It’s no secret that the NCAA has taken the approach of having everyone else fix their problems over the last 5+ years. Things took a unique turn back in 2021 when Congress got involved, forcing NIL to return to college athletics. We have been in lawless territory since then, and because the NCAA refuses to, well, do their job, Congress is getting involved yet again.
Yesterday it was announced that a group of US Senators introduced a bipartisan bill to fix some of college sports’ biggest issues. Some
of the issues addressed in The Protect College Sports Act are the following:
- Limiting athletes to transferring schools only one time without penalty
- Limiting athlete eligibility to a maximum of five years
- Prohibiting former professional athletes from playing in college
- Prohibiting schools from poaching a coach from another school during their sport’s season
- A spending cap would be put into place to limit how much schools can spend on athletes.
Speaking for most if not all college fans, all of these changes would be welcomed. Some of the bigger conferences in the country have had very large, seemingly bottomless wallets, and they’ve had no issues throwing as much money as possible at players. The transfer portal has also been a complete nightmare, letting players transfer every season if they choose to. Congress is essentially offering solutions that would be great for each sport, but all this proves is that the NCAA is becoming a more and more useless organization by the day.
We don’t need to go through the itemized list of ways the NCAA has overstepped boundaries in the past and tried flexing their authority when it was really none of their business, all while turning a blind eye to other events that involved the FBI. Things didn’t get better when Charlie Baker was named President of the NCAA back in 2023. Granted, he inherited a mountain of problems that were left by his predecessor, Mark Emmert, but his inability/lack of desire to regulate the transfer portal and NIL has been puzzling to say the least. Furthermore, given the fact that the College Football Playoffs aren’t even a NCAA product and March Madness is really the only thing somewhat earning money for the league in a meaningful way, it feels like it’s time for schools to have serious conversations about what forming a new league could look like if the adults don’t return to the room and do their jobs so that Congress doesn’t have to do it for them.
We may not see any major shakeup in the NCAA as a whole any time soon, but it is at least promising to see that someone is interested in making college football and basketball better products. But what do you think about the bill that was introduced? Also, would you like to see schools break away and start a new league, or should Charlie Baker ultimately step up and just do what he is paid to do? Let us know in the comments below.
