This expert thinks that Protect College Sports Act will bring some stability for schools, athletes

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote soon on a measure known as the Protect College Sports Act. Among many other provisions, the bill would limit the number of times student-athletes could transfer from one school to another. It would also address name, image, and likeness, or NIL, payments that athletes can get, and generally prevent conferences from cutting the number of varsity or Olympic sports a school in that conference has to offer.

There are passionate arguments on both sides of this debate as some observers worry about the future of college sports. To delve into some of them, The Show spoke with Victoria Jackson, an associate clinical professor of history at ASU and co-director of the Great Game Lab there. And the conversation started with what she thinks about the bill.

Full conversation

VICTORIA JACKSON: Just the existence of this bill at all is fascinating to me. It’s a bipartisan bill in a moment of political polarization. It’s a reflection of the success of athlete activism to get better treatment and rights over the past 15 years. And now it for me represents an awareness that we need better policymaking to like deal with the reality of those improved benefits and rights, and then also just kind of chart the course forward for the entirety of the college sports enterprise from here on out.

MARK BRODIE: So supporters of this bill have been referring to sort of the chaos of college athletics in terms of, you know, how much some of the student-athletes can get paid and the transfer portal, you know, people leaving and coming and going and being recruited every which way. Do you get the sense that the provisions in this bill would put an end to that to the extent that that is desirable?

VICTORIA JACKSON: Well, it’s funny because critics will say it’s always been chaos, it’s always been wild, but now that the athletes are enjoying some of the fruits of the chaos and the extravagant spending, like now we have to put mechanisms of restraint in place.

But I do think to a certain degree, and I do also think this opens the door for maybe potential future mechanisms of restraint when it comes to coaches’ salaries or buyouts or whatever else, like yeah, we do need some mechanisms of restraint. This is a distinctive enterprise. It’s elite — some would say professional — sports being operated by institutions of higher education. It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, and so I think we need to acknowledge that.

That said, there has been a long-running desire by the NCAA and member institutions to gain some antitrust protections, and this is the primary goal from an NCAA perspective. And so there, they’re limited, but there are some major antitrust protections that are part of the bill.

MARK BRODIE: So when you talk about the professionalization, I mean, in a lot of ways, one of the things that folks who are not happy with the way the current system works is that, you know, college football and college basketball coaches basically build a new roster from scratch every single year, and players and student-athletes are going to the school where they will make the most money. It’s very much like a professional league like the NBA or the NFL. Is that a problem, do you think? Like, is that something that needs to be reined in somewhat?

VICTORIA JACKSON: Well, two of the main kind of priorities of these antitrust protections are around athletes’ compensation and also their mobility, so exactly what you’re talking about. The eligibility piece, the NCAA really wants to be able to put into place rules that are age-based eligibility, so that an athlete’s clock starts, you know, after their 19th birthday, the beginning of the academic year following that. And no matter what, that’s when your clock starts.

The second is this mobility issue, which is that because there were so many kind of antitrust challenges to the ability of athletes to transfer, the transfer rules just kind of got lifted. And, you know, we have athletes who’ve competed across four years at four different institutions. And so, you know, coaches can do that, but more chaos comes from the perspective of people trying to operate this industry when it’s the athletes doing that. So it would place a one-year, one-time transfer rule in place, with exceptions.

MARK BRODIE: So is that a good thing, do you think, those kinds of things in terms of limiting mobility and, you know, the amount of time that people can transfer and sort of that age window that you talked about?

VICTORIA JACKSON: You know, I am somebody who is on the side of athletes’ rights, but I do think policy by antitrust, and also just the ability to continually go to the courts and disrupt the rules, isn’t good policy. And so I do think we need some mechanisms of restraint again, if further on down the road, there are additional ones that aren’t just focused on athletes, but other component parts of this business that I do believe is an unsustainable business model.

MARK BRODIE: Well, when you talk about getting the courts involved, I mean, we saw just earlier this year with, you know, rulings that allowed players, football players who left college, signed contracts with NFL teams, then be allowed to come back and play for college, it just seems like there’s so much uncertainty that, you know, while maybe isn’t great for the industry, to an extent, it’s probably not great for the student-athletes either, right?

VICTORIA JACKSON: Well, I think that that is such a good example to showcase where we are in the year 2026 with college sports, because the line has collapsed between amateur and professional.

MARK BRODIE: So one of the other things I want to ask you about with this particular bill is its impact on Olympic sports, because I know this is something near and dear to your heart as a former Olympic sport participant. The supporters, again, are saying this will be good for, you know, for sports like swimming and diving, track and field, things like that. Do you see it that way?

VICTORIA JACKSON: This is another piece of this that I just love, because it’s a window into where we are. Because first women’s sports, and then Olympic sports, were used as this like protective shield in the past when anytime there was legislation coming forward, it was about athletes’ rights. And well, we can’t, or, you know, in the courts, too, “We can’t give more to football players, because then women’s sports will die. We can’t give more to football players, because then Team USA will no longer be on top of the medal table.”

And so what I love about where we’re at is that we’re aware of this industry professionalizing, but we’re putting mechanisms and structures in place to ensure that these institutions of higher education will continue to maintain women’s and Olympic sports at the levels, scholarship-wise and roster spot-wise, as they were in the 2024–2025 academic year.

And, you know, we have proponents of this bill saying, “If it doesn’t pass, women’s and Olympic sports will die.” We have critics of this bill that say, “It will kill women’s and Olympic sports.” In my takeaway is that we’ve gotten to a point where everyone understands we have to preserve and work to preserve women’s and Olympic sports. So I think — I think we did it. Like, everybody gets it now, and I do think, in good faith, everybody is really concerned about this. And at the level of the local institution, I don’t think an athletic director is going to be making any cuts anytime soon, as well, anywhere in the country.

MARK BRODIE: So let’s assume this bill passes, both the Senate and the House, and the president signs it. What do you think the ultimate impact on college athletics will be?

VICTORIA JACKSON: I don’t think it will have that big of an impact.

MARK BRODIE: Really?

VICTORIA JACKSON: No. I think that we’ll continue to see athletes being able to make money from third parties and NIL deals. I think we’ll see an expansion of revenue sharing. This bill actually does that. It goes beyond the cap placed by the House settlement for the total amount being shared with athletes, but it also has a provision, which again, I think is really good, that you can go above the cap as high as $5 million if that money is going to athletes in women’s and Olympic sports.

So I do think it’ll bring some stability. I don’t think athletes will experience unnecessary restraints on their ability to make money, on their eligibility, on their mobility. I don’t have a Doomsday opinion of this bill.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Victoria Jackson, an associate clinical professor of history at ASU and co-director of ASU’s Great Game Lab. Victoria, it was great to talk to you. Thank you.

VICTORIA JACKSON: Yeah, thank you, Mark.