The PCSA Should Be DOA: Congress Should Not Legalize the NCAA’s Broken Model

The Protect College Sports Act is not reform. It is a last ditch power grab dressed up as stability, pushed by leaders who keep warning that college sports is on the brink of collapse while ratings, revenues and their own compensation packages hit record highs.

Passing the PCSA would be a historic and inequitable first: Congress granting competing institutions the power to collude against one group of Americans and suppress their rights. College sports, under the NCAA, already generate more revenue than most major professional leagues in the US, including the NBA, the MLB and the NHL. However, professional sports leagues do not have the unilateral right to impose salary caps, player movement restrictions or agency regulations because it violates the Sherman Antitrust Act. Those restrictions exist because the athletes are independently represented by their respective players associations, providing them with an organized, self governed structure to negotiate the rules and restrictions they believe are in the best interest of the industry they drive. This independent representation also gives them a mechanism with the power to enforce the agreement. College sports leaders are asking Congress for the benefits of that model while dodging and refusing the process that makes it lawful.

A serial antitrust violator is now begging Congress for a federal antitrust exemption. The same system that has repeatedly landed in court because its business model violates the law wants Congress to legalize that model at the expense of college athletes: young men and women who carry full course loads, prepare for careers beyond sports, represent their universities and compete at one of the highest levels in the world. 

In its latest form, the bill’s headline provisions distract from its core impact: granting the NCAA, conferences and schools an unprecedented legal shield for the same control they unlawfully exercised for decades. Congress should fear the extent of abuse and manipulation that will happen when that unjust control is federally sanctioned. To be clear, basic athlete protections, many of which schools already provide and some of which expire under this bill, are not a fair trade for a permanent antitrust exemption.

In a legal brief in the Sorsby v. NCAA case this May, the NCAA described itself as a “major sports organization.” However when athletes protect and assert their rights, the NCAA retreats behind its self-created “amateurism” model to avoid the responsibilities that come with running a multibillion-dollar sports and entertainment industry. Athletes.org opposes the Protect College Sports Act because it would lock the central contradiction of college sports into federal law. The NCAA wants to be treated like a major professional sports enterprise when it needs power, protection and legal deference. The PCSA acknowledges, affirms and rewards that contradiction along with the rich and powerful who seek to perpetuate it.

It would give the NCAA, its member conferences and schools the legal protection of a professional league without requiring them to operate like one. No collective bargaining. No shared governance. No real accountability to the athletes who power the system.

To date, the NCAA and its member institutions’ response to collective bargaining has been that it is “extremely complex.” But instead of doing the hard work of building a lawful, sustainable system with athletes, they have chosen what they believe is the simpler path: spending hundreds of millions of dollars litigating cases they continue to lose and lobbying Congress to legalize a model the courts have repeatedly validated as illegal.

The PCSA also accepts the industry’s claim that athlete compensation is breaking the system and is financially unsustainable. Rather than believing this is the root cause of the financial crisis for universities, Athletes.org views paying athletes an equitable share of the revenue they generate as a traditional cost of operating a business, and in this case, a justifiable expense in a multibillion-dollar one.

If Congress wants to examine and consider limitations on unsustainable spending in college athletics, it should start with the people already at the top of the payroll. In many states, the highest-paid public employees are football coaches, basketball coaches and university leaders. The PCSA caps how much schools can spend on athletes, but it does not meaningfully restrict coaching salaries, administrative compensation, facility upgrades, buyouts, conference realignment costs or any other category of institutional spending. The bill does not solve the money problem. It protects every expensive choice schools already make, then asks athletes to subsidize the cost.

Senator Tommy Tuberville, who spent 35 years coaching college football and supports federal involvement in college sports, has publicly acknowledged that the PCSA will not fix the problems in college athletics but will likely inevitably create more.

Congress should not protect a broken model or grant the NCAA, conferences and schools a federal shield before they do what every other major sports enterprise must do when seeking to limit compensation and rights: negotiate directly with athletes through a self-governed, independent organization. Athletes.org opposes the PCSA because it fails this fundamental test—allowing the industry to control athletes’ health, mobility, and economic opportunity without ever requiring it to negotiate with the very people those rules govern.

Athletes.org remains willing to engage in good-faith discussions on this bill and on the sustainable solution for college athletics that can be implemented today under existing law. We are prepared to work with any member of Congress, conference leader, university president or athletic director who is genuinely committed to long-term stability, fairness and opportunity for the athletes who make college sports possible.

--

Athletes.org, “The Players Association for College Athletes,” is a voluntary membership organization whose membership includes more than 5,200 current and former college athletes. We educate, organize and represent our members as a group by negotiating the terms of their collegiate athletic experience. 

AO Membership includes athletes from Division I schools across the country. Click here to explore our full Division I membership list and see where AO members are represented.