Salary caps, player unions, roster spots: What will the Protect College Sports Act do?

The U.S. Senate is planning to vote in the coming days on a bill that would significantly shape the future of college sports. The Protect College Sports Act addresses myriad topics that are contributing to an unstable and often messy period for the college sports industry as it transitions to a more professional model for its biggest schools and most popular sports. The bill is the result of more than a half-decade of steady lobbying from the NCAA, conferences, their schools and other advocacy groups. It will be the first bill on this topic to make it to a full Senate vote, and if approved would move on to debate in the House of Representatives, where it could change. In the past two weeks, lawmakers and others have made a major push to try to draw attention to the bill. Supporters have made bold claims that the treasured American institution of college sports will be irreparably harmed if Congress doesn't act. Opponents say the bill is an attempt to restore authority to a set of power brokers who have a long history of exploiting athletes. Both sides have dabbled in bad sports analogies, hyperbolic warnings and misleading statements. As a crucial vote approaches, let's sort the truths from the myths in some of the public statements on the issue and add context to how the college sports system currently works and what the Protect College Sports Act would actually do to change it. "This is about reining in the bad practices that are happening in college sports today, the runaway costs... [and] the runaway arms race in sports spending." -- Sen. Maria Cantwell (D), co-author of the PCSA The PCSA increases the amount of money schools can spend on direct payments to their players by $27.5 million, more than doubling the current $21.5-million spending cap. The bill does not include any provision that would require or encourage athletic departments to spend less money. The bill does try to crack down on the common practice among wealthy teams of funneling "above-the-cap" money to their players by arranging endorsement deals that serve as de facto added payroll. Cantwell argues that a law that creates a hard cap on player payments will help stop the spending race. The college sports industry tried to install a hard cap last June through the House Settlement, a deal that ended a series of antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA and its power conferences and established new rules about how athletes are paid. The leagues built a new enforcement group called the College Sports Commission to make sure the name, image and likeness deals athletes sign with groups other than their schools are legitimate endorsements. So far the CSC has been unsuccessful because rich teams and boosters have not committed to following the rules they helped to negotiate in the House Settlement. Despite a cap of $21.5 million this year, roughly 30 football teams have a payroll of $30 million or more, according to industry sources that help facilitate player payments. About half of those teams have payrolls that exceed $40 million. "There would have been a lot of criticism if that number would have been just at the House Settlement number," Sen. Eric Schmitt, one of the bill's co-sponsors, told ESPN when asked about the large increase in the spending cap. "Are you going to see a lot of Group of 6 schools hit that number? Maybe not right away. But you've got a chance now with a structured deal so this doesn't continue to spiral. If the PCSA becomes law, the CSC would have more legal backing to be able to enforce those rules. Schools that circumvent the cap would risk violating federal law. However, it's not clear if that increased power will be enough to stop the current methods for circumventing the cap, nor does it stop teams and their funders from potentially finding new loopholes to exploit. Even if a new law does successfully cap direct payments to players, college sports programs have a long history of devising creative ways to spend money on things like facility upgrades or increased support staff to get an advantage over their rivals in recruiting. In a report published last week, Cantwell shared that from 2005 to 2023 (before schools began paying players directly) the college sports arms race caused increases of 322% in recruiting costs, 300% in sports equipment and "a whopping 370%" in coaching salaries. The PCSA makes no effort to tamp down those costs or dissuade schools from continuing to spend beyond their means in any of those expense categories. The bill does create a commission that is tasked with studying "whether any intercollegiate sport should be subject to spending or cost limitations." Cantwell did not respond directly to questions about why the bill made no effort to cap any athletics spending other than money directly flowing to players. "If we don't act, we will see 30 to 50 competitive football programs in this country and the remainder of the programs go under." -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R), co-author of the PCSA The authors of the PCSA have said they set out to maintain the current "big tent" format of FBS-level