Here are the interesting things about the SAFE Act that we may all be missing

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Earlier this month, I wrote that I didn’t think federal legislative action on college sports was dead, even with the SCORE Act running into some unexpected trouble in the House.

Lawmakers are still fiddling with SCORE and trying to find a way to thread a complicated legislative needle to get something to the president’s desk. And in the meantime, we now have a competing vision for what college sports legislation could look like: the SAFE Act.

Unlike SCORE and most other recent legislative developments in college sports, SAFE comes from Senate Democrats, led by Maria Cantwell (D-WA). Unlike SCORE, SAFE does not grant the NCAA and power conferences any antitrust exemptions, nor does it specifically state that college athletes are not employees.

Those are, of course, the two specific things the NCAA and power conferences want the most out of federal legislation.

If you’re interested in a complete rundown of what else is in SAFE, there have already been a few quality explainers, such as this one from Yahoo, or this from the Athletic. If you’re the sort of nerd who wants to read the entire bill’s text … first, welcome, Extra Points is exactly your kind of newsletter, and second, you can find it here.

In this newsletter, I’d like to take a second to highlight a few portions of the proposed legislation I think are especially interesting and talk about why I think this bill is important, even if it never comes close to actually becoming law.

Okay, so beyond the antitrust stuff, what’s different or interesting about this bill?

SAFE would potentially significantly chance how college sports financial data is recorded and reported.

Right now, if you want to get information about athletic department revenues and expenses, the best data comes from the annual financial report each school files with the NCAA (MFRS report). But these reports aren’t widely available to the public.

The only way anybody who doesn’t work in college sports gets to see them is if they file a gazillion open records requests. There are a few outlets, like the Knight-Newhouse Database, that share a lot of this information for free. We built the Extra Points Library, which includes almost all of these reports, plus the ability to manipulate and compare them by line item … but it isn’t free. I don’t have access to grant or foundation money, and filing 200-plus requests costs money, sadly.

All of these databases are incomplete, though, because you can’t FOIA a private school, and even a few public schools are exempt from sharing their reports. The reports also don’t currently include anything specific about direct athlete payments.

But SAFE addresses all of this. The bill calls for schools, in addition to sharing reports on athletic department revenue and expenses, to also report:

Staffers familiar with the construction of the bill tell me the intention is for all of this data, not just data from public schools, to be shared with the public.

MFRS data isn’t perfect, and institutional accounting practices can significantly shift how various expenses are classified, so school-to-school comparisons can be tricky. But making all of this information public would be a significant win for academic researchers, policy watchdogs, athletes, reporters and anybody else who is invested in college sports.

I would welcome this change, even if it means a big chunk of stuff I charge for becomes free for everybody. I’m just going to FOIA other stuff if I don’t have to spend time chasing itemized budgets, after all.

But the bill isn’t a total win for transparency advocates.

SAFE specifically states that, unlike athletic department budgets, the endorsement contracts athletes sign with schools (commonly referred to as rev-share) would not be subject to open records requests.

I asked about this. After all, I could file a FOIA and get the salary data for all kinds of student workers in lower-paid jobs, like in cafeterias or janitorial services. I can FOIA to get almost every kind of vendor contract a public university provides. Why shouldn’t I be able to inspect a vendor contract between an athletic department and an athlete, especially when the values of contract like that will regularly exceed those of professors?

The congressional staffers told me that they believe SAFE should “protect athlete privacy,” and publishing that financial information could expose athletes to predatory third parties.

The bill attempts to impose order on the agent world.

Unlike in most professional sports, regulations surrounding athlete agents in college run the gamut from “barely enforced” to “do not exist.” There is no athlete union to impose certification standards, no state bar association membership requirement and, in some cases, no registration.

SAFE proposes a lot of regulations on college agent activity, including a 5 percent cap on agent fees (in practice, these can be as high as 15 to 20 percent), a requirement to register with states and the NCAA and a “private right of action” for athletes to sue agents.

SAFE calls for the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to enforce those provisions. It also calls for adjustments to previous sports agent legislation (called SPARTA, in case all of this stuff wasn’t confusing enough already), meant to give that law more teeth and flexibility.

