Congress is about to take another swing at college sports, and the bill at the center of the debate is being sold as a fix for the chaos of the NIL era. Whether it actually fixes anything is another matter.
The legislation in question is the “Protect College Sports Act,” which mainly seeks to provide college sports with an antitrust exemption. Sen.
Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who co-sponsored the bill with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), pushed it on ESPN’s “College Game Day” during the show’s stop in Austin, Texas.
Pat McAfee and Nick Saban were there, looking on approvingly.
The Senate voted 74-24 on Tuesday afternoon to move the bill forward, setting up a full vote that is expected Thursday. If it clears the Senate, it would then head to the House. It still faces real resistance, especially from labor and civil rights groups that say the measure could chip away at athletes’ rights, including the right to collective bargaining.
That criticism got a public airing Tuesday afternoon when NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson appeared on ESPN’s SportsCenter after Cruz’s appearance on College Game Day drew objections. Johnson said the athletes’ “voice in the process” was one of the things missing from the bill, along with “so many things that should be in there to protect the players.”
The bill does include a requirement that “at least one-third of athletic association governingboards or other committees with rulemaking authority to consist of current or recent formerstudent athletes.” But that does not mean the other two-thirds will have to listen to them.
There is also a major issue lurking beneath the politics: the bill, according to the Knight Commission summary, is “neutral on, and does nothing to alter, employee or non-employee status for student-athletes.” That has obvious implications in a world where athletes are being paid directly by schools.
The legislation also contains provisions that would limit athletes’ pay. Coaches, on the other hand, are treated very differently.
There is no cap on their compensation, aside from a rule that anything above $500,000 “can only be paid from college sports revenues or donations to the athletic department.” In other words, tax dollars can’t be used to buy out an underperforming coach’s contract.
One part of the bill does say that “FBS football coaches from leaving mid-season.” That might as well mean any time before the national championship game, just in case Lane Kiffin is tempted to test the boundaries of “mid-season” again.
What the bill and the surrounding pitch do not really explain is what all of this means for the people actually buying the tickets and filling the stadiums. Fans, boosters and donors are usually an afterthought anyway, and the endless commercial breaks inside a stadium make that pretty clear.
Still, the case for college sports being worth saving may be easier to make when you look at what happens when regional rivalries still have life. In Berkeley a couple of weeks ago, UCLA and Cal met in their football season opener, and the atmosphere suggested that local and regional matchups still matter a lot.
At the same time, the sport’s chase for television money has done enormous damage. It helped destroy the legacy Pac-12 and left the other major conferences swollen beyond recognition.
The Big Ten now has 18 teams, the Atlantic Coast has 17, and the Southeastern Conference and Big XII each have 16. At least three of those leagues are geographically absurd.
That kind of realignment also creates headaches for athletes in non-revenue sports, who are the ones trying to squeeze into middle seats on cross-country flights for games that are often a long way from home.
The answer, at least in this view, is not more sprawling super-conference life. It is a return to regional roots. Fans are less bothered by transfer movement and large paychecks than they are by schedules full of opponents with little or no shared history.
The PCSA would block the creation of a “super league,” but a different approach might be needed if college sports are ever going to be truly regional again. One idea is to split football off from everything else and put it into its own super league, using a promotion/relegation setup with 10-team tiers based on results over the last three or four seasons. The top teams in each tier would make a 16-team playoff, the bottom teams would move down, and winning would determine your place in the hierarchy.
Bay Area News Group colleague Jon Wilner made a similar prediction last week: “When football breaks off, the college sports industry will reform along regional lines.”
That would mean a return to something like the old map in other sports, with USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Arizona, ASU, Oregon and Washington together again. Oregon State and Washington State, having already been burned once, probably would not be eager to join.
The larger point is simple enough. Neighborhood and regional rivalries make college sports better. A lot of people didn’t realize how much they had until those matchups started disappearing.
The Pac-12 name may not be salvageable. One possible replacement would be the Pacific Coast Conference, a nod to the league formed in 1915 that included many of these schools. But that conference collapsed in 1959 amid scandal, so maybe that is not the cleanest option.
Still, if someone has a better name for a new alignment built around those legacy schools, the invitation is open. Maybe somebody with influence will be listening.
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