Protect College Sports Act [formerly “SCORE Act” thread]

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Can someone explain -- simply -- this to my aging, increasingly feeble mind:
Will this bill put limits on the amount of NIL money that can be raised for student athletes?

Largely Yes and a little bit no. Deals like nick lennear, Malachi Toney and Amir sears’ with adidas won’t count against our cap. But obviously these are elite cases and special NIL deals.

multimedia rights companies’ NIL deals are subject to be counted against the cap; and the CSC will have the authority to decide what’s proper compensation and what’s cap circumvention by third parties.

Judge Wilken Affirms Magistrate's Ruling: MMRs and Third-Party Sponsors Remain Subject to CSC Oversight

On July 2, we reported on Magistrate Judge Nathanael M. Cousins' ruling that multimedia rights companies (MMRs) and third-party brand sponsors are not

www.nilrevolution.com

LSU’s football roster alone is just over the 48 million dollar cap which applies to all varsity athletes at lsu. Let’s say all the other non-football lsu athletes combined make 25 million dollars.

Lsu is subject, this year, to a 5 million dollar fine for being 25 million dollars over the cap. Moreover, their 2027-2028 cap would be reduced by the amount they are over in 2026-2027, so in turn even if they want to pay more & incur the luxury tax fine, it’s fool hearted because the fines will keep increasing and future budgets will keep being lowered.

 

[Allabouttheu95]

Not sure if it’s any good as I spent about 5 minutes on it with the help of AI but I sent the below to my state representatives in case anyone just wants to copy.

Spoiler: Message to state representatives

I urge you to oppose S. 4668, the Protect College Sports Act.
This bill will not create stability. It will lock in and worsen the massive financial divide created by unequal conference television contracts. Programs such as Florida State and Miami are among the biggest brands in college sports, yet they already compete at a structural disadvantage against Big Ten & SEC schools that receive much larger guaranteed annual conference revenue simply because of membership. Congress should not protect a system that rewards conference affiliation over the value, history, competitive success, and support of individual programs.
I also strongly oppose any federal cap on athlete compensation. Athletes create the value that produces billions for universities, conferences, broadcasters, coaches, and administrators. It makes no sense to restrict their economic opportunity while every other part of the system continues to cash in.
If this bill passes, it will create more chaos—not less. Athletes will challenge restrictions on their compensation and freedom, leading to more lawsuits, uncertainty, and public backlash. The NCAA has already faced major legal challenges over athlete-compensation restrictions; federal legislation should not be used to shield powerful institutions while limiting athletes’ rights.[congress]
Please oppose S. 4668 and any effort to move it toward a final vote.

 

[CaneMutiny06]

Largely Yes and a little bit no. Deals like nick lennear, Malachi Toney and Amir sears’ with adidas won’t count against our cap. But obviously these are elite cases and special NIL deals.

multimedia rights companies’ NIL deals are subject to be counted against the cap; and the CSC will have the authority to decide what’s proper compensation and what’s cap circumvention by third parties.

Judge Wilken Affirms Magistrate's Ruling: MMRs and Third-Party Sponsors Remain Subject to CSC Oversight

On July 2, we reported on Magistrate Judge Nathanael M. Cousins' ruling that multimedia rights companies (MMRs) and third-party brand sponsors are not

www.nilrevolution.com

LSU’s football roster alone is just over the 48 million dollar cap which applies to all varsity athletes at lsu. Let’s say all the other non-football lsu athletes combined make 25 million dollars.

Lsu is subject, this year, to a 5 million dollar fine for being 25 million dollar over the cap. Moreover, their 2027-2028 cap would be reduced by the amount they are over in 2026-2027, so in turn even if they want to pay more & incur the luxury tax fine, it’s fool hearted because the fines will keep increasing and future budgets will keep being lowered.

It’s going to get messy but most big-spending schools (including ours) are likely going to circumvent the cap by using non-associated deals to pay the players in situations where the cap has to be exceeded to sign certain guys

 

[stoopid311]

Not sure if it’s any good as I spent about 5 minutes on it with the help of AI but I sent the below to my state representatives in case anyone just wants to copy.

Spoiler: Message to state representatives

I urge you to oppose S. 4668, the Protect College Sports Act.
This bill will not create stability. It will lock in and worsen the massive financial divide created by unequal conference television contracts. Programs such as Florida State and Miami are among the biggest brands in college sports, yet they already compete at a structural disadvantage against Big Ten & SEC schools that receive much larger guaranteed annual conference revenue simply because of membership. Congress should not protect a system that rewards conference affiliation over the value, history, competitive success, and support of individual programs.
I also strongly oppose any federal cap on athlete compensation. Athletes create the value that produces billions for universities, conferences, broadcasters, coaches, and administrators. It makes no sense to restrict their economic opportunity while every other part of the system continues to cash in.
If this bill passes, it will create more chaos—not less. Athletes will challenge restrictions on their compensation and freedom, leading to more lawsuits, uncertainty, and public backlash. The NCAA has already faced major legal challenges over athlete-compensation restrictions; federal legislation should not be used to shield powerful institutions while limiting athletes’ rights.[congress]
Please oppose S. 4668 and any effort to move it toward a final vote.

Thanks for posting!

 

[ShadowSpring]

Regulating how much athletes can make and how much employers can pay seems kinda like socialism

 

[cookies]

It’s going to get messy but most big-spending schools (including ours) are likely going to circumvent the cap by using non-associated deals to pay the players in situations where the cap has to be exceeded to sign certain guys

Yeup. The unknown is how big of bat the CSC/NCAA will swing in immediately restricting and limiting compensation; and issuing out fines to the forty or so athletic departments who are currently exceeding the cap. I read a ton about the IRS’ entanglement with all of this yet never completely deep-dived into the all the different facets of the settlement.