And finally, there’s the stuff about TV.

As you’ve probably heard about, thanks to all those commercials, big-time college conferences are not permitted to jointly sell their broadcast rights. Professional sports leagues can, thanks to an antitrust exemption in the Sports Broadcasting Act. There was a whole Supreme Court case that specifically established that college entities can’t do this.

There are folks in the college sports industry — from a few Group of 6 commissioners to Texas Tech board of regents chair Cody Campbell — who believe the SBA should be amended to allow colleges to sell one big ol’ TV package. The thinking goes that one huge contract would generate significantly more revenue for everybody, thus giving schools the funds to pay football players, pay coach buyouts and continue to fund women’s and Olympic sports programs.

SAFE specifically permits this and even calls to create an NCAA committee to study and implement such a contract.

I don’t have a strong opinion on whether combining the rights would actually lead to more revenue for everybody — or if it would be better for consumers. I don’t think there’s been enough reporting done to make me feel confident one way or another.

But let’s say Campbell and Cantwell are right, and one big ol’ supercontract does give more money to everybody. Why should the Big Ten and SEC go along with that plan, which would undermine their financial and political advantages? And how can anybody be confident that schools would take that windfall and actually use it to spend on Olympic sports, rather than just football?

Cantwell’s team told me they believe the bill’s requirements for schools to maintain Olympic sport sponsorships and scholarship allotments would be sufficient to push them to continue to spread their spending around. They also believe that the revenue growth and “efficient scheduling” options provided by a single contract would be enough to encourage the participation from all major leagues.

Is that true? I don’t know. If I were writing a bill to address this question, I’d probably push for requirements mandating certain operational budget allocations, rather than just scholarship or sponsorship requirements … but I’m not a lawyer or a lawmaker.

Will this bill become a law in the near future? Probably not. But that isn’t what interests me. What interests me is: What problem does Congress want to solve?

Republicans control the Senate, House and White House. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the guy who actually runs the relevant Senate committees, has already made it clear he isn’t on board with SAFE, although he is seeking Democratic support for whatever Senate bill he ultimately offers.

And you know what? Based on my conversations over the past two years with lawmakers and industry professionals, I’d feel comfortable saying there is legitimate bi-partisian interest in college sports legislation. But the question is … about what?

The SCORE Act, in my view, is fundamentally about bringing order to athlete compensation. It would allow the NCAA (and the CSC or another college sports regulatory body) to actually enforce whatever hypothetical NIL rules exist. It would shut down potential litigation about athlete employment status. It would provide, for better or for worse, some sense of labor regulation certainty.

SCORE was not meant to address the growing financial and political gap between the Big Ten/SEC and everybody else. It was not meant to address Olympic sport funding, access to women’s sports, agent regulations or myriad other college sports issues.

The proposed SCORE solutions are less politically popular than they might have been six months ago, despite the lobbying efforts of the NCAA and various college conferences. The NCAA’s approval rating among the public typically hovers near that of stuff like “stepping on Legos after you asked your children to clean up,” after all. Thanks in large part to Campbell’s lobbying efforts, more Republicans are starting to question the long-term wisdom of essentially just giving the NCAA everything it wants.

SAFE, as I read it, isn’t meant to address the NCAA’s labor problem so much as other issues in college sports, from agent regulations to financial reporting to athlete medical care.

I’m more interested in how the conversation around potential legislation advances beyond just “we gotta stop this transfer portal business” to “we gotta prevent a P2 breakaway” or “we need a more sustainable method to fund Olympic sport development” or any of the other potential issues.

There’s a path to bi-partisian compromise in there somewhere, I think. It might not be one that the Big Ten, SEC, NCAA or entrenched status quo particularly likes … but that’s also the risk you run when you beg for Congress to solve your problems.

Like I mentioned earlier, we have hundreds of MFRS reports for just about everybody in Division I and Division II in the Extra Points Library, with data for some schools going all the way back to 2016. We also have contracts for athletic directors, head coaches, conference affiliation agreements, major vendor contracts, shoe deals and much more.

I add to the Extra Points Library almost every single day. If you’re looking for the most accurate data for your research, reporting or administrative decisions, check out the Extra Points Library today.