What's the deal with insurance in the PCSA?

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

Quick housekeeping note: I am headed back to ol’ Columbus for Thursday and Friday to speak at the national conference for the Society of Professional Journalists, and also to chat with some Ohio State students. If you’re around and would like to say hello, drop me a line!

Late Monday evening, the Senate finally passed the Protect College Sports Act, 77-22. Depending on your perspective, the PCSA is an example of uncommon bipartisanship and deft legislative horse trading in a world where getting anything passed is almost impossible … or it’s a testament to how out of whack the Senate’s priorities are when it comes to the stuff voters actually care about. I’ll leave that for you all to debate in the comments.

Of course, the PCSA didn’t actually become law. It also needs to pass a vote from the House before President Donald Trump can sign it. This could change, but the folks who closely cover Congress are saying the House won’t reconvene to pass the bill before the midterm elections. Whether this thing gets out of rules committees and out of a lame-duck Congress is anyone’s guess.

I don’t mind saying this again: I don’t think the PCSA is a good bill, and if I were a member of Congress (and thank heavens I’m not!), I wouldn’t vote for it. I think the bill’s core principles aren’t likely to actually drive costs down, and the major beneficiaries are coaches and administrators, not players or fans.

After several more amendments were proposed and voted on, the actual text of the PCSA looks a little different now than it did last week. Conference realignment restrictions weakened (Power 4 leagues could expand to 20 teams, rather than 19), and there were some changes to athlete NIL reporting; athletes would have to disclose if they did deals with a “foreign government, a foreign adversary, a state-owned enterprise, or a sovereign wealth fund,” which I had no idea was currently a thing or at risk of becoming a thing.

The bill is huge, and even if I wanted to, I couldn’t touch on everything within the 2,000ish words I’m allowed per emailed newsletter. So since we only have so much space here, I’d like to quickly talk about insurance.

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I texted and called a few Senate staffers over the past few days to try to get clarification about college athlete insurance policies. I’m still not very confident in the answers. So let’s talk about them here, for a second.

Near the end of the PCSA, way after all the stuff about salary caps and agent fees and conference realignment, sits the following section:

Intercollegiate athletic association post-eligibility insurance and catastrophic injury fund or program

From the original text of the bill:

An amendment to raise the cap to $200 million failed by one vote.

So if I am reading this correctly, the PCSA calls for the NCAA to establish a fund of at least $60 million to pay for medical expenses for athletes who suffer long-term conditions related to their college sports careers, including CTE.

This fund will be used to pay for those bills at Division I institutions that “generate less than $20 million in total athletics revenue.” I have not gotten clarification yet on exactly what “generate” means, or where that $20 million number comes from.

I’m not pointing that out to be a pedantic nerd. If we define "generate less than $20 million” as “reported a number less than $20 million in total athletic department revenue on its FY25 NCAA MFRS report," then we’re looking at roughly 57 public schools falling under that benchmark, plus additional private schools, which don’t have to share their data via open records requests. In case you’re curious about which schools those are, here’s the cutoff point, via the Extra Points Library:

However, revenue classified under “total revenue” can also include money from stuff like student fees, institutional support and government appropriations. Those might not automatically be considered “generated” the same way as money from TV rights, ticket sales and corporate sponsorships.

If we pull another report, setting the cutoff at $20 million “generated” (i.e. total revenues minus institutional subsidies, government appropriations and student fees), we’re looking at 152 public schools, plus most of the private schools outside the P4 and Big East.

Almost everybody in the FCS, along with many FBS schools, fall under that benchmark. And if we calculate “earned” as to also exclude donations, well, that’s most programs outside the P4.

I actually think that mandating this sort of fund is a good idea, as NCAA policy could always change and become less generous. My understanding is that right now, the Post-Eligibility Insurance Program extends coverage for two years. I’m not sure exactly where the funding would come from to extend this coverage, but NCAA revenues have grown, and perhaps there’s money under the couch cushions from new business lines unrelated to TV to pay for this benefit without cutting school distributions.

But what I don’t completely understand yet, if this bill does become law, is whether a school just over the $20 million cutoff line — be that South Dakota State or Longwood, however the line is established — would see its costs increase as a result of the bill.

I’m not worried about Ohio State or Texas paying for a more generous healthcare package. But Western Michigan? I’m not saying it couldn’t be done … just that I’d have follow-up questions.

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If this bill doesn’t go anywhere in the House later this fall, those questions would become moot. But now that everybody involved will have a chance to catch their breath and dig into the details even more … figuring out exactly who will need to pay for what, and when, feels like an important exercise.