College sports is changing. That is undeniable.
Athletes can finally earn compensation connected to their name, image, and likeness (NIL). They have more freedom to transfer. They are beginning to challenge a system that has generated billions of dollars from their talent while carefully restricting their economic power.
Now Congress is considering the Protect College Sports Act. Its supporters say the legislation will restore stability, establish national standards, preserve opportunities, and protect college athletics.
Those are worthy goals. No doubt that the college sport needs structure. Athletes need guaranteed scholarships, medical care, academic support, safety standards, and protection from dishonest agents. Women’s and Olympic (non-revenue) sports must also be preserved.
But we should never judge legislation solely by its title or its most attractive provisions. We must ask a more important question:
Who receives the greatest protection?
Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.
After examining this bill, I believe the answer is clear. The Protect College Sports Act would provide its strongest protections to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), athletic conferences, and universities—not to the athletes whose talent makes the entire enterprise possible.
Here are eight reasons Congress should reject the legislation in its current form.
It would legalize limits on athlete compensation.The bill would give the NCAA, conferences, and schools targeted antitrust protection when they jointly enforce rules governing athlete compensation, revenue sharing, NIL agreements, eligibility, and transfers.
Think about that.
These institutions are competitors, but Congress would allow them to coordinate restrictions on what athletes can earn. In most industries, competing employers cannot simply come together and decide how much workers should be permitted to receive.
Meanwhile, the bill does little to control the “runaway train” of multimillion-dollar coaching salaries, expensive facilities, administrative growth, or other major expenditures. The athletes’ share is treated as the financial emergency.
That is not financial reform. That is financial control.
It gives athletes representation without guaranteeing power.The bill includes provisions for athlete representation. That sounds promising, but being present is not the same as possessing power.
I have spent years in higher education and sports. I know the difference between being invited into a room, being given a voice, and having a meaningful vote once you get there.
Athletes would not receive a guaranteed right to bargain collectively over their compensation, health and safety, medical coverage, practice conditions, scholarship security, or transfer rules. Institutions could listen politely and then proceed exactly as they intended.
Every major professional sports league has a players’ association and a collective-bargaining agreement. College sports increasingly operates like a professional business when selling television rights, securing sponsorships, hiring coaches, and building facilities. Yet, when athletes request professional protections, they are reminded that they are students.
College sports cannot be professional when collecting revenue and amateur when sharing power.
It would restrict athletes’ freedom to transfer.The legislation would allow restrictions limiting athletes to one transfer without losing a season of eligibility.
Why should athletes face penalties for seeking better opportunities when coaches, athletic directors, and administrators routinely leave for better jobs?
Even traditional students don’t have limits on transfer.
A young athlete may need to transfer because a coach leaves, playing-time promises are broken, an academic program is inadequate, or the team environment becomes unhealthy. Some athletes are pressured to compete while injured. Others experience mistreatment but fear speaking up. (Hello, Michigan and Ohio State major abuse scandals related to athletic physicians harming athletes.)
The freedom to leave is not simply a recruiting issue. It is a form of protection and institutional accountability.
When athletes can leave, programs have a greater incentive to treat them well.
It would preserve a troubling racial power imbalance.We cannot discuss the economics of college sports without discussing race.
Black athletes are highly visible in football and basketball, the two sports producing most of the industry’s revenue. Yet Black people remain significantly underrepresented among university presidents, conference commissioners, athletic directors, head coaches, major donors, media executives, and others making the most consequential decisions.
According to the NAACP, Black men constitute approximately 66% of the football rosters in the ACC, SEC, and Big 12. Those conferences generated approximately $16 billion in athletic revenue over the past decade, excluding NIL activity.
Black athletes are everywhere on Saturday afternoon. But where are we on Monday morning when the contracts are negotiated, the investments are approved, and the rules are written?
America has a long history of valuing Black labor without equally valuing Black leadership, ownership, or voice. We have been permitted to participate without being allowed to control. We have been celebrated for performance while excluded from authority.
Congress should not preserve that pattern under the banner of protecting college sports.
Its compensation restrictions would disproportionately affect Black athletes.Supporters may describe the bill’s compensation provisions as race-neutral. But a policy can be race-neutral in its wording and racially unequal in its effects.
Because Black athletes are heavily represented among the most marketable players in football and basketball, restrictions on revenue sharing and institution-related NIL opportunities would disproportionately limit their earning potential.
For many athletes, college may be the best—and perhaps only—time when they can capitalize fully on their athletic value. Less than 2% of NCAA athletes will become professional athletes. Even for those who reach the professional level, careers can be short and can end with one injury.
We cannot tell young people to understand their market value and then create federal protections allowing powerful institutions to restrict that value.
Calling the cap race-neutral does not make its consequences race-neutral.
