Explaining the new college sports bill

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Once again, we're talking law stuff on a college football channel.

[00:00:04]Is it what I had in mind when I chose this field? Nope. Is it what I had in mind when I started this channel?

[00:00:11]Absolutely not. Do I enjoy it? Also, no.

[00:00:16]But, we're here now.

[00:00:18]And we just have to talk about it. So, I want to talk today about the new bill that was proposed, the Protect College Sports Act, what I think about it, what I assume is going to happen from it, and that's it, really. There's not much else. Before we get started, my name is Lucy, this is my college football channel. One day we'll get to talk about football. One day it'll be less policy and bills and Schoolhouse Rock and a little bit more X's and O's and college ball.

[00:00:45]But, that day is not today. So, I hope that you subscribe and know that it's coming in the future. Now, an important disclaimer for this is I am not a legal expert. I did not go to law school.

[00:00:56]I really am not qualified to talk about the legality of any of this. So, this is just my take on what we're seeing and what I assume as someone who is a college football fan and has a very baseline casual understanding of how the law works, what I think will come out of this Protect College Sports Act. If you want like legit legal advice, not your gal.

[00:01:20]You're going to jail if I'm representing you. So, what is this bill? And it's called the Protect College Sports Act.

[00:01:25]It was written by Republican Ted Cruz.

[00:01:27]We're just going to look past that and Democrat Maria Cantwell. So, it's bipartisan, which is very important. We will get to that later. This bill is enacted to, quote, protect college sports. It's like 100-plus pages. I I'm going to be honest with you, didn't read it. Read the summary.

[00:01:43]Like I said, don't take your legal advice from this girl. But, there are a lot of parts of this bill that are really interesting. And if for some reason this bill passes, which spoiler, I don't think it does, it will permanently change the landscape of college football and college sports in general. It's imposing a lot of changes. So, let's go through those changes now. So, one of the big ones is it limits transferring to one time. You could potentially transfer again, but that would have to be like a exception where your head coach leaves or your school decides to get rid of your sport.

[00:02:17]I am in favor of regulating how much a person can transfer. I don't know how you legally do that. That seems like a crazy thing for the law to say that you can do.

[00:02:27]And I have concerns about the second time transfer. Where is that going to be the NCAA or the college sports committee commission, whatever it's called? Are they the ones that decide, hey, this is a valid reason for transferring or not?

[00:02:40]Because like the NCAA previously has looked at some pretty valid reasons for transferring of being like, hey, my mom is dying and I want to be close to where I'm in like, sit out. I don't necessarily trust the NCAA to handle that appropriately. So, what does that look like? I don't know if there's an answer to that question.

[00:03:00]Like I said, I'm not reading that bill.

[00:03:01]101 pages. I'm sorry that happened to you or I'm so happy for you. Either way.

[00:03:06]Another key pillar of this bill is something we've kind of heard politically the last few weeks is limiting eligibility to 5 years.

[00:03:13]Once again, I'm fine with that.

[00:03:14]Obviously, once again, there are exceptions where, you know, injuries happen, things things go on, but I do think it's reaching a point where I'm like, you guys cannot be in college for 9 years.

[00:03:26]Like, would I have loved to be in college for 7 years? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:03:30]That would have been fun. Unless you're trying to be a doctor. Like, there's really no reason for you to be in college that long. Another proposal in this bill that I am a 100% a fan of is prohibiting professional athletes from reentering college. So, if you have competed professionally, whether that's the G League, the NBA, an American professional league, a European professional league, you will not be able to come back and play in college. So, will Wade plan accordingly. This bill also include something to address the Lane Kiffin rule. That's just what it's being called, not uh legally in the document, not officially, which is kind of a bummer. I feel like if you're going to call it that, you got to do it on the record. That would try to prevent schools from poaching a head coach during the season. So, you can no longer hire somebody while the season is still active. That one, like I do think it's like semi good in theory. I just I don't know how you could ever enforce that. I have no clue how you could enforce that.

[00:04:23]Some pieces of this bill. I And I think they're all written with good intention.

[00:04:28]A lot of them I question the legality of. I don't know if you can tell people they can't transfer. I don't know if you can tell a head coach that he can't leave. Like some of that stuff is just sort of beyond my understanding of what's allowed with the law and what's not. There are other parts of this bill that deal more directly with NIL and TV media rights that are pretty confusing if you don't have a law degree. And let me remind you, just like in 800th time that I don't have a law degree.

[00:04:56]But would probably have the biggest impact on the sport. And this is where I really see the breakdown with this bill because I just like don't get how any of this is allowed. Like I just don't get it. So, something that this bill would allow is giving all college athletics the ability to negotiate their TV media rights as one. Where currently the Big 10 negotiates their media rights, the SEC negotiates their media rights, the ACC, they negotiated their media rights like 10 years ago and did a really terrible job. So, they won't actually do that again for a long time. But you get what I'm saying. What this bill would theoretically allow is if all the schools in the Big 12 and the ACC and the Group of Six come together and they were like, "Hey, Big 10 and SEC are making way more money than us.

