The Protect College Sports Act is about to take a big step forward to becoming a law.
After months of buildup, the U.S. Senate is set to vote Monday afternoon on final passage of the bipartisan bill that would regulate college sports and lock the House v. NCAA settlement into federal law.
Senators are scheduled to start voting at 4:30 p.m. The expectation is that the bill clears the chamber easily. Earlier procedural votes drew support from more than 70 senators, and nothing has changed to suggest the final tally will look much different.
If it passes, the bill heads to the House, where the path gets a lot less predictable. Lawmakers there are already signaling they want changes, and the timing is another hurdle. The House isn’t expected to return to session until after the midterm elections in November, which means any movement on the bill will have to wait.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Sports Illustrated he believes House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will call representatives back from its recess ahead of the November midterm elections to vote on the PCSA.
No official word on that has been announced and Cruz hasn’t exactly been the best prognosticator of the bill’s timeline. So, file that under “believe it when you see it.”
There are still some procedural votes before the bill moves to the final vote. Several amendments still need to be voted on, including one from Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) that would cap head coaches’ salaries at $5 million.
This writer’s position on the PCSA is well-documented.
It’s a bad bill designed to restore power to those responsible for creating the current landscape we see today. The bill will strip away the power players gained by limiting their earning ability and movement. It gives the NCAA the power its been losing in courtrooms for six years now.
And all of this is without any meaningful input from players because College Sports Inc. doesn’t even want to try and bargain with them. It wants the old way of dictating the terms and conditions for playing college sports. Bargaining would mean acknowledging athletes as more than just pawns to go out, risk serious physical damage so the NCAA and conferences can fatten their wallets.
Athletes will still get paid, of course. That toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube, but college sports leaders have been crying crocodile tears for years about how smaller sports are in danger of dying because of the rising costs of bigger sports like football and basketball.
But those arguments are as believable as ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit saying two weeks ago that he did not know anything about Cruz’s political leanings. Or that he doesn’t “get into” or “follow” politics.
What Herbstreit said to the media on the Friday before Ole Miss and LSU faced off in Oxford is just an example of the shameless things being said to get this bill passed.
But, hey, it’s working right? That’s all that matters to College Sports Inc.
The PCSA isn’t about saving college sports. It’s about saving the people who ran college sports into the ground. It’s about clawing back control from athletes who finally had leverage. It’s about protecting the same leaders who spent decades were amateurs while building an industry worth billions.
This bill is a bailout for the old guard. It’s a lifeline for the NCAA. It’s a reset button for the people who lost in court, lost in public opinion and lost any moral high ground they once claimed.
Athletes didn’t break college sports. The “adults” did. And now the people who benefited from the old system are sprinting to Congress to get back what they lost.
If the PCSA passes, they’ll get it.
And athletes, the ones who make the whole industry possible, will be told once again to sit down, stay quiet and be grateful for whatever scraps the system decides to hand them.
That’s what this bill is. That’s what this fight is. And that’s why the people pushing it are working so hard to pretend it’s anything else.