It rewards institutions without requiring racial accountability.The bill would provide universities and conferences with valuable federal benefits: antitrust protection, federal preemption of certain state laws, expanded media-bargaining authority, and limits on legal liability.
What would these institutions be required to do in return to address racial inequity within college sports?
Where is the requirement to increase the number of Black athletic directors, conference executives, head coaches, trustees, sports-business owners, and decision-makers? Where is the accountability for institutions that profit from Black talent but remain silent when Black political representation, educational opportunity, and voting rights are threatened?
The NAACP has raised precisely this concern. Public institutions cannot depend on Black athletes to fill stadiums, secure television contracts, attract donors, and build university brands while distancing themselves from the communities that produced those athletes.
Regardless of the anti-Black attack by the Trump administration, college sport leadership should be unified and have the courage to protect the Black athlete.
If Black athletes are essential to the revenue, Black people must also be present where the revenue, policy, and power are controlled.
Why HBCUs may not truly benefitThe money is not guaranteed.
The Act merely authorizes up to $180 million annually for HBCU grants. Congress would still have to appropriate those funds each year from 2027 through 2032, and individual HBCUs would have to compete for them. That is, qualifying HBCUs would have to apply for grants largely restricted to technology, broadband, and sports-media infrastructure. Therefore, the advertised $1.08 billion represents a potential six-year ceiling—not money assured to reach HBCU campuses.
The funding is valuable, but it does not correct the underlying economic imbalance. It would not guarantee annual operating revenue, larger media contracts, direct compensation for HBCU athletes, or a competitive share of the billions generated by college sports. Most football-playing HBCUs are also in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) and would be excluded from a Football Bowl Subdivision-only (FBS, which generally has a larger student population and athletic budget) portion of the proposed pooled-media revenue distribution.
Meanwhile, wealthy programs could spend tens of millions of additional dollars retaining athletes—more than the entire athletic budgets of some HBCUs. That could make it even easier for powerful programs to recruit successful HBCU athletes through the transfer portal. HBCUs might receive better cameras and production facilities while continuing to lose players, revenue, and competitive ground.
Most importantly, the grant money does not eliminate the bill’s broader restrictions on athlete compensation, bargaining power, transfer freedom, and legal remedies. Black athletes at HBCUs should not have to surrender economic rights in exchange for institutional funding.
And let’s be clear: If Congress truly wanted to support HBCUs, it would not need to tie that support to this bill. Congress could have made—and still can make—that investment directly.
It could weaken accountability for abuse, injury, and discrimination.The bill contains positive language concerning medical care, health and safety standards, scholarships, and an athlete ombudsman. I support those protections.
But a right is only as strong as the mechanism available to enforce it.
Athletes and advocates warn that the bill’s liability provisions could make it more difficult to hold institutions financially responsible when violations result in serious injury, abuse, lost scholarships, or lost compensation. The legislation also relies heavily on the college sports system to establish and police its own standards.
History tells us that self-policing is not enough.
We have seen athletes pressured to play through injuries. We have witnessed abusive coaching environments, sexual misconduct, inadequate medical treatment, and retaliation against those who speak out. The tragic death of University of Maryland football player Jordan McNair reminds us of what can happen when institutional interests are placed above athlete safety.
A protection without independent enforcement is a promise—not a right.
College sports needs reform—but not this reform.
Let me be clear: opposing this bill does not mean supporting chaos.
College sports needs national standards. Athletes deserve guaranteed scholarships, long-term health care, educational support, fair NIL rules, safe working conditions, and protection from exploitation. Women’s and Olympic sports must not become casualties of a changing economic system.
But Congress should provide those protections directly. Athletes should not be required to surrender compensation, transfer freedom, legal remedies, or collective power to receive basic protections they already deserve.
As a former college athlete, coach, professor, and sports-business professional, I love college sports. I know its capacity to educate, inspire, build community, and change lives. I also know that loving an institution does not require us to ignore its inequities.
In fact, love should demand accountability.
For generations, Black Americans have been welcomed into American institutions when our labor, talent, entertainment, and votes were needed. Too often, we were excluded when ownership, leadership, wealth, and decisions were divided.
That history should guide us now.
Black athletes should not be highly valued on the field and minimally empowered everywhere else. They should not generate the revenue while others determine how much of that revenue they may receive. They should not be the face of college sports while remaining outside the rooms where its future is decided.
Do not call legislation athlete protection when its greatest protections belong to the institutions already holding the power.
Congress should reject the Protect College Sports Act in its current form and return with legislation created with athletes—not merely for them.
Nothing about them without them.
“Never Too Far” contains perspectives and insights from an inquisitive and engaged Orange County transplant from Philly. Deborah Stroman is an entrepreneur and UNC leadership professor who has seen too much and not enough, and thus continues to question and explore the thoughts and actions of humankind.
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