football by slowing conference realignment and providing an opportunity for multiple conferences to negotiate future TV rights deals as a group, a change that would likely increase the money flowing to those schools. The bill prevents Power 4 conferences from growing beyond a total of 19 teams. The Big Ten currently has 18 teams. The SEC has 16. It would also force any school wanting to jump from one Power 4 conference to another to spend three years as an independent before joining the new league -- although that waiting period would no longer apply after 2031. These provisions were designed to keep the Big Ten and SEC -- both of which have a sizable financial advantage over other conferences -- from merging and creating a new "super league" that would create a permanent divide between them and the roughly 100 other FBS teams. After a June hearing on the bill, Cantwell said "we're not going to let the most powerful and richest conferences dictate to the rest of America what's going to happen to 500,000 athletes." However, during the next two months, the Big Ten and SEC withheld their support until lawmakers doubled the salary cap, giving their schools a path to maintaining their significant financial advantage. The current cap limit ($21.5 million) was designed so that schools like West Virginia and Wake Forest could have a chance to build their roster with roughly the same spending power as Ohio State and Texas. So far, it has not been successful. According to industry sources, the richest programs are spending tens of millions more than other Power 4 schools. That new cap more realistically meets the market for the couple dozen teams at the rich end of the spectrum who are already spending at least $30 million on just their football payroll. Other teams will likely struggle to find ways to keep pace in recruiting. Rather than leveling the playing field, which was what most college sports officials have repeatedly asked Congress to do, the new cap could end up cementing the gap between the haves and the have-mores with a federal law. Cruz declined multiple requests for an interview from ESPN for this story. The PCSA's potential impact on future conference affiliations and TV rights deals has media companies -- including ESPN, Fox Sports and their parent companies -- heavily invested in the outcome. Disney, along with companies such as Paramount Skydance, parent of CBS, reported in financial documents that they paid for lobbying on college sports legislation. And both ESPN chairman James Pitaro and Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks were among participants (others included ESPN football commentators Nick Saban and Tim Tebow) in part of a presidential advisory committee that formed after President Donald Trump's "Saving College Sports" roundtable. Neither ESPN nor Fox Sports have staked public positions on the PCSA, though both have multibillion-dollar deals with conferences -- ESPN with the SEC and Fox Sports with the Big Ten -- that support it. "We are ecstatic that the players are getting paid; that's not the issue. The issue is [some players are] going to a separate school every year and playing against student-athletes who are 27, 28 years old." -- Craig Robinson, executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, which supports the bill The PCSA directly addresses two of the most visible issues roiling coaches and fans in recent years: the increase in players transferring schools and the NCAA's inability to enforce eligibility rules. The bill would allow athletes to transfer once during their career without having to miss a season, restoring an old NCAA rule that was struck down by legal challenges. The bill also limits athletes to a five-year window to play college sports, which begins the year they turn 19 or the year they finish high school. Those eligibility requirements are identical to a new rule adopted by the NCAA in June. While several outgoing seniors have challenged part of the eligibility rules in lawsuits this summer, so far no one has raised a legal challenge to the new age-based limits. If the PCSA becomes law, the NCAA would have a stronger case to keep athletes in their late 20s out of college sports if any older players were to file lawsuits. Oluchi Okananwa, a Maryland basketball player and one of the leaders of a group working to unionize college athletes, said in a news conference last week that players are in favor of more structure. However, Okananwa believes those rules should be established through a collective bargaining agreement with players rather than dictated by Congress. Some senators who oppose the PCSA, such as Alabama's Tommy Tuberville, agree with the transfer and eligibility parts of the bill but believe that the federal government's intervention in college sports should stop there. "The one group that doesn't like this are the rich sports agents who wear Gucci suits and alligator shoes. They may not like it because there are no rules for agents right now. An agent can charge 30% on an 18-year-old. That is nuts." -- Sen. Eric Schmitt (R), co-sponsor of the PCSA College sports agents are largely unregulated, and there have been several reported examples