Sens. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., on Tuesday announced that they have introduced a bill pertaining to college sports, including athletes’ activities in making money from their name, image and likeness (NIL).
The measure also would attempt to address what has become a massive shift in athlete movement among schools by generally requiring athletes to complete three years of athletic eligibility before they could transfer without having to sit out of competition for a year. There would be some exceptions, including for coaching changes.
Under current NCAA rules, undergraduate athletes in any sport at a Division I school can transfer once at any time and be eligible to play immediately. While there are restrictions on athletes’ ability to transfer more than once, the NCAA has waiver processes that generally have allowed them to make multiple moves.
The bill would establish a national standards for NIL activities, preempting varying state laws around the enterprise and requiring the NCAA to develop and maintain a uniform standard contract for NIL deals.
The bill specifically says no state can adopt a law that “relates to the rights of student athletes to receive compensation directly or indirectly” from a school. It also says nothing in the bill will affect the employment status of athletes, who stand to get a number of new benefits under the bill, including access to a health-care trust fund.
A bill passed by the California Assembly that is still alive, but delayed until 2024, in the state’s Senate proposes to create the opportunity for athletes there to receive revenue-sharing payments from their schools. Athletes’ employment status is the subject of federal lawsuit and a complaint against the NCAA, the Pac-12 Conference and the University of Southern California by the National Labor Relations Board’s Los Angeles office.
In addition, the bill would give the NCAA, conferences and schools legal protection from any challenge to actions taken as “authorized, consistent with, or reasonably contemplated by any provision” of the measure. This is a feature of such a bill that the association has long been seeking. Various of the NCAA’s limits — or attempts at limits — on athlete compensation and NIL activities have drawn antitrust lawsuits or threats of intervention by the U.S. Justice Department.
More recently, new NCAA President Charlie Baker has adamantly called for a standard contract for NIL contracts.
The bill follows a year-long effort by Tuberville, a former major-college football head coach, and Manchin to look at the issues addressed by the measure.
A news release from Tuberville’s and Manchin’s offices announcing the bill included prepared, specific statements of support from Baker, four presidents of Power Five conference schools and the Big 12 and Southeastern conferences.
This is contrast to a general statement that the NCAA issued late last week when after another bipartisan effort at a college sports bill was launched by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Jerry Moran, R-Kan.; and Cory Booker, D-N.J., who unveiled a discussion draft of a bill.
The draft from Booker, a former Stanford football player; Moran and Blumenthal has some of the same new benefits under the bill announced Tuesday, but it does not appear to include NCAA-friendly features like the legal protection and it does not include any restrictions on athletes’ ability to transfer.
In addition, the Booker-Moran-Blumenthal proposal would set a series of enforceable rules aimed at improving athletes’ short- and long-term health care, their safety and their educational outcomes. And it would place oversight and enforcement in the hands of new entity that would not be a government agency but would be granted investigative and subpoena powers.
Statements from Tuberville and Moran touted their bill’s potential impact.
“ … in recent years, we have faced a rapidly evolving NIL landscape without guidelines to navigate it, which jeopardizes the health of the players and the educational mission of colleges and universities,“ Manchin said. “Our bipartisan legislation strikes a balance between protecting the rights of student-athletes and maintaining the integrity of college sports.”
Said Tuberville: “Our legislation … will set basic rules nationwide, protect our student-athletes, and keep NIL activities from ending college sports as we know it.”
Among other things, the bill would:
▶Require the NCAA to investigate and audit schools’ compliance with the bill’s provisions and refer violations to the Federal Trade Commission.
▶Require athletes to disclose NIL deals to their schools and require the FTC to establish a website with anonymous data about the deals.
▶Require agents, collectives and boosters seeking to have NIL deals with athletes to register with the FTC and make various disclosures to that agency.
▶Establish a fund that would provide for greater health insurance for current and former athletes than is currently in place by schools. The fund also would pay for athletes’ families to travel to the athlete’s events.
Money for the fund would come from a requirement that any collegiate tournament or playoff – this would appear to include the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and the College Football Playoff – put not less than 1% of “annual gross revenues” into the fund.
Former athletes would not be able to access the fund unless they have graduated from the school for which they last played.
