U.S. Senate advances Protect College Sports Act

• The Protect College Sports Act backed by bipartisan lawmakers has moved forward in Senate
• The bill would create fixed federal rules setting the exact framework for transfers and eligibility to payment among other things
• According to the bill’s sponsors, this is a way to fix the chaos in the current regulatory landscape

The Protect College Sports Act, a piece of legislation designed to end what its sponsors call "a system of exploitation," has advanced in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, after a majority voted in favor of the draft law.

Protect College Sports Act gets backing in Senate

Passing with 74-24 vote, the bill sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Maria Cantwell, crosses political faultlines and has brought lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to push through what is largely seen as a seminal piece of legislation.

Sen. Cruz has described the Protect College Sports Act (S 4668) as an opportunity to bring "order in the chaos" and help strengthen safety measures for student-athletes.

However, not everyone agrees with this qualification, including the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) which has openly questioned certain aspects of the bill, but has backed it in spirit. While the bill will still face pushback, it is likely to pass and become a federal law, that will bind college sports to new rules that could potentially help improve conditions for college athletes.

The proposal has to do with such issues as eligibility to compensation, which has led to court cases, and the rights of athletes to transfer from one school to the next, or be compensated by their schools directly.

The NCAA would receive an antitrust exemption in order to curb future legal challenges to the rules.

Fixing the Wild West or sapping student-athletes’ bargaining rights?

"Some have asked why Congress should get in the middle of this? The answer is simple: because Congress screwed it up in the first place. It has been the federal antitrust laws applied in litigation after litigation after litigation that have had the effect of tearing down essentially all the rules. So right now it is the Wild West," Sen. Cruz said during a press conference on Monday, before the vote in the Senate.

Sen. Chris Murphy has raised an issue with the bill, arguing that the bill would take away bargaining power from student-athletes and create the aforementioned exemption from antitrust laws for colleges. Sen. Murphy argued that right now it was mostly black athletes who had bargaining power, and that the bill’s passage would mean an end to those collective bargaining powers.

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