of agents taking large double-digit percentage cuts of an athlete's earnings or finding other ways to take advantage of young players and their families. The PCSA would limit agent fees to a maximum of 5% of a player's endorsement contract. NFL and NBA agents typically receive 5% or less of a player's contract with his team. However, it's not usual for marketing groups that help pro players find legitimate endorsement deals to charge fees of 15-20%. The PCSA does not distinguish between regular endorsement deals and contracts between players and schools. That's because the contracts players sign with schools are technically written as endorsement deals because schools are unwilling to acknowledge on paper that they are paying athletes to play. "The PCSA would further insulate these institutions from accountability while denying athletes one of the most fundamental rights workers have: the right to organize and collectively bargain." -- Meghann Burke, Executive Director of the National Women's Soccer League Players Association The PCSA states that it remains neutral on whether college athletes can be classified as school employees and if athletes should have the right to unionize and collectively bargain in the future. If it becomes law, the bill will provide schools and conferences with many of the protections that pro sports leagues only obtain through collective bargaining and therefore decrease the leverage players have in a future negotiation. Several House Republicans have remained steadfast in the past months that they believe a college sports bill should include specific language that prohibits college athletes from becoming school employees. If the PCSA passes through the Senate, the House could add amendments that impact ongoing efforts to unionize college athletes. "There is going to be a moment where the United States is standing at the Olympics, and we're not winning gold or silver or bronze because we're not going to have the athletes. Because the [collegiate] system will have collapsed." -- Cantwell College sports officials, Olympic leaders and politicians have all said the training future Olympians receive by playing college sports is essential to America's success on the international stage. Most of those Olympic sports are funded on college campuses thanks to the surplus revenue from football programs. Those leaders fear that schools will shutter their Olympic sports teams to pay for the increased costs of football payrolls. The PCSA includes a measure that would prohibit schools from eliminating their Olympic sports teams for the next nine years. At the 2024 Summer Olympics, 75% of U.S. athletes played college sports, according to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. At the 2026 Winter Olympics, that number was roughly 40%. Among the 33 medals the U.S. took home from Milan, 25 were won by athletes who have never competed in the NCAA. The NCAA system trains more foreign Olympians than U.S. Olympians. Of the more than 1,000 NCAA athletes (current, former and incoming) the association reported competed in Paris, roughly 600 of them competed for countries other than the United States. The United States is one of the few (if not the only) major Olympic competitors that does not provide significant federal funding for its Olympic training program. That means the burden of paying for the national pride and diplomatic benefits that come with Olympic medals falls heavily on the money generated by 18- to 24-year-old college football players who don't get to choose how it's spent. "If the Senate doesn't act, hundreds of thousands of students will see their roster spots go away and their scholarships go away." -- Cruz The PCSA provision requiring schools to maintain roster spots and scholarships for the next nine years is intended to address fears that schools will cut nonrevenue and Olympic sports or reduce the support those teams receive so they can spend more money on football now that athletes are making money. There is no current evidence that suggests opportunities will decrease in the absence of a new law. "Whether you think the bill is perfect or not, I've not talked to anybody who believes the arms race on its current trajectory would mean more opportunities for more sports down the road," Schmitt told ESPN. The arms race, as Cantwell pointed out in her report last week, has been steadily escalating for the last two decades. When athletes started earning NIL money in 2021, many college sports administrators warned that more money flowing to football players would inevitably lead to women's sports and nonrevenue sports disappearing. So far, that has not been the case. Since 2021, the number of teams and roster spots has actually increased. In that time, the number of teams at Division I schools has grown by 151, according to the NCAA. Roster spots have risen from 184,222 to 202,353. Roster spots at Division II and Division III schools have also increased, but those programs are not impacted by the changing economics of paying players. For Cruz's claim that "hundreds of thousands" of roster spots would vanish to come true, nearly every Division I school would have to cut its entire athletic department.