By James Sutherland on SwimSwam
U.S. Congressman Michael Baumgartner has introduced a new bill that would overhaul the governance of college sports in light of the ever-changing landscape in the NCAA amidst the pending settlement in the House v. NCAA case.
Baumgartner, who officially introduced the Restore College Sports Act on Tuesday, spoke on the House floor on Monday, using the March Madness basketball tournament as an example of how NIL has reshaped the NCAA and smaller market schools can no longer be competitive under the current model.
All four #1 seeds made it to the Final Four of March Madness, with the Florida Gators edging out the Houston Cougars in the final on Monday night.
“Tonight is the NCAA championship, but the magic of March Madness is gone,” Baumgartner said, according to The Spokesman-Review. “There’s no upsets, no Cinderellas. Just bigger brands with bigger budgets. Why? Because college sports is on a downward trajectory, and the magic of what used to make it special is gone.”
The Restore College Act would replace the NCAA with a new entity that would oversee and regulate college sports, and would be led by a commissioner appointed by the U.S. President and confirmed by the Senate.
In Barmgartner’s press release, it notes the new legislation would create a national commission “to establish clear rules for athlete compensation and program governance—with student-athletes at the table.”
The Restore College Sports Act would implement a national NIL revenue-sharing system that pools and redistributes funds equally to all student-athletes, “regardless of fame, position or sport.”
Another important piece of the bill is that it would create regional-based conferences within a single time zone to cut down on excessive travel that has only been exasperated this past season with former Pac-12 teams from California and Arizona moving to the ACC and Big Ten, which have schools primarily based on the eastern side of the country (and Big 12 which is more spread out).
There would also be a salary cap implemented for college coaches “to halt the runaway spending arms race.”
“Public universities, many of which are taxpayer-funded and heavily subsidized, need the same kind of fair competition rules that Congress has supported for professional sports leagues through antitrust exemptions and revenue-sharing models,” Baumgartner said.
“This is about saving Olympic sports, protecting academic integrity, and restoring sanity to an industry that’s completely lost control,” Baumgartner said. “Congress has a choice: step in and restore order—or let small schools fold, non-revenue sports vanish, and college sports become a monopoly for the few.”
Baumgartner speaking on the House floor:
Boise State legal professor Sam Ehrlich, who focuses on the sports industry, told The Spokesman-Review that Baumgartner’s proposal stands out from other NIL-related bills because it envisions a complete overhaul of the college sports system rather than putting guardrails on the existing one.
“The NCAA will be furious about it, and I think a lot of the schools would be furious about it, too, just because it really does take a lot of power out of their hands,” Ehrlich told The Spokesman-Review. “It would essentially tear down the system and start from the beginning.”
Despite all of the NIL-related bills brought to Congress in recent years, there hasn’t been much progress by way of legislation.
Baumgartner’s bill is looked at as a way of shaking things up amid the stagnation, Ehrlich noted.
“This is kind of saying, ‘Hey, let’s just federalize the whole thing,” he said. “It is really strange to see a Republican propose a bill like this.”
In addition to the NCAA, Baumgartner’s bill will likely meet resistance from athletes who have had success in the new NIL landscape, given that they would be paid the same amount as every other college athlete under this system.
Attorney Darren Heitner, who represents college athletes, told The Spokesman-Review that dividing all NIL revenue equally isn’t fair and “undermines the very concept of name, image and likeness rights.”
“Should a star quarterback who generates millions in jersey sales now subsidize every athlete at every institution? That’s not equity,” Heitner said.
“We’re moving from NCAA overreach to federal government overreach,” Heitner wrote. “The equal revenue sharing across all institutions and coaching salary caps aren’t just impractical – they fundamentally misunderstand the market forces that drive college athletics. This reads like it was written by someone who wants to return to an imagined golden era of college sports that never actually existed.”
You can read the bill here.
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