in the middle of a season. Kiffin left Ole Miss for LSU after the Rebels’ regular-season finale, and under the act, a coach could not take a head coaching job at another school before finishing the season for the current one. The same restriction would apply to assistants, including an offensive coordinator on a College Football Playoff team who wanted to leave for a head coaching job.
The act would also let conferences pool their multimedia rights and would place a cap on agent fees.
The bill cleared a hurdle last week when it got the approval of the SEC and the Big Ten, but it is still not certain whether the Senate will vote on it before recess. If it passes there, it would still need approval from the House before reaching President Donald Trump, who has already said he supports it.
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