Matt Perrault gives his analysis of the Protect College Sports Act shows it reshapes NCAA operations, sets spending limits, and faces enforcement hurdles.
Video Transcript
This is an interesting look at the way that politicians feel they can get involved to save college sports.
Advertisement
This is the Protect College Sports Act.
The Big Ten and the SEC were not really supportive of it.
They looked like they wanted to get away from it, but politicians can strong arm people in sports, and it looks like it worked.
There was a pretty quick about-face in the 11th hour that sent this landmark legislation to the Senate floor for a vote coming up next week.
What does this thing do?
Okay, here’s the bill.
It looks a lot like the old rules, but it’s under the new current environment of NIL.
Schools could spend about 49 million on athletes, a $29.3 million base cap plus a retention pool to keep their players.
Advertisement
So they can go out and spend 21 million on new players, and they can pay their current players $22.5 million, plus 5 million for women’s sports and non-revenue sports.
That’s a 129% increase to what is currently being spent at the moment.
Two, the bill includes deals tied to schools and associated partners like sponsors, apparel brands, and multimedia right groups to prevent cap circumvention.
This is the problem.
How in the world do you police this?
Because this looks a lot like the old stuff, right?
Under the table bill, under the table payments will be happening like crazy from people taking things off the table, off the record, and not being tracked or reported.
Advertisement
Number three, transfers and eligibility would give the NCAA and the conferences a limited antitrust exemption, restore the one-time transfer exemption, which is awesome.
If you transfer more than once, you gotta sit.
Standardize five-year eligibility, I like that, and ban pros from returning to college.
I like that as well.
And then number four, for comfort expansion, power conferences could only have 19 schools.
Interesting, ’cause 20 is what most people think we’re gonna go to.
Teams switching power leagues would have to operate independently for five years, so we would basically stop the current run on expansion.
Advertisement
Does this fix college sports?
No.
No.
But it’s a start.
I mean, it’s something.
It’s the parameters.
It gives us a framework to at least get us into the right frame of mind as to how do we fix, quote-unquote, college sports.
I don’t love that politicians are involved, but it felt like college sports needed somebody to pay attention.
They weren’t gonna do a czar, so you needed somebody to step in and say, “Hey, these are state-run institutions.
These are people who have state-run You know, you’re taking state funds, federal funds.
You guys are still academic institutions.
Okay?
Advertisement
You’re tied to these universities, and these universities need money from the government to do a variety of things.
So if you keep on playing this game, you guys are not going to be able to do anything that we want you to do.”
And this is the problem.
How do you police it?
They’ll self-report, right?
That’s the problem.
It feels like, okay, we’re all on board that we gotta fix this, right?
We’re all on board that we’re trying to create a new environment, a different environment.
But it is extraordinarily frustrating to think that schools are gonna abide by this and no one’s gonna cheat.
Advertisement
You essentially This is the Big Ten’s argument, right?
Like, why has the Big Ten been so dominant?
Because the SEC can’t cheat anymore.
And so for a long time, the SEC could pay their players, and the Big Ten people didn’t pay them as much, so players went to SEC schools.
I’m not saying that’s true, I’m just saying that was the, that’s the line.
And thus, the, the players can be paid across the board, really this, you know, this Wild, Wild West.
There is no parameter.
There’s no, no cap on what you can spend on a player.
So the Big Ten folks can pay and pay and pay, just like the SEC can pay and pay and pay, and look what happened.
Advertisement
The Big Ten won back to back to back championships.
I don’t know.
The SEC goes back to domination again.
If this passes, it should, and goes into effect, if the SEC all of a sudden rears back, maybe there was something to that, and maybe the SEC is not going to be beholden to this.
I just don’t think schools can be trusted not to break the rules in order to win.
The genie is already out of the You know, already out.
I’m not sure how you come back and I’m not sure how you fix this.
I’m just not so I mean, to me, I think most of this stuff is good.
I just don’t know how you do number two.
Advertisement
How do you fix number two?
I don’t know.
I, I don’t, I don’t understand how you fix that.
Deals with partners and sponsors and apparel groups and multimedia right groups.
I, I mean, if I’m someone who operates a large company in Florida and I wanna pay you know, college players, I, I don’t know.
I, I, I, I feel like it’s very difficult to police that.
So I think in theory, it looks like it’s better than nothing, but I’m not sure it changes or fixes college sports.
I’m not, I’m not sure it protects college sports the way they think it’s going to.
I hope it does.
Advertisement
I hope that there’s some real teeth, that if you get caught cheating, there’s a real significant penalty for it.
I haven’t seen that yet as to what happens if you don’t follow the rules.
That would need to be established.
And then who is investigating and who is implementing?