The worst case scenarios are that the ncaa + csc are basically pseudo state entities now with antitrust exemptions. From a Birds Eye point, it’s more powerful than most departments I.e education, energy, etc in how broad sweeping their regulatory framework works post-bill-passage.

Hundreds of cases like these will pop up if they are strict:

https://apnews.com/article/nil-arbitration-nebraska-722b97116270f183b652dad297d29ae8

7.5 million for 18 Nebraska football players lol. We don’t even know if this is all those guys are getting from Nebraska. You can’t even field a starting eleven in all three phases with 18 guys. 48 million for every varsity athlete at a single university is nuts

CSC approves $7.5M worth of reworked NIL deals for 18 Nebraska players

The College Sports Commission has approved $7.5 million in restructured name, image and likeness opportunities spread among 18 Nebraska football players after those deals initially were rejected in a decision upheld by an arbitrator two months ago.

www.espn.com

 

[cookies]

Regulating how much athletes can make and how much employers can pay seems kinda like socialism

State sanctioned crony communism with capitalistic characteristics

 

[ShadowSpring]

State sanctioned crony communism with capitalistic characteristics

I tend to think courts will strike it down. it's not too hard to find a hardline libertarian judge

 

[Empirical Cane]

I used to come home from the Hill, jump in the shower, pour diesel fuel, light it on fire, and scrub myself with steel wool each night.

 

[cookies]

I tend to think courts will strike it down. it's not too hard to find a hardline libertarian judge

Outside of amateur legal reading purview, but I believe what cane mutiny said about constitutional grounds & so forth applies.

We do not want to depend upon that. Would take long time and the ncaa has terraformed the bill around the house settlement. In some respects challenging it would have to go through Claudia Wilkins’ court and even tho she decided the original settlement, the bill would not lend itself to becoming null and void any time soon

 

[ShadowSpring]

The 1 transfer limit would seem to hurt Indiana, Texas Tech, and LSU. Teams that rely mostly on the portal will find there's less available players.

 

[RightSaidFred]

Why would the ACC fight for its teams to leave the conference?

Based on no comments from individual schools fighting it, perhaps support from the university side is stronger than we think. This primarily hurts the player/labor

You’re not wrong about this hurting players rights, this bill ***** over players for hundreds of millions of dollars with no representation and it ***** over Miami for hundreds of millions. But I feel like other people on this thread have made the good points already about the labor side so I chose to speak on the Miami/Clemson/etc side.

Either way, the whole bill needs to die. But yeah, you're not wrong.

 

[RightSaidFred]

Schools are fighting ... hence the modifications requested by Moody etc. At least 6-8 schools in the ACC have been vocal against this act.

No doubt, the Florida schools at least + Clemson + maybe Virginia obviously talked to their senators based on how the vote went but what about the senators in Utah, California, North Carolina etc. I'm not saying they're sitting on their hands though but we need more votes against

 

[Canesrule230]

I sure hope our admin has a plan. When this thing failed its initial efforts I thought we should have announced our leave to the b10 and paid whatever exorbitant $ amount to gtfo.

Unless something cbanges it sure looks like we’ee hosed here.

 

[Angry Ibis]

I continue to believe that the focus on conference expansion diverts attention away from the mass restrictions on labor pay.

'I need to post my Undertaker meme. We’re back from the dead!' — Protect College Sports Act passes first major hurdle, but obstacles remain

Conference expansion was a topic that weighed heavily on the voting on Tuesday.

sports.yahoo.com

Like I don’t even understand what we’re doing here lol. Ross is a fine reporter but Stanford is objecting to being locked into the ACC? Bruh the B1G just chose Oregon and Washington over yall lol they don’t love yall like that. Really incredulous that Stanford would care so much, especially after how hard they had to lobby to even get into the ACC.

obviously schools’ actions are newsworthy but feels like a red herring to devote so little attention elsewhere considering the bill does a lot more than restrict the musical chairs game of conference realignment.

Anyways the five schools he says are more upset are Miami, Clemson, FSU, UNC, and Stanford. IMO Seems like Clemson and UNC are positioning themselves to be a package deal to the SEC

So we are back to another dance partners phase of realignment...

Should these schools stay quiet to not **** off the conferences and show they are good little boys and girls so the conferences will like them?

 

[dolemite79]

I sure hope our admin has a plan. When this thing failed its initial efforts I thought we should have announced our leave to the b10 and paid whatever exorbitant $ amount to gtfo.

Unless something cbanges it sure looks like we’ee hosed here.

Rudy Fernandez was retweeting negative stuff about the PCSA last night and esp with how it affects miami. I have to believe that admin is keenly aware of the negative impact that this will cause miami. Hopefully there is a contingency plan already in place or being put into place. The admin has worked too hard to get us where we are now to let us slip back into oblivion.

 

[Morey161]

 

[cookies]

The 1 transfer limit would seem to hurt Indiana, Texas Tech, and LSU. Teams that rely mostly on the portal will find there's less available players.

Evaluations become much more important, and HS recruits and transfer players will have less money made available to them as well.

27 of the 49 million is set aside for the strict purposes of retaining your own players; thus, since no program operates in a vacuum, the incumbents are going to benefit more than future stakeholders.

Programs would have to set aside a transfer portal budget before they even know how good certain players are or know how many of their own players intend to transfer lol. A gigantic mess, and again, each athletic team would have to cross coordinate with the others all at once to avoid going over the cap.

What happens if the MLBPA concedes in CBA negotiations on banning prep to pro in the new revamped draft? Now a whole other class of athlete has a different caliber workforce & the benefits pool (the salary cap) wouldn’t adjust to that newer reality.

 

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[ShadowSpring]

It's dead