The Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences agreed Friday night to support a Senate bill that seeks to regulate college sports, ending a breakneck week of negotiations and pulling the bipartisan measure out of what looked like a certain death spiral.<\/p>\n
School presidents from both conferences voted to back the bill after receiving last-minute concessions over language regarding third-party name-image-likeness deals and the so-called \u201cassociated entities\u201d that often broker those arrangements between players and schools. <\/p>\n
More details need to be worked out, but the headline is that the bill still has a chance to earn the 60 votes it needs to halt debate and head to an up-or-down vote before the Senate heads for summer break next Friday. <\/p>\n
The summer recess is increasingly looking like an intractable deadline for the Protect College Sports Act, a bipartisan effort headed by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. <\/p>\n
After the conferences, which had balked at large sections of the bill, put out a short release announcing they supported the act \u201cas currently drafted,\u201d Cruz put out a short statement on social media thanking the leagues and saying: \u201cLet’s save college sports.\u201d And Cantwell said: \u201cGood. Now progress can be made in protecting women and Olympic athletes and moving the legislation closer to the President\u2019s desk.\u201d<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump, who has also been seeking fixes<\/a> for an industry that now pays its players millions, got involved late Thursday, which helped push the parties back to the negotiating table.<\/p>\n Cody Campbell<\/a>, the Texas Tech regent who has played a big role in shaping this policy, called the SEC and Big Ten support \u201c a major breakthrough<\/a> that moves us closer to a Senate vote \u2014 and a better future\u201d for college sports.<\/p>\n Increased salary cap, new language entice holdout leagues<\/p>\n The most groundbreaking part of the reworked deal is the $27.5 million that schools would be allotted<\/a> to retain players, in addition to the $21.3 million cap that already exists. <\/p>\n It could represent a major reworking of the House settlement \u2014 the groundbreaking agreement that governs paying players. The idea is that the extra money will take the place of payments from \u201cassociated entities\u201d that were allowed above and beyond the $21.3 million cap. It was those payments that, many schools complained, obliterated any idea of a cap or controlled cost. <\/p>\n The SEC and Big Ten sought stronger language in the bill to guarantee that any third-party deals are truly outside deals and not coming from the schools\u2019 multimedia-rights partners, which currently arrange the majority of those deals.<\/p>\n Among the questions still unanswered are whether the new cap will comport with the House settlement, which had very specific instructions about the hard cap (22% of a certain part of athletic department revenues, which equals $21.3 million this season).<\/p>\n Also, what would happen to the College Sports Commission, the main NIL enforcement arm that spends the bulk of its time analyzing third-party NIL deals that would be greatly reduced under this arrangement? <\/p>\n Even with a victory, a long road remains for bill<\/p>\n Even with Friday night\u2019s victory, the bill has a long road ahead. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has been a staunch opponent of the bill since the beginning. Before the latest compromise, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said that \u201cas written today,\u201d the act \u201ccreates chaos and eliminates opportunity for student-athletes.\u201d <\/p>\n Whether the SEC\u2019s approval is enough to get those senators and others from SEC states on board is one issue. If the bill clears the Senate, it would still then need to pass the narrowly divided House, which flailed on another college bill called the SCORE Act, for more than a year. <\/p>\n There\u2019s also the matter of whether smaller conferences, long in favor of the bill, would remain so now that their bigger competition is being allowed to directly pay players more than double what was previously allowed.<\/p>\n Compromise comes on a day where NCAA loses two more court rulings<\/p>\n Almost everyone involved in college sports agrees that the status quo isn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n The news broke only hours after the NCAA lost a pair of key court cases<\/a> involving its new rule that would give most Division I athletes five years to complete five seasons of eligibility. <\/p>\n Using those losses as another chance to urge for passage of the bill, NCAA President Charlie Baker said \u201cIt is long past time leaders across college sports call for the immediate passage of the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act.\u201d<\/p>\n Two-time national champion hoops coach Dan Hurley of UConn used social media to outline<\/a> the stakes in more colorful terms: \u201cSomebody please come and fix College Sports. It\u2019s a complete (expletive) show,\u201d he said, using an emoji where the expletive would go.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n