The U.S. Senate has passed a bill to overhaul college sports, granting the NCAA a limited exemption from U.S. antitrust laws and creating federal law to supersede state regulations on Name, Image and Likeness (NIL).
The Protect College Sports Act allows the NCAA to limit student-athlete transfers to one, with further transfers resulting in a penalty. It also allows the reinstatement of the five-year eligibility rule, which gives college athletes five consecutive years to play five seasons.
It caps how much money schools can spend on players at $49 million.
The bill has bipartisan support, including from the NCAA, UConn Men’s Basketball Coach Dan Hurley, and President Donald Trump.
However, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) isn't a fan.
In a speech before the bill was voted on, Murphy said the legislation doesn’t give students enough agency. He cited a unanimous Supreme Court decision from 2021 ruling that the NCAA operated as a monopoly and was subject to antitrust laws.
“We are taking a system that the Supreme Court said could not persist under our law, and we are changing the law to allow that illegal system to persist,” Murphy said.
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) also voted against the bill.
Athletes and coaches have long called for reform to the college sports system. However, the landscape changed significantly after student-athletes were granted the right to profit off of their NIL in 2021. Calls for reform have grown louder since.
Among Murphy’s criticisms of the bill are a lack of spending caps on coaches and facilities.
“This bill only caps the money going to the players,” Murphy said. “[It] does nothing to cap the money going to the coaches, does nothing to stop the continued billions of dollars going in to feed this facility's arms race.”
Seventy-two senators voted in support, with 22 against. It’s headed to the House, which is out until after the November election.
