AUSTIN (Nexstar) — As fans gathered around tailgates and college campuses to cheer on their teams in the second weekend of the college football season, some of Texas’ elected leaders sparked a conversation about the future of regulating deals that are making college athletes richer.
It all started with a TV ad that directed viewers to a website called Pass the SCORE Act, which was created by a group called the Coalition for the Future of College Athletics (C4FCA). According to its website, the C4FCA is a “unified front working diligently with members of Congress to ensure that the rights of college athletes are upheld through fair and forward-looking federal legislation on name, image, and likeness (NIL).”
The SCORE Act is the current proposal in Congress to create guardrails to regulate NIL deals and protect college athletes.
The ad caught the eye of Cody Campbell, the Chairman of the Board of Regents of the Texas Tech University System. He snapped a picture of the ad and posted it to his X account, saying the ad and website are filled with false claims.
“The most egregious being that the SCORE Act, in its current form, is supported by every D1 conference in America. This is NOT true,” Campbell wrote in bold letters in his post. Campbell alleged the majority of conferences and its members think the bill should be amended to protect female athletes, Olympic sports, and smaller programs.
Campbell’s post gained traction among the Lone Star state’s congressional delegation on X. Republican Representatives Chip Roy, Wesley Hunt, and Lance Gooden all reposted Campbell’s words and said they would work to amend the bill before it advances.
What is NIL and the SCORE Act?
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) officially approved rule changes in July of 2021 to allow college athletes to make money off of their name, image, and likeness, through deals like endorsements. Since then, states have passed a patchwork of laws on how to regulate these deals. For example, student-athletes in Texas schools are not allowed to be in endorsements that promote alcohol or gambling.
There has been an appetite to create a more uniform set of rules at the national level in Washington D.C., but to date nothing has come to fruition. Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker and U.S. Congressman from Texas, said he had worked on trying to create federal regulations to help protect student-athletes. One issue Allred brought up in a recent interview with Nexstar was there is no cap for how much commission agents can take from student-athletes in these NIL deals.
“I want to see them making money, but I want to make sure they’re not being taken advantage of and I want them to get an education,” Allred said about the student-athletes.
Congress is debating a proposal known as the SCORE Act. The current proposal does this:
- Require agents to register with the NCAA.
- Gives state attorneys general the power to bring a civil action against an agent.
- Requires schools to provide student-athletes with academic support and career counseling services.
- Schools must provide sexual violence prevention, medical care (including payment of out-of-pocket expenses for any injuries related to their sport), and a degree completion program.
- Allows the NCAA to establish rules on reporting NIL deals, prohibited compensation, creating a limit of how much revenue-share universities must pay to all of its athletes (the current proposal sets that at least $20.5 million), registering agents, how athletes can transfer to different schools
- Says student-athletes are not considered employees of the college
- Provides an antitrust exemption for the NCAA
- Requires each university to have 16 varsity teams
During a July 15 U.S. House Energy and Commerce committee hearing, the bill was not supported by Democrats. Much of the concern centered on the antitrust exemptions for the NCAA, as many members of the committee complained the bill gives too much unchecked power to association.
“We can’t do that by returning power to those who abused it for a century,” U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Massachusetts, said in the meeting. “We should do it by finally guaranteeing college athletes the rights, protections, and seats at the table that they’ve been denied for far too long.”
Trahan also argued there is no enforcement mechanism in the bill to make sure college athletes have a path to report any violations. Democrats further argued that not considering the athletes as employees would not allow them to bargain if they have concerns. Republicans on the committee argued it was a good starting point and were willing to work with Democrats to come to a final solution.
U.S. Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Washington, wrote a letter to the bill’s author to address concerns he had with the bill. “The bill appears to be a product of the richest conferences to cement into place the current power structure in college athletics that would leave only the wealthiest schools able to compete at the highest levels of college athletics,” Baumgartner wrote.
Rep. Hunt wrote on his X account that the bill would force athletic programs to cut scholarships and entire women’s programs. “Our daughters, and every young woman in America deserve fairness, opportunity, and the same fighting chance to excel in collegiate sports that generations before them fought so hard to secure,” Hunt wrote on his post.
Four of the 18 co-sponsors on the bill are from the Lone Star State, including Gooden, who said on X that the bill does need work.
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