Backers of the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act say it will fix the problems of intercollegiate sports. Sports union leaders say it’s a return to an old system of exploitation.
The act would reduce athletes’ right to transfer schools, and it fails to give them the status of employees.
College sports have come a long way since it was about scheduling friendly competitions with the fellas down the road. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) began in 1906 as a nonprofit organization governing 62 college athletic programs. Today it oversees 1,100 programs in the United States. College teams in NCAA’s most competitive classification, Division I, are financial powerhouses. The top 75 college athletic programs had $11.84 billion in revenue in 2024. The top program, the University of Texas at Austin, generated $332 million.
Three main revenue streams contribute to that river of cash:
- Lucrative media rights deals to broadcast live games and circulate highlights. In the 2024-2025 fiscal year, the Southeastern Conference brought in $1.03 billion from its deal with ESPN and its 14 full-member schools received $72.4 million on average.
- Licenses to companies to sell branded merchandise, often bearing players’ likenesses. In exchange, schools receive products, cash and a percentage of sales. For example, Ohio State University is halfway through a 15-year $252 million sponsorship deal with Nike.
- Naming rights to athletic venues. In March, Alaska Airlines renewed its sponsorship of the University of Washington’s basketball arena for $28 million over 10 years. University of Arkansas just signed a $70 million deal to rename theirs the CommunityAmerica Razorback Stadium.
Ultimately that revenue flows from the players’ hard work. Fans don’t buy jerseys with the name of the coach or school president. They don’t subscribe to ESPN to watch the accounting department. But for decades, the players who create all that value have been locked out of the marketplace. Under NCAA rules they were compensated only with scholarships, barred from benefiting from their NIL rights, and could be punished if they profited from autograph signings, merchandise sales, or sponsorship deals.
That all changed in recent years. Thanks to legal action and state legislation, the NCAA changed the rules in 2021 to allow players to profit from the rights to their name, image, and likeness (referred to by the acronym NIL). Now college athletes can sell autographed memorabilia or clothes with their name on them.
Moving out
Nearly every worker in the United States — except members of the armed forces, midshift healthcare workers‚ and NCAA college athletes — is free to take a better position at another workplace. College students too can transfer schools when they please. Only college athletes are restricted.
For decades, Division I players who clashed with their coaching staff, disliked their living conditions, or were just plain homesick were not allowed to transfer to another Division I school without sitting out a year. This restriction was finally removed after a court ruling in 2024. The NCAA granted players unlimited transfers through something called the “transfer portal.” Players who want to change schools for whatever reason now submit their name to the portal between seasons and can receive offers from any other college program who want their services. They can transfer as often as they want, as long as they want, until they use up four years of NCAA eligibility.
The logical next frontier for college athletes would be to win classification as employees. This would allow them to unionize and collectively bargain for better working conditions. The National Labor Relations Board has gone back and forth about whether student athletes can be considered workers with union rights. When its board has been majority Republican presidential appointees, the answer has been no; majority-Democratic employees have answered yes.
In 2022, after minor league baseball players joined the Major League Baseball Players Association, some thought college athletes would unionize next. An NCAA Division I college athlete union could be 190,000 members strong.
Busy with bills
This year, the pendulum swung back.
President Trump issued an executive order on April 3 calling on Congress to pass legislation by August 1 to “save college sports.” On May 27, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) introduced the Protect College Sports Act, co-sponsored by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas). The bipartisan effort contains elements of two earlier bipartisan bills that were introduced in 2025.
A House bill called the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act (SCORE Act) had been introduced in July 2025 by Congressman Gus Bilirakis (R-Florida) and championed by Congresswoman Janelle Bynum (D-Oregon). AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler denounced it as “union-busting policy in action” because it would have allowed schools to have ultimate control over athletes’ name, image and likeness, and empowered the NCAA — not state legislature — to set rules on athlete compensation. The bill was set for a House vote in early May. Bynum revoked her support. The bill was later pulled off the agenda.
A Senate bill called the Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement Act (SAFE) was introduced by Cantwell in September 2025 and had support from the AFL-CIO and major professional sports unions. But crucially to some union leaders, it fell short of granting student athletes employment status.
Meghann Burke, head of the women’s professional soccer league union, spoke out against that omission.
“Universities are nonprofit educational institutions that receive federal funding and tax benefits,” Burke said in a press statement. “They cannot operate a de facto for-profit sports business inside those institutions while disclaiming the civil-rights and labor obligations that come with public support.”
As currently written, the Protect College Sports Act pulls ideas from both SCORE and SAFE.
It would let players retain their NIL rights, cap player agent fees at 5%, and require schools to provide comprehensive medical coverage to players. But it would also prevent players from participating in intercollegiate sports for more than five years and restrict them to one transfer without penalty. And it would also leave unanswered the question of whether or not student athletes are employees with workers rights, like the right to join a union.
The 10 players unions of the AFL-CIO Sports Council issued a joint statement on the Protect College Sports Act June 18.
“As written, the bill further silences college athletes’ voices on the job, undermines their right to collective bargaining to improve their workplace conditions, jeopardizes fair compensation and stops states from passing laws that would protect and advance their rights.”
The bill is headed to the Senate for a full vote, and appears to have a good chance of making it through Congress this summer after receiving a public endorsement from the president. 190,000 college athletes await the outcome.
