A New Deal for College Sports? How the Protect College Sports Act Would Work
By Alexander L. Ballard
The Protect College Sports Act would change college athletics by altering compensation, transfer, and eligibility rules, establishing protections for non-revenue sports, limiting antitrust liability for specified rules, and leaving athlete employment status unresolved.
The Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act, 77-22, on Monday night, sending it to the House after months of hearings, amendments, and lobbying. It would change college athletics by altering compensation, transfer, and eligibility rules, establishing protections for non-revenue sports, limiting antitrust liability for specified rules, and leaving athlete employment status unresolved.
The compensation rules are the most-discussed part of the bill, and they are also the most misunderstood. The bill does not set a single new compensation cap. It keeps the existing revenue sharing cap from the House settlement in place, then layers two add-ons on top. Schools can exceed that cap by up to $22.5 million a year through a “retention fund” designed to retain athletes at the school, subject to statutory conditions, and by up to another $5 million a year specifically tied to compensation for athletes in non-revenue, women’s, and Olympic sports. A school loses access to the larger retention-fund exception if it fails to meet graduation-rate and academic-progress benchmarks. So the extra money is not guaranteed just by having the revenue to spend it; a school has to keep its athletes eligible and progressing academically to use it at all.
The bill also gives the NCAA, conferences, and schools specified antitrust protection when they enforce or comply with a defined list of rules, including compensation, eligibility, transfer, recruiting, and agent-registration rules. In NCAA v. Alston, 594 U.S. 69, 84–86 (2021), the Supreme Court applied ordinary antitrust scrutiny to NCAA restrictions on certain education-related benefits. The Senate-passed bill would therefore provide statutory protection for specified rules that Alston subjected to ordinary antitrust scrutiny. That protection covers the rule-makers, not the athletes bound by the rules; it settles who can get sued, not necessarily what the rules themselves say.
Non-revenue sports get their own set of protections. Schools with $80 million or more in annual athletics revenue have to maintain their 2024-25 levels of roster spots and grant-in-aid opportunities in non-revenue sports, including Olympic sports, for nine years, with a waiver available for financial hardship. A separate provision covers schools with $50 million but less than $80 million in revenue, protected for four years with additional exemption grounds. Schools below the $50 million threshold are not covered by either of those roster-and-grant-in-aid protections. That means the same bill can protect a swim program at one school while leaving a comparable program at a smaller athletic department with no equivalent floor at all.
Athletes’ eligibility and transfer options change too. Division I and Division II athletes get a maximum five-year eligibility window, a rule that currently exists as NCAA bylaw but would become federal statute if this bill is enacted. Athletes transferring from one four-year institution to another may transfer once without losing or delaying eligibility; a second transfer generally carries a one-year eligibility penalty, subject to exceptions for things like a discontinued sport or a coaching change.
The bill does not resolve the employee-status question, and it says so directly: the legislation is neutral on, and does nothing to alter, whether student athletes are employees. It also creates a 24-member Commission on the Future of College Athletics, directed in part to study the implications of collective bargaining and employment status. That question has not gone away; it has just been passed to a commission rather than settled in the bill itself.
The House will not take it up until after the November midterm elections, when it returns from recess. Its practical effect will differ depending on where an athlete competes: the school’s athletics revenue, the athlete’s sport, and the rules that apply to that institution all matter.
Alexander L. Ballard is a J.D. Candidate, 2027, Northeastern University School of Law, concentrating in sports law. He is a former Division II swimmer and current college club swimming coach with experience in collegiate athletics compliance.
