If the PCSA is dead, here's my proposal for something that could actually pass

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

On Friday, I wrote that I didn’t think the Protect College Sports Act had a very good chance of passing once senators get back from their August campaign break recess.

The single biggest reason for that doesn’t have much to do with the bill itself. It’s about timing. The midterm elections are in November, and Congress has a lot of very important legislative priorities before those elections (such as measures relating to future budgets, judicial confirmations, the Iran war and more). Complicating matters further is the fact that right now, those midterms look like a wipeout for Republicans, with the GOP likely to lose control of at least the House, and potentially the Senate as well.

A college sports bill, even one that is relatively popular among lawmakers, is not the sort of thing that swings a competitive Senate election. It isn’t a requirement for a truly massive donor. (Whatever the Power 4 is throwing around in lobbying isn’t anywhere close to, say, what crypto or prediction markets are spending, or even conventional mega-lobbies like real estate developers.) It isn’t even of great personal interest to the majority of lawmakers. All of that makes the PCSA a perfect example of the sort of thing that would get sidelined as lawmakers sprint to the finish line.

But there’s another, more practical, matter. The most current draft of the PCSA is more than 200 pages long. The bill tries to tackle everything from the transfer portal to athlete NIL compensation to the protection of women’s and Olympic sports — and also the widening financial gap between the Power 2 and everybody else, potential SuperLeague breakaways, HBCU media production investments, and much, much more.

Even if all of those ideas were good (and I don’t think they’re all good), that’s simply too much to do in such a short amount of time. The political margins are too small to get such a massive bill passed, with 60-plus Senate votes, in the middle of the fall. If this happens, I would be very surprised.

Let’s say the PCSA does fail. Does that mean any congressional efforts to regulate college sports must be dead forever? I’m sure some lawyers, agents and fellow media analysts would say so, but I don’t think I agree. There are too many major questions — from college athlete employment status to NIL’s impact on student visas to where Title IX fits into an increasingly professionalized collegiate sports world — to simply leave to litigation alone.

Eventually, even if the goal is to get to collective bargaining with some segment of athletes to create a CBA, some federal laws are going to need to be changed … or at least clarified.

Last May, I took a stab at drafting my own legislative proposal, the SUBSCRIBE TO EXTRA POINTS Act. I stand by many of those ideas, but I also understand that the political environment of today is not the political environment of May 2025.

So let me try again. I’d like to present the Protecting Athletes’ Yields and Market Treatment; Maintaining Athlete Rights, Benefits, Revenue, Ownership, Workplace Negotiation, and Institutional Compensation Standards Act.

1) The PAY MATT BROWN NINE BUCKS Act, unless formally reauthorized by Congress, is set to expire on July 1, 2028. That means this bill will only apply to the 2026-27 and 2027-28 college athletic seasons.

2) As part of the PAY MATT BROWN NINE BUCKS Act, Congress will grant a temporary, limited and conditional antitrust protection to the NCAA and member conferences, effective only insofar as the NCAA, member conferences and member institutions are in compliance with the rest of the act. Should a federal agency find that membership has not complied, all antitrust protections will be immediately revoked, and Jeff Kessler will have permission to, and I quote, “beat the NCAA’s ass in court once again.”

3) This antitrust protection is limited to protecting the NCAA’s and the CSC’s ability to execute the provisions of the House v NCAA settlement, the current “5 in 5” eligibility standards and to operate the CSC NIL clearinghouse.

4) For as long as antitrust protection is in place for the NCAA and constituent groups to enforce the House settlement terms, coaches and senior administrators at participating NCAA institutions must follow similar rules. All supplementary income proposals for coaches and athletic directors must also pass through the CSC to pass a fair market value evaluation. Additionally, compensation for head coaches and ADs is limited to four times the total compensation of the university presidents at their institutions. Contracts that are currently out of compliance with this act must be redrawn no later than Jan. 1, 2027.

In plain English:

I don’t think we’re getting a CBA in the immediate future, the courts are unlikely to provide clarification re: the employment status of athletes in the very immediate future, but the current unregulated market carries problems for everybody involved or invested in college athletics … even the athletes.

But giving the NCAA permission to continue doing almost exactly what it did over the last 100 years is deeply unpopular with fans and current lawmakers.

My suggested compromise? Extend and actually enforce the House settlement for two years and subject “management” to similar salary cap pressure. This is meant to provide temporary labor peace only until either a CBA is negotiated, lawmakers and/or judges clarify employment status or everybody can negotiate on a better solution. This is supposed to be uncomfortable for school leadership as well, so they’ll be incentivized to find a better long-term solution.

1) Every Division I and Division II institution of the NCAA must publish not only its most current NCAA MFRS report but also every other MFRS report for the past five fiscal years. The NCAA will host all of these individual financial reports on its website, no later than April 1, 2027.

2) All public NCAA D-I and D-II institutions will be required to make athletic department documents (coach contracts, vendor contracts, employee emails, etc.) generally available via open records law requests, even if those athletic departments are organized as DSOs, LLCs or public-affiliated universities or are otherwise exempt from disclosures under state law.

3) As part of their MFRS reports, each D-I and D-II school must also disclose how much House settlement money its athletic department spent each fiscal year and which sports got that money. They are also required, in public, to disclose total payroll commitments of each varsity team for each season. They are not obligated to share individual athlete terms.

In Plain English:

This isn’t just to benefit me or other nosy reporters. If the NCAA is going to get a huge government carve-out to enforce the House settlement, then everybody should get to verify that individual schools are actually complying with that settlement. And with Title IX’s impact on revenue sharing payments still legally ambiguous, I believe it’s important for all parties to have as much information as possible, should they want to pursue litigation, regulation or policy changes.

Extra Points Library gives college sports professionals instant access to the contracts, financial records, salary benchmarks and operational data shaping the industry. Whether you’re benchmarking salaries, researching vendor deals, comparing your school to its peers, reporting a story or simply trying to better understand how college athletics actually works, Library gives you the data behind the headlines.

It’s built specifically for professionals who work in college sports. Over the past week, we’ve added salary data for more than 5,000 new athletic department employees across the country, new Division II budget data, major Division I vendor contracts, and the latest coach contracts across baseball, golf, track and more. Take a look for yourself here.

Read about our summer launch here — more benchmarking data, new institutional data reported via IPEDS and a FREE scheduling tool called GamePlace.

Great questions! If federal intervention is where those issues should be discussed, it should be in a completely different bill, discussed on its own merits.

My goal here is simple: buy everybody enough time to work on a more fleshed-out, long-term labor solution (perhaps one that also addresses other major economic issues in college sports) … one that explicitly includes the input of more college athletes or their representatives. That isn’t possible before November 2026, but as athletes become more organized, as a new Congress is sworn in and as everybody gets more (and better) data … then I think a more durable agreement is possible.

But in the short term, all constituent groups get predictability. That can help stave off a few more lawsuits, help athletes and administrators make more informed decisions, and give fans a break.

Is it perfect? No. Does it address everything? Not even close. Could it get 60 votes in this current Senate? Honestly … I think this would have a better shot than the full 220-page PSCA.

But it does buy everybody some time. And hopefully, it also gets me $9, which just so happens to be what a monthly subscription to Extra Points costs.

That’s a win for everybody, in my humble opinion.