Save College Sports Act

[Jordan91]

Restricting NIL will immediately be challenged in court. 

[HelloThere]

49 minutes ago, Jordan91 said:

Restricting NIL will immediately be challenged in court. 

Yep, and the only way it survives is some sort of antitrust exemption. Since I don't believe the legislation has any chance of passing, I have not read what antitrust exemptions they would include.  If they have those then it could pass the courts.

I have no problem with there being debate in Washington about this, especially considering local (school picked) judges are currently running college football.   My issue, like others have stated, is that government involvement never works out.  It just doesn't. 

That said, the nature of the courts involvement right now is never going to work out either. 

[TTown]

From Dellenger- 25 million retention pool $ + 5 mil for women. So 51 mil overall.But the kicker is they want to close loopholes on Associated Entities /MMR/ Sponsors etc. Worried about circumventing the Cap. Seems that will be a Court challenge for sure from athletes .

But the bill isn't finalized yet so the devil is in the  details. And even if the stars align in the Senate, good luck in the House. That's a whole different game with time ticking away .

[Bobby Burton]

3 hours ago, CutaneousHorn said:

Why is the president of the Yankees involved?

Exactly!

[Bobby Burton]

3 hours ago, Lnghrn said:

Bobby - any idea what is captured in the restrictive NIL language?  Not sure how you can restrict legit nil.   Generally UT is going to be in a good position with legit nil due to size of Austin, UT brand in Texas and nationally.  Hopefully this would get rid of schools that are calling crap nil that is really pay for play.  

Language is not finalized is my understanding. 

[MBHORNSFAN]

Hope it dies. 

[TTown]

2 minutes ago, Bobby Burton said:

Language is not finalized is my understanding. 

Agree . Seems Learfield has gotten all their deals for UT  through the Clearinghouse. I read that when they responded to Kessler trying to get Associated Entities more leeway.  Believe he didn't get that yet, but is still trying with the original judge on House Settlement.   Assume Nike and others we use have gotten deals through. 

So Texas should be in a good place, but still see litigation coming on that issue , again depending on what is in the Bill.

[TTown]

Dellenger just tweeted the Majority Leader sounding more optimistic. Thune Said  headed in right direction. Which can only mean headed in Big 10/ SEC demands  haha. Maria Cantwell oh never mind not worth it😂

[GoHorns1]

3 hours ago, Hal Kemp said:

Totally agree with you! Not a federal issue, nor a federal problem.

I hope it doesn’t pass.

Who is going to enforce the rules with punishment with tough consequences for violating the rules?

[BobInHouston]

4 hours ago, Steamboat Willie said:

I'm not against a bill. NIL, the portal, enforcement, that stuff needs a federal fix. You can't run college sports under 50 different state laws with nobody able to actually enforce anything.

But we started out trying to fix that, and now Congress is setting spending caps, deciding who's allowed to expand, and rewriting how TV rights can be pooled. That's not cleanup anymore. At that point they're writing the operating manual for the whole sport, with everybody in the room lobbying for their own piece.

And the funny part is the SEC and Big Ten opposed the committee bill and now look like they're getting a lot of what they wanted anyway. Not exactly shocking. Those two conferences cover 26 states, that's 52 senators, and you need 60.

If a compromise ends the chaos, fine, I'll take it. I just can't shake the feeling that we're not fixing college sports so much as creating the next mess we'll all be back here arguing about in five years.

If you're not seriously considering athletes' rights when you say you're going to cap, and collectively bargain, you're not seriously working on the problem.

I'm not saying that's easy. It's extraordinarily hard. But the schools are acting as though they can solve this problem without the athletes, and they can't.

[Steamboat Willie]

1 hour ago, BobInHouston said:

If you're not seriously considering athletes' rights when you say you're going to cap, and collectively bargain, you're not seriously working on the problem.

I'm not saying that's easy. It's extraordinarily hard. But the schools are acting as though they can solve this problem without the athletes, and they can't.

I agree. If you're going to put a cap on what players can make, the players have to be part of that conversation. You can't have Congress, the conferences and the schools decide among themselves what athletes are allowed to earn and expect that to be the end of it.

If college sports wants the stability of the NFL model: spending limits, enforceable rules, etc.;  eventually they're going to have to accept the other side of that model too. The players get a seat at the table.

[mmdaytontexas]

The NCAA, or a new organization, can legally cap pay-for-play since that wording is not in any piece of NIL legislation anywhere. In fact, in most NIL legislation, pay-for-play is forbidden. What you cannot cap is the NIL. However, you can legally take the schools out of offering and paying players with conference and national association rules. 

Players have a right through their agents to sell their NIL for any amount they want, but that's between them and the markets, not the schools. The schools and conferences should be able to form their own organization and set their own portal rules and base-level cost-of-living requirements for each player who cannot earn NIL dollars. 

If this nonsense continues as is, then the Universities should tell the NFL to form G Leagues and draft all these players straight out of high school for those teams. It's hypocritical to call this a university sport and these players student athletes.

[Hal Kemp]

2 hours ago, GoHorns1 said:

Who is going to enforce the rules with punishment with tough consequences for violating the rules?

I understand why you ask this as history and past actions show its ineptness, but in theory it should be the governing body…NCAA. It’s the universities’ association, and they should govern themselves.

[GoHorns1]

5 minutes ago, Hal Kemp said:

I understand why you ask this as history and past actions show its ineptness, but in theory it should be the governing body…NCAA. It’s the universities’ association, and they should govern themselves.