[00:05:39]We don't want to get left behind.

[00:05:42]What if we all come together and we decide to pool our media rights and negotiate as one.

[00:05:49]That would apply to the whole entire sport of college football, including the Big Ten and the SEC. That's because this bill states that if 75% of teams in college football decide, "Hey, yeah, we are going to negotiate media rights as one."

[00:06:03]That would be enough that if every team in the Big Ten and every team in the SEC abstained or voted no, that's over 75%. So now college football rights as a whole are being negotiated as college football rights and not Big Ten, not ACC, not SEC.

[00:06:19]Well, obviously not ACC in any circumstance. This very clearly is not good for the Big Ten or the SEC, who right now are making significantly more than anybody, where they're not going to want to share that. The purpose of that is to prevent the idea of a super league forming, which would be the Big Ten and the SEC. I kind of feel like that directly goes against the idea of like preventing a super league because you're having the Group of Six, the Big 12, and the ACC all come together. So like, that's a super league in a sense. So I don't know about that.

[00:06:51]And it would require every team in all of those conferences to vote, "Yes, we want to pool our media rights." I don't know how feasible that is. That's a lot of teams that all have to agree on something. I also have no idea how the legality of that works. Like, I don't know if that's legal even a little bit.

[00:07:07]And I'm assuming the Big Ten and the SEC have a lot of money, so they can get some good lawyers if they want to cuz of those TV media rights deals. They get a lot of money from those. The other big part of this bill would be giving the college sports commission more legal authority to do what they said they've already been doing, which is looking at NIL deals and saying, "Hey, this is a legit opportunity." Or no, this is clearly someone just like paying for play. There've been issues with that.

[00:07:30]Nebraska's had a lot of problems with the CSC and getting, you know, deals, brand deals, whatever those may be denied. So this bill would give them more power to say, "Hey, we have more authority where if you do this, we can punish you." And basically try to close a lot of the loopholes that schools have been using to pay beyond what the $20.5 million salary cap is supposed to be for these schools. So, this is supposed to give the CSCE a lot more power to actually discipline, almost acting kind of as the NCAA a little bit, a sort of a governing body of NIL and what these schools can pay. I don't know how this works again. A lot of this video is me saying I don't know how it works. An important part of what they're proposing here is that the cap can be negotiated. So, the cap is able to rise if all these schools come together and say, "Well, we want to pay more than $20.5 million."

[00:08:21]I just really don't get how you can do the salary cap when players aren't employees and there's like all this like sort of weird kind of legal stuff with employment status, which this bill very clearly stated, "Hey, we aren't making any real decision or statement on whether the athletes are employees or not." Like, it basically was like, "That's not for us to figure out right now." So, what do I think about all of this? One, I'm so tired of it. Two, there are things in there that I agree with. I like the idea of limiting transfers with, you know, some exclusions. I love the idea of no professional athletes coming back. There are so many moving parts of this. With the stuff with like TV rights alone, there's like a million different clauses that come with that.

[00:09:09]I just think there are too many legal barriers for this to work out. And I think some of it is advantageous to an extent where it's like, I don't even know why you're trying that. Like, it's a valiant effort.

[00:09:24]I don't hate it.

[00:09:26]I don't see it succeeding. Now, an important part of this, which I mentioned earlier, this is a bipartisan bill, which means that it bodes well for the future of this bill, where okay, you have a very Republican senator and a Democratic senator coming together and doing this. It means it's more likely to pass because there's going to be less push back because it's not an entirely kind of like Republican bill like the score act and it's not an entirely Democratic bill. So, it makes it more digestible that both sides have contributed to this. I just think there are too many question marks with how the legality of this shapes out with is this allowed? Like this is going to be met with lawsuits and push backs every single step of the way. Where does this accomplish something? I don't know, but are there things in here that I do think like could be good worthwhile changes for college athletics? Absolutely. The question is just how much government involvement is allowed with that. I really should have taken some law classes in school. I should have. If you're reading this bill and you hate it, don't worry. It's probably not going to look like this down the road. I don't know if this passes and if it does pass, there's so many things that are going to get changed. There's so many amendments, all that stuff. But if you love this bill, don't get too excited cuz there are going to be a lot of changes. There's going to be a lot of push back.

[00:10:47]This is an interesting start, but it is not anywhere close to the finish. But we have finished this video. Look at that, synergy. Play on words. Good If you like this video, please give me a subscription. Hit the subscribe button.

[00:11:00]It's so easy. I've done it a million times myself. You just click, done, easy. You don't ever have to worry about it again because I want to make sure you get to see my videos cuz I work really hard on them. And I will stop making them if people stop watching. I love to quit. I'm a huge quitter. It's part of my personality type. So, you have to do your part so I don't quit.

[00:11:19]Hopefully we'll get to talk football soon. Hopefully.

[00:11:23]Maybe.

[00:11:24]Who knows?