socaltownie said:
BearlyCareAnymore said:
calumnus said:
OC Bear said:
SCT: the ONLY solution is legislative action. The Prez can issue any EO, and the courts can over-rule it if it exceeds Congressional intent in the written law(s). If Congress wanted to give teh ncaa the ability to limit transfers, they could write a law to do so. Congress has chosen not to.
From ChatGTP:
As of April 2026, the primary bipartisan effort in the U.S. Senate focusing on NCAA sports law, NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness), and revenue sharing is led by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Ranking Member of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Eric Schmitt (R-MO).
They are currently spearheading a new legislative effort, having released a bipartisan discussion draft in March 2026 known as the College Sports Competitiveness Act.
Here are the key details of the current bipartisan efforts:
The College Sports Competitiveness Act (Schmitt-Cantwell): Introduced in March 2026, this proposed legislation aims to solve revenue challenges by allowing colleges to jointly sell media rights and providing an antitrust exemption for college football. It seeks to generate more revenue, support women's and Olympic sports, and create a 14-member board to govern these changes.
Senate Negotiations (Cruz-Cantwell): Separately, Republican Ted Cruz and Democrat Maria Cantwell have been actively negotiating to produce a bipartisan bill focused on the "employment" debate, aiming to prevent college athletes from being deemed employees of their schools while attempting to stabilize NIL and transfers.
Other Key Legislators: Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Jerry Moran (R-KS) have previously worked on bipartisan discussion drafts, including the Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement (SAFE) Act.
The SCORE Act: Earlier bipartisan attempts included the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act (H.R. 4312), which was introduced in the House in 2025 to create national NIL standards and establish that athletes are not employees, though it faced opposition.
Main Obstacles: The primary hurdle for these bipartisan groups remains reaching a consensus on whether athletes should be considered employees and how to handle antitrust protections, with Democrats often pushing for collective bargaining rights and Republicans opposing them.
In my opinion it is absolutely ridiculous to put limits on player's ability to sell their services on the free market without putting the same limits on coaches and administrators and requiring universities to share a negotiated percentage of revenues with players.
If you are going to limit the player's salaries or their ability to seek higher salaries from another employer on the free market like the rest of us can do, then there should be a guaranteed salary in return and there should be equally restrictive limits on salaries of coaches and administrators. If you are going to limit the player's ability to transfer to a different school to once in a five year period, then coaches have to commit to their job for 5 years before accepting a position elsewhere.
The problem didn't start with players getting rights. The problem started because universities and administrators and coaches were massively exploiting the player's standing as student athletes to extract massive value out of them while giving them little in return. No one seems to be dealing with that end of the problem. It is not acceptable for coaches to be able to work for $5M-$10M a year and seek employment elsewhere at will in order to up their salary or use as bargaining leverage with their current employer while trapping players at a low salary or no salary and not allowing them to bargain by testing the free market. The system was already broken it is just that the profound impacts of the broken system have shifted from the players to the fans.
I know it sucks for us, but when free agency hit things adjusted, collective bargaining agreements were signed, and we all got adjusted to a new norm. Collective bargaining would resolve many of the issues. I would start by considering a form of restricted free agency where the players get to transfer once for any reason and thereafter they are able to test the market and their school can stop the transfer only by offering matching financial terms.
1) No doubt that this reordering in power was long overdue.
2) But this new world order is going to have profound impacts on higher education just at the same time it is grappling with significant pressures on both the topline and in cost categories. Meanwhile reordering the expenses seems, at least in the short term, fairly problematic.
2.5) Case immediate in point - none of the insiders was calling to pay Tosh less (or not get Tosh and pay less to free up money for the players). Rather Pay Tosh MORE and pay players MORE. I guess hope that you can right size the AD - at the same time you are adding very well compensated GMs for both football and MBB. I guess hope that these extra multi-year expenses are covered by increased multi-year philanthropy. Fingers crossed.
3) A serious challenge is whether the players are employees. Neither side wants that but also isn't clear you can get a functioning CBO system without it.
4) Whether or not "fans" pay the price feels "meh". As SB and others have pointed out, in the brave new world in many ways people are going to make choices about the product and can walk away if they don't like it. Arguably given attedance a number of folks have.
4.5) A bigger issue from a fans standpoint is competitive balance. Without something in place we are going to see things look like MLB - where the very best resourced programs horde ALL the talent. The programs best able to do that will be those that figure out the answer to "Just have the Whales fund it all" because that model is not sustainable when donor fatigue kicks in. Interesting things going on at LSU and Penn State to solve that problem by leveraging their massive and committed fan base. I have to believe that tOSU and Texas will be following in short order.
5) But mostly it is worrisome about the university. To me that will always be the first priority - how can it be ensured that an ancilliary activity doesn't financially threaten UCB? If those firewalls are in place I could care less. But if we get to the point that the transfers start to hit 100 million to shore up a "nice to have" without a clear link to the overall business model then probably time to start having hard and honest conversations. What I fear is that in a zero sum activity like Football we will be there soon.. Again, a though experiment. Lets say we get close but no cigar for getting to the CFP. Do you not think there will be HUGE pressure to pay JKS what he could get in the NFL (or from a blue blood) to have him come back to help us be "relevant"? And if the Administration fails to meet that number what is the negative consequence in the short term with donors? And if it does do that - at the same time given the budget cycle UC is up in Sacramento in a hard budget fight - what then?
SCT - my big disagreement with you here is that this has a profound impact on higher education. It doesn't have to if school's would stop being immature babies thinking they can measure their value by the quality of their football team and throwing outsized cash at them. It can only have an impact on higher education if the schools choose to let it. They could opt out. For instance, Cal has not made money off athletics in forever. Cal loses more and more every year. Cal isn't hurt by the extra cost of giving players a fair deal unless Cal chooses to participate.
If the schools set up a system that relied on essentially high value labor providing their work for free they cannot complain when that high value labor is able to charge market rate.
But the bottom line is sports are a wanna have, not a need to have. If schools can't afford it they have a choice. Players shouldn't have to subsidize their desire. Especially when in the case of football they risk catastrophic injury and severe repetitive injury every time they walk on the field.
As for competitive balance, we've never had that. If you look at the top 25 over 5 decades, you will find the same teams dominating it most of the time. We had that for years with donors at big programs, not able to pay players (legally), diverting money into what they could - coaches and facilities. Bruce Snyder got hired away from Cal for the equivalent of less than $1.2M in today's dollars. Let that sink in. Schools built weight rooms so that every guy on the team could simultaneously bench press. They gave recruits and players goodies instead of cash. The arms race has been unyielding and it isn't going to stop because you put limits on players.
The main reason schools are mad is because donors are going directly to the players with their money and cutting the schools out of the deal. And yes, their product is less attractive because they can't guarantee the fans the same roster year in and year out (which was exactly baseball owners argument against free agency).
Yes, if JKS keeps developing and Cal wants to keep him, they will have to pay him a lot. So? Why should JKS keep the football program afloat?
The consequences to donors of the general fund is enormously overblown.
1. The donations to athletics are a grain on the sand of the beach compared to the general fund. If donors cared that much, they could shift a small portion of their general fund donations to athletics and the athletics programs would be flush. They keep choosing not to.
2. Historically, Cal has had some of its biggest fundraising when the revenue sports have sucked. And you cannot find a correlation between football or basketball success and donations to the general fund. The correlation is to donations to the ATHLETIC programs.
3. Not JKS' problem. If losing JKS is going to cost the university $100M in donations, (it won't) I'd suggest they pay the man.