True, but will the universities will give the governing authority power to enforce the rules with powerful consequences? The governing authority must have subpoena power to investigate but with a window of time. No more waiting a couple of years.

Edited Monday at 10:48 PM by GoHorns1

[Hal Kemp]

2 minutes ago, GoHorns1 said:

True, but will the universities will give the governing authority power to enforce the rules with powerful consequences?

That’s the $64,000 question! 
That is what is needed, but I realize it is easier said than done! One can hope!

[BobInHouston]

2 hours ago, mmdaytontexas said:

The NCAA, or a new organization, can legally cap pay-for-play since that wording is not in any piece of NIL legislation anywhere. In fact, in most NIL legislation, pay-for-play is forbidden. What you cannot cap is the NIL. However, you can legally take the schools out of offering and paying players with conference and national association rules. 

Players have a right through their agents to sell their NIL for any amount they want, but that's between them and the markets, not the schools. The schools and conferences should be able to form their own organization and set their own portal rules and base-level cost-of-living requirements for each player who cannot earn NIL dollars. 

If this nonsense continues as is, then the Universities should tell the NFL to form G Leagues and draft all these players straight out of high school for those teams. It's hypocritical to call this a university sport and these players student athletes.

You would fit in quite well with the NCAA, which has tried for decades (and failed) to repeal the law of supply and demand.

We have had like a hundred years of this "nonsense." More than that, actually. The "cap" was basically zero, in terms of actual cash, and schools ignored it, because the market the schools wanted to tap cost real money. When NIL became "legal," costs skyrocketed because schools need the best players they can find.

The schools are welcome to live by the laws you suggest, but they won't, because they want their TV rights to be worth the millions they're being paid for them. But they do want the rules, because they will lower costs.

 

[BobInHouston]

2 hours ago, GoHorns1 said:

True, but will the universities will give the governing authority power to enforce the rules with powerful consequences? eThe governing authority must have subpoena power to investigate but with a window of time. No more waiting a couple of years.

NCAA rules never have been laws, so you can forget about subpoena power.

[GoHorns1]

Just now, BobInHouston said:

NCAA rules never have been laws, so you can forget about subpoena power.

Exactly. The new the governing private authority must have subpoena power to enforce the rules with tough consequences. That authority can be given power to subpoena by the schools.

[TTown]

Well Dellenger latest is the SEC presidents had a call and got a Summary of the revision changes. But  took no action until they see the full language of the bill. He gave no hint at the revisions etc. Devil in the details, so supposedly tomorrow.

[horns96]

I see a lot of people bemoaning "government" while not knowing how government works.  This bill is so far from becoming law, no way it passes the House with a mid-term election coming up in November.  

[TTown]

Dellenger posted latest revisions so we will see. The NIL HS part will be challenged I'm sure. Or a bunch will try to reclassify asap. https://x.com/RossDellenger/status/2082085881221919018?s=20

[Steamboat Willie]

The misconception here is that the media-rights fight is about forcing the SEC and Big Ten into a TV pool. It never was. Joining has always been voluntary. The real question is whether the final bill keeps enough incentives, or consequences, that "voluntary" quietly turns into "you'd better join." Postseason access was the actual lever, which is why Sankey went after it. Take that out and the section sits in the bill doing nothing. Those two keep cutting their own deals, and a pool without their inventory isn't the $4-8 billion everybody's been selling.

So: political win for Cody Campbell, policy win for the SEC and Big Ten. He gets to say Congress passed a national framework. They get to say they protected the model that already runs the sport. But did we fix anything? The biggest spenders are already operating around these caps through associated entities. If the bill just legalizes what they're already doing, that's not a ceiling, that's a floor.

[TTown]

Big 10 Commish on if bill isn't passed.

https://x.com/RossDellenger/status/2082133809865031721?s=20

[Steamboat Willie]

The associated-entity fight is what's really holding this bill up, mostly because there's no clean answer to it.

The loophole is simple enough. Schools are capped on what they can share directly, so the big programs find ways to move extra money through multimedia partners, sponsors, and other affiliated businesses. Nebraska's the best example. The CSC threw out deals for 18 players after deciding Playfly counted as an associated entity and the contracts had no real business purpose.

But not every Learfield or Playfly deal is fake. Those companies have thousands of legitimate sponsorships and media relationships, and you can't just assume every dollar tied to them is circumvention. Leave it wide open, though, and the biggest spenders keep building rosters outside the cap anyway. That's the whole problem. Everybody agrees there needs to be a ceiling. Nobody has figured out how to stop the cheating without dragging a lot of real business down with it. Which is why this is the piece that still isn't resolved.

[Steamboat Willie]

On 7/28/2026 at 11:55 AM, TTown said:

Big 10 Commish on if bill isn't passed.

https://x.com/RossDellenger/status/2082133809865031721?s=20

I thought Petitti's comments were interesting. He basically said if Congress can't get a bill done, the next step is working out CSC changes with the other conferences. If that doesn't work, the fallback is self-governance. He also made a point of saying that doesn't mean anyone stops playing each other, which tells me he wanted to shut down the breakaway league narrative before it got started.

The bigger takeaway is that the SEC and Big Ten don't seem boxed in. A federal bill is one option, not their only option. That's probably why they're in no rush to meet congressional deadlines. The catch is that self-governance doesn't solve the legal problem. Without antitrust protection, you're back to writing your own rules and hoping they survive the next lawsuit. That's the exact problem Congress is trying to solve.