The Protect College Sports Act Is a Complete Joke

3 min readThere was a general rejoicing when the so-called Protect College Sports Act passed the Senate with a huge bipartisan majority on Monday. This act has brought Tailgunner Ted Cruz onto the set of ESPN's College GameDay set, and the plan allegedly is to have the president sign this thing at halftime. For those two things alone, the bill should have lost in the Senate. But the larger problem is that the bill was sold mendaciously. It is nothing more than an attempt by coaches and administrators to get back some of the control they lost when the old system of unpaid labor collapsed in court. Its advocates spoke darkly of the "chaos" that a suddenly open market had caused in this peculiar corner of the mass public entertainment industry. But the real problem with the PCSA is that it's a lousy bill. From Politico:A high priority for Senate commerce chair Ted Cruz of Texas and the panel’s top Democrat, Maria Cantwell of Washington, the Protect College Sports Act would replace a patchwork of state laws governing student-athlete compensation, transfers, and eligibility with one overarching federal rulebook.This contribution to big government from the Tailgunner is genuinely disappointing.But while the 77-22 vote would ordinarily present itself as a welcome glimpse of cross-party unity, it is now being overshadowed by a murky outlook in the House, where Republicans oppose multiple provisions of the Senate package. Democrats, meanwhile, are smarting from a highly charged debate over whether the legislation would exploit college athletes of color—and some are questioning why their colleagues would split from the AFL-CIO and the NAACP, two organizations core to the party’s base that oppose the legislation.(Ed. Note: "Cross-party unity" is not a good thing when one of the two parties has lost its mind.)The biggest victory for the workers in this industry was in the legitimization of name, image, and likeness payments. Athletes and fair-minded people around the industry fought for this in and out of court for decades. This has occasioned a kind of arms race for athletes suddenly capable of making money off their names, images, and likenesses, which has frightened college sports administrators and other buffet-grazers right down to their socks. The bill is celebrated for replacing the "patchwork of state laws" governing the NIL market with a single federal entity. It also requires reporting for any NIL payment above $600. As I should not have to explain to conservative supporters of the bill, like the Tailgunner, a federal "framework" can contract as well as expand.But the real joker in the deck is the provision granting college sports an antitrust exemption. From Forbes: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 in the school’s home market, and distributors would have to reconvey media rights back to school that aren’t used (for any sport).This provision should have been a poison pill for the whole enterprise. It gives away the entire game and demonstrates that the PCSA is really a way for coaches, administrators, and other hangers-on to regain some of the control they enjoyed until the whole system was laughed out of various courtrooms. It also represents a roadblock to any attempts by college athletes to unionize.I am reminded of how baseball's owners reacted to threats to the old reserve clause. People like Bill Veeck warned them that the clause was judicially doomed and that they should all prepare for a soft landing. The baseball establishment ignored them, so, when the reserve clause finally fell, there was "chaos" as free agency hit baseball all at once. People—including, well, me—warned the college sports industry that its unpaid-labor business plan was unsustainable, and that they should prepare for that eventuality. Baseball's management spent decades of ill feeling trying to get back the control that the reserve clause once gave them. Now, I fear that the people in charge of college sports are embarked on a similar fool's errand. And they have Congress running things now. Oy.