A new federal bill introduced Thursday will make it illegal for the NCAA or other college sports associations to impose restrictions on the type or size of agreements that college athletes could sign in the future.
The bill, co-authored by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) and Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Massachusetts), is the latest in a series of proposed national laws aimed at helping college athletes win money and reforming a $ 1 billion college sports industry that several members of Congress consider fundamentally unfair. This proposal is the only option so far that does not provide any means for Congress, the NCAA, or any other governing body to regulate products that athletes can approve.
“Long-distance college athletics doesn’t look like professional leagues, and it’s time we stopped denying the right of college athletes to make money from their talent,” said Murphy, who said he believes current standards of the NCAA are a civil rights issue. “If predominantly white coaches and NCAA executives can have free support agreements, why shouldn’t predominantly black athletes be given the same opportunity?”
The new bill also specifically prohibits the NCAA or conferences from doing anything that prevents athletes from organizing under collective representation to sell their license rights as a group. Such group licenses are often needed to negotiate media rights, t-shirt sales and items such as video games, such as the college football video game that EA Sports announced its plan to revive earlier this week. .
The NCAA has so far opposed the possibility that athletes could organize for any type of group licensing activity.
NCAA President Mark Emmert and other college sports leaders have called on Congress to help create national uniform rules that dictate how athletes can take advantage of their names, images, and similarities (NILs). These leaders want the possibility of creating “protection railings” that they say would prevent NIL payments from becoming low-wage salaries that cross the line between amateurism and professional sport.
Murphy and Trahan, who played volleyball in Georgetown, believe the NCAA has crossed the line of professionalism for some time.
“As a former Division I athlete, I’m all too familiar with the NCAA business model that for decades has used the disguise of amateurism to justify obscene profitability, while student-athletes have struggled to achieve it.” , Trahan said in a statement Thursday.
Murphy told ESPN that he believes Congress is unlikely to be able to act on college sports legislation for the first six months of the year. This makes it likely that some state NIL laws will come into force before a national plan is put in place.
Florida has already passed a law that will make current NCAA rules illegal in the state as of July 1. Four other states are also considering legislation that would come into force at the same time.
The NCAA has argued that several state laws, many of which have unique differences, would create a chaotic environment in which schools operated under different rules and potential athletes could choose their schools based on which state gives them the best opportunity to charge. in accession agreements.
The association stated its intentions to change its own rules in October 2019. However, they missed a self-imposed deadline to vote on the proposed changes last month and it is unclear when they will move forward. The most recent NCAA proposal was significantly more restrictive for athletes than most state and federal legislative options.
“I wasn’t going to support what the NCAA did, so I’m not going to shed a tear for the decision to delay the NCAA,” Murphy told ESPN. “They could never handle it. I think there’s an argument for letting the different state laws go into effect and we can see if the sky falls as the NCAA says.”
The bill introduced by Murphy and Trahan will be considered alongside other legislation that presents a range of options on the involvement of Congress in shaping the future of college sports.
Democratic Senators Cory Booker and Richard Blumenthal proposed a bill in December calling for general changes that go beyond NIL compensation and rights. Republican Senators Roger Wicker and Marco Rubio have proposed bills that provide more leeway for NCAA leaders to determine what restrictions are needed to preserve amateurism in college sports. Representative Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio) has also introduced a detailed proposal that would open the doors to NIL payments, while creating some restrictions on the type of products athletes can approve.
Murphy and Trahan’s bill also states that all services that a school or conference offers athletes to help them get the most out of their NIL potential must be available to all athletes under their jurisdiction. In other words, if a school hires a consultant to help build the marks of its football stars, all the other athletes in the school should have the same opportunity.
The bill also requires an annual report, funded by the federal government, to assess how much money college athletes earn on membership contracts and to break down that data by race, gender, and sport to analyze the market.