Breaking Down The Protect College Sports Act Passed by The Senate

The Protect College Sports Act easily passed the U.S. Senate yesterday in a 77-22 vote. It now moves on to the House of Representatives, where it’s expected to encounter more pushback and potential amendments.

In its current form, the PCSA covers everything from NIL and revenue sharing to health and safety and protection of women’s and Olympic sports. Below is a breakdown of the major provisions.

The PCSA does something dozens of proposed bills have attempted to do since the NCAA changed its rules prohibiting college athletes from monetizing their name, image, and likeness back in 2021: it creates a right to earn compensation for NIL at the federal level, replacing the patchwork of state laws.

In addition, the PCSA enshrines the revenue share cap adopted in the House v. NCAA settlement and also allows for additional compensation to flow to athletes through a new $22.5 million retention fund, which can grow to $27.5 million for schools paying athletes in non-revenue sports. The revenue sharing cap can still be increased or modified by the parties to the lawsuit, and that portion of the PCSA lasts only for the duration of the settlement unless Congress later votes to retain those aspects.

“…compensation on revenue sharing is probably the most important thing we could possibly enshrine in federal law today,” said U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and senior member of the Senate Finance Committee. “This is [Congress] saying, for the first time, that an athlete gets a percentage of the media rights, the ticket sales, and the sponsorship.”

Another issue tackled by the PCSA is the lack of regulations around agents in the NIL space. If it ultimately becomes law, the PCSA will require agents to register with a state and certify their registration to the NCAA before representing college athletes. Agent fees would also be capped at 5%, and agents would be prohibited from misleading athletes about the existence or value of NIL deals to influence that athlete’s decision to enroll or transfer.

To further protect athletes, the PCSA also requires that NIL contracts include key terms and not bind athletes beyond their collegiate eligibility.

One of the reasons federal bills have failed previously is the varied priorities of Congressional leaders. Many have wanted to include health and safety or academic guidelines added to any NIL bill, but they haven’t all agreed on what that looks like.

The PCSA includes several provisions aimed at ensuring athletes can complete their academic careers. Scholarships would be guaranteed for ten years after eligibility in order to allow athletes to complete their degrees.

It also prevents athletes from losing their scholarships due to injury or poor performance in competition. And prevents athletic staff from pushing athletes into courses or majors they might not choose on their own.

A number provisions in the PCSA protect athletes health and safety, both while in school and after their eligiblity.

Division I schools would be required to cover out-of-pocket medical costs for athletic injuries or illness, including covering the cost of a second opinion and provision for an end-of-eligibility medical examination. Those institutions would also be required to cover out-of-pocket costs for sports-related injuries or illness for five years after the athlete’s eligiblity concludes.

The PCSA also mandates safety standards for heat exertion, brain injury, sick cell trait, and asthma, all of which would be overseen by health and safety officers that are independent of the athletic department. Coaches and non-medical personnel would be prevented from second-guessing the decisions of medical personnel on playing decisions.

Focused on post-eligibility, the PCSA would create a medical trust fund of $60-100 million per year to help institutions who don’t have the financial resources to provide post-eligibility medical coverage to athletes. These funds could be used to help athletes cover the costs associated with long-term conditions caused by playing their sport such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

As schools increasingly share revenue with athletes, sports that don’t generate net revenue are potentially on the chopping block. The PCSA, however, attempts to protect these sports.

The bill attempts to prevent schools from cutting women’s and Olympic sports by requiring school to maintain a minimum number of sports (the NCAA already requires 16 for all programs with FBS football teams, including a minimum of six sports involving all-male teams or mixed teams of males and females, and a minimum of eight all-female teams).

It also goes one step further for schools generating $80 million or more in revenue. They must keep at least the same number of roster sports and grants-in-aid for non-revenue sports as they did in 2024-25 (the last academic year before revenue sharing was allowed by the House settlement).

During her floor speech, Senator Cantwell said the bill needed to be passed, “because we need to stop stealing money out of college [and] university institutions for education, for tuition, for professors, and putting it into an arms race on sports.”

“It’s time to make sports about playing sports again, and not about the money. So this bill stops the cuts to women’s and Olympic sports. Why? Because who’s paying the bill right now? The number one person paying the bill is a hundred programs and a thousand women and Olympic athletes because they don’t make money, so the easiest way to save money in an institution is to cut them right now. And so we are trying to stop that.”

There are a few other related items in the bill as passed:

It expressly does not override, modify, or amend the requirements of Title IX and provides protection for Title IX whistleblowers

Requires schools that pool their media rights to promote and distribute the media rights for women’s and Olympic sports

Protects walk-on eligibility for para-athletes

The bill’s wide-ranging reach also goes into eligibility, transfers, and coaching changes.

Athletes will have five years of eligibility with exceptions for serious injuries and other medical conditions (as compared to the NCAA’s current five-year eligibility rule with limited exceptions for military service, religious missions, and maternity leave).

Transfers would be limited to once without having to sit out a year, although athletes could transfer again without penalty if they are pursuing a graduate degree, their sport is cut, their head coaches leaves, or they are sexually assaulted or harassed.

Coaches would also have a new limitation on their movement: coaches and key football staff could not leave mid-season for another FBS program and could not engage in recruiting, roster management, NIL activity, or game-planning functions for a new team during the same season.

Other provisions of the bill create an Office of Athlete Ombudsman at the NCAA to provide independent guidance to athletes, requires at least one-third of governing boards or committees with rulemaking authority to be made up of current or recent former college athletes, and requires that two members of the to-be-created Commission on the Future of College Athletics to be from HBCUs and another two be from mid-sized conferences.

It also amends the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to provide antitrust protection to college sports that would allow schools to join a voluntary collective to pool and negotiate their media rights like the pro leagues. It would also require every football and basketball game to be available on a non-exclusive basis to at least one free local television outlet in the school’s home market, and distributors would have to reconvey media rights back to school that aren’t used (for any sport).

Although the bill overwhelmingly passed the Senate, it’s expected to encounter hurdles in the House, which has its next scheduled legislative session beginning Monday, November 9.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com