Booker, Dem lawmakers introducing NCAA reform bill
A bill being introduced Thursday by four Democratic lawmakers would grant college athletes sweeping rights to compensation, including a share of the revenue generated by their sports, and create a federal commission to oversee college athletics.
The College Athletes Bill of Rights is sponsored by Sens. Cory Booker ( D- N. J.), Richard Blumenthal (D- Conn.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-ill.). If passed, it could wreak havoc on the NCAA’S ability to govern intercollegiate athletics and the association’s model for amateurism.
The announcement of the bill comes a day after the Supreme Court agreed to review a court ruling the NCAA says blurs the “line between student-athletes and professionals” by removing caps on certain compensation that major college football and basketball players can receive.
The NCAA has turned to Congress for help as it works toward permitting athletes to earn money from endorsements and sponsorship deals, while also trying to fend off myriad statelevel bills that would undercut any attempt to create uniform rules for competing schools.
Last week, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-miss.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, introduced a bill that would allow college athletes to be paid for their names, images and likenesses, with oversight from the Federal Trade Commission. The bill also protects the NCAA from future antitrust challenges to its compensation rules.
Booker and Blumenthal’s bill, however, goes way beyond NIL rights for athletes and is not nearly as Ncaa-friendly.
“As a former college athlete, these issues are deeply personal to me,” said Booker, who played football at Stanford. “The NCAA has exploited generations of college athletes for its own personal financial gain by preventing athletes from earning any meaningful compensation and failing to keep the athletes under its charge healthy and safe.”
The legislation would allow college athletes to earn money off their names, images and likenesses with minimal restrictions, through either individual or group licensing deals.
It would also require schools to share 50% of the profit from their revenue-generating sports such as football and basketball with the athletes who play them, after the cost of scholarships are deducted.
Some of the biggest athletic departments in the country, such as Ohio State, Alabama and Texas, generate more than $100 million in revenue annually, the bulk of which comes from football and men’s basketball. Almost all of that revenue typically gets sunk back into the athletic departments to pay for not just those programs, but all the other non-revenue sports.
The bill also would:
• Create what it calls “enforceable” health and safety standards for athletes developed by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Schools would subject to fines that could be worth millions if standards are not met.
• Establish a medical trust fund athletes can access for five years after leaving school.
• Guarantee college athletes’ scholarships for as many years as it takes them to receive an undergraduate degree and ban coaches and staff from influencing academic choices such as majors and courses.
• Remove restrictions on athletes who transfer from one school to another and penalties for breaking a national letter of intent, and allow athletes to return to school after entering a draft within seven days of that draft.
• Require athletic departments to annually disclose revenues and expenditures, including salaries of department personnel.
• Establish a nine-member Commission on College Athletics, appointed by the president, that would include at least five former college athletes and individuals with legal expertise. The commission would take over much of the job of overseeing college sports from the NCAA, enforcing rules laid out in the law with subpoena power to investigate violations.
The NCAA will vote next month on legislation that will permit athletes to be compensated for their names, images and likenesses for the first time, but with some restrictions.