For the sake of the traditions America loves most — no more punting on this issue.
Since the House v. NCAA settlement enabling colleges to directly pay their student-athletes took effect last July, there has long been a sense of doom in the discourse surrounding collegiate athletics: that it’s lost a certain magic in the chaos of litigation, ballooning program spending, disparate NIL rules across the nation, and absurdly high turnover of coaches and athletes, all under the lingering question of what, exactly, are student-athletes entitled to?
Stakeholders have turned to federal leadership as a last resort for some stability. Senators Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) have responded with new legislation aimed at reducing the havoc embroiling the NCAA as it navigates the current compensation landscape and, just as importantly, preserving the soul of American collegiate athletics.
No one is arguing anymore that student-athletes shouldn’t seek compensation for the value they create for universities through their name, image, and likeness — especially in top football and basketball programs, which generate millions of dollars in revenue for their schools. Though a large concern for lawmakers is correcting the legal chaos within the college sports environment, the new, nakedly transactional feature of the landscape has shown that significant concern lies in protecting the vestigial characteristics of the collegiate sports mythos at the beating heart of America: loyalty to long-loved traditions and teams, fair competition and the thrill of the underdog story, the struggle for glory borne out of love for the game and one’s teammates, the inspiration of the striving and camaraderie that lifts the hearts of millions of fans and players alike. Above all, there’s a stubborn hope that athletics done right ultimately shapes young people in a way that makes them valuable, principled citizens. It feels, from Washington to stadiums across the country, that these basic elements are being lost.
The fight is also about maintaining the true purpose of a university education, and keeping it from becoming a transactional one that operates as a host for money-making, minor-league football and basketball. The purpose is one that should remain devoted to the cultivation of a person’s full potential through the development of the intellect and character, to which athletics is a fruitful supplement. Many hold that the appreciation for these things is slipping away, with these actual functions themselves sliding off into frivolity as well.
To be fair, this is not all true. The vast majority of universities still uphold most of their programs that work at a deficit: all non-revenue programs, Olympic sports, and most women’s teams, proving that there is high value to these activities far outside of the revenue they could generate. And the rare bipartisanship and consensus over the issue is heartening. You’d be hard-pressed to find a position that unites President Trump, Democrats, Republicans, legendary college coaches, conference heads, fans, players, and even stray labor activists. It shows that preserving the integrity and aesthetic of one of America’s favorite cultural monuments is worthwhile. A healthy society cares for such things. Good. It’s now a question of whether regulatory incentives are enough to restore a missing appreciation of sports’ value beyond revenue and fame, especially in behemoth money-makers like large football and basketball programs.
The Protect College Sports Act is a third legislative attempt to accomplish this, after its predecessors have whimpered out of consideration in the past. The act has been refined to be more politically palatable (for instance — after the SCORE Act failed to gain any traction in the House, in part for categorically denying that student-athletes were employees, the PCSA stays explicitly neutral on employment status). It’s likely that it would succeed in facilitating a cultural change in the NCAA’s revenue sports, football and basketball, for how it cleverly addresses certain warped incentives.
One of the most pressing concerns is the combination of unlimited transfers within what is effectively the environment of a bidding war. Athletes can transfer as many times as they want with little to no effect on eligibility, provided they transfer within a specific window. All the while, schools can woo players with up to millions of dollars in money from the school itself or external boosters and collectives, oftentimes circumventing the 22 percent revenue cap instituted by the House settlement due to loose NCAA rules. The result is a ludicrously high roster turnover every offseason as players chase each ever-more-lucrative opportunity, essentially a hyper-incentivization of disloyalty. This degrades the ability of any team to effectively focus on player development or establish an authentic culture anchored in the university. The act limits athletes to one consequence-free transfer during their five years of eligibility, and it cracks down on any compensation strategy that would allow for circumventing the cap. The provision preserves athlete mobility while maintaining some reasonable restraints to reduce recruiting chaos.
In testimony supporting the act on Wednesday, Nick Saban eloquently summarized the concern at hand. “I have seen players come into a program needing structure, discipline, coaching, academic support, and accountability. I have seen them leave with a degree, a career, a family, and a better chance to be successful in life. That is what college athletics is supposed to be about. It is not just about who wins on Saturday. For me and many of my colleagues, it was about developing young people.” How can this happen if a coach has to re-recruit his players every off-season?
It also maintains opportunities for less wealthy programs to succeed, which, even if such a result arrives through a bit of market manipulation, is much more appealing for the specific purpose served by collegiate sports. No one wants a dreadfully boring future where the athletic programs with all the money stay good forever, and the ones with less cash are never anything but mediocre. Preserving the revenue cap slows the rising costs of athletic programs that ballooned as winning the financial arms race started to become the only way to win games, which then began to turn universities with successful programs into minor-league sports operations rather than institutions with a genuine educational mission. Not to mention, this disincentivizes schools from diverting money away from less lucrative sports teams toward the revenue generators, more solidly securing the future of the non-revenue Olympic sports whose participants make up 75 percent of the Olympic team roster.
All of this is accomplished by granting the NCAA an anti-trust exemption, giving it the broad authority to enforce these regulations without being dismantled by constant anti-trust litigation, as the environment has been as of late.
There are about 2,200 roster spots in the NFL and about 16,000 current Division I football players. Similar numbers apply for collegiate basketball players. And the likelihood of a professional sports career lessens even more with esoteric sports. Most will not play professional football, which is why we can’t forget the academic and developmental purpose of the student-athlete life in this new, nakedly transactional environment. The short-term money offered by schools and NIL opportunities is lucrative, but illusory. People will need skills and virtues that serve them and society at large beyond the gridiron or the basketball court. Perhaps non-revenue sports are lucky not to have such a distraction from this mission, and are the most familiar with the authentic camaraderie, love for tradition, and desire for greatness that can be found outside of the noisy exaltation of revenue.
For the sake of the traditions America loves most — no more punting on this issue.