Bill would eliminate billions of dollars in lawful athlete pay, grants NCAA immunity to operate above the law, allows cuts to NIL and Olympic/women’s sports, and includes self-policing that would lead to more university cover ups of sexual abuse and negligent actions.
The National College Players Association (NCPA) today condemned the Cruz-Cantwell “Protect College Sports Act” as an unprecedented federal assault on college athletes that uses transfer and eligibility concerns as a Trojan horse to deliver the NCAA and conferences what they have sought for years: special immunity from the law and the power to suppress athletes’ economic rights.
“This bill is not reform,” said Ramogi Huma, Executive Director of the NCPA. “It is a bailout. Congress could have addressed reasonable transfer and eligibility parameters, the issues driving anxiety across college sports, without stripping athletes of their leverage and handing the NCAA the legal tools it needs to keep exploiting athletes. Instead, the bill uses those issues as cover to put a predatory industry above the law.”
An antitrust exemption, attack on labor, disproportionate harm to Black athletes
The NCPA said the legislation is designed to undermine the free-market NIL ecosystem that athletes built after decades of being denied basic economic rights.
“This bill would functionally shut down a massive share of NIL from NIL collectives alone - well over $2 billion every year that would otherwise go primarily to football and men’s basketball athletes, the majority of whom are Black,” Huma said. “At the same time, that money and more will continue flowing from these same sources to coaches and administrators who are predominantly White. This is an unjust wealth extraction, dressed up as ‘order.’ It’s a government sanctioned upward transfer that carves young Americans out of the American Dream and equal opportunity while locking in guaranteed riches for an older class of coaches and administrators.”
Despite claims that the cap on what athletic programs can pay athletes is “negotiable,” it locks in a very low nationwide ceiling tied to the House settlement, then shields NCAA/conference pay-suppression rules from antitrust challenge. The only realistic way to raise it is Congress changing the statute, not athletes bargaining in a marketplace. What good is a union if it can’t collectively bargain with the decision-maker? Athletes can’t collectively bargain with Congress.
“This bill would play athletes and organized labor for fools,” Huma said. “The bill wants athletes to believe they can somehow ‘bargain’ for fair treatment after Congress legislates away the free market, preempts state protections, and gives the NCAA legal immunity for suppressing athlete compensation and freedom. That is not bargaining - that is disarmament.”
“The free market and enforceable rights are what allowed pro athletes to win fair treatment,” Huma continued. “Those gains didn’t come from owners’ goodwill. They came from leverage. This bill is an extremely anti-labor, anti-worker effort aimed at stripping athletes of the same tools every other American worker relies on while entrenching the NCAA’s control.”
The bill also seeks to further exploit college athletes by setting the stage for media-rights pooling dramatically increases what conferences and schools collect, while athletes are still boxed in by a settlement-defined pay ceiling. Once the settlement expires, the bill keeps the cap in place but increases it only by Consumer Price Index adjustments, not by booming media-rights revenue.
Women’s and Olympic sports sold out - protections made conditional
The NCPA also warned that the bill sells out women’s and Olympic sports by offering participation protections that are conditional - not guaranteed. It ties basic roster spots and scholarships to a revenue-maximizing scheme and then distributes that new pooled revenue to conferences and institutions. The bill sends the message that women’s and Olympic sports are expendable unless they come with a financial upside, and all athletes lose when participation is treated as conditional and athletes’ labor is used as leverage.
“Protecting women’s and Olympic sports means protecting them from cuts,” Huma said. “This bill does not. It makes that protection conditional, leaving the door open for the same budget-cutting and roster-shedding we’ve seen for years whenever powerful stakeholders decide women’s and Olympic athletes are expendable.”
“Safety” rhetoric without third party enforcement: more self-policing, more cover-ups
The NCPA said the bill sends a devastating message to every survivor of sexual abuse and to every family shattered by catastrophic injuries and preventable deaths:
The bill's so-called enforcement mechanism can chill accountability: it requires 60 days' notice before suit, lets defendants block litigation by claiming they have "cured" a violation when a cure is possible, and authorizes judges to award potentially large attorney's fees to the prevailing party. That fee risk can discourage survivors of sexual abuse, families who lost a child in hazardous workouts, and athletes harmed by negligence from coming forward and finding counsel. Not to mention many lawyers will not represent an athlete over serious safety violations that do not amount to high damages.
Americans are tired of Congress taking no real action against the systems that enable sexual abuse. We watched institutions ‘self-police’ for years while predators operated in plain sight. Larry Nassar is the most notorious example of what “self-policing” really means: cover-ups, silence, and victims left to suffer. And the Epstein scandal reminded the world what happens when powerful institutions and gatekeepers look the other way while vulnerable people are harmed. The lesson is obvious - when accountability is optional, abuse thrives.
Huma added: “If the NCAA and conferences were capable of policing themselves, we wouldn’t have decades of scandals, preventable deaths, and lifelong injuries. Yet this bill doubles down on the same failed model while asking athletes and families to trust the very institutions that have repeatedly failed them.”
Minimum standards for reform
At a minimum, Congress should enact the following as part of any federal legislation:
“Congress should not be in the business of targeting a specific group of American citizens for fewer rights, less safety, and less pay, all to protect the NCAA from accountability,” Huma said. “This bill sells out players. It sells out women’s and Olympic sports. And it tells victims of abuse and families who lost children that the NCAA’s legal comfort matters more than human lives.”