NIL, transfers, and litigation weakened the old institutional control over college sports. The Protect College Sports Act would help rebuild it in a paid-athlete system—and raise a larger question about who gets to exercise that control.
“Nine of my players make more than my assistants.”
John Calipari offered that comparison while answering a question about a salary cap for coaches, according to reporting on his September 30 press conference. The Arkansas coach also supported the Protect College Sports Act and discussed collective bargaining, while questioning how it would work across states. He called for order and guardrails in the current system.
The comparison captures how far the business around a veteran coach has moved. Athletes now have economic relationships and negotiating options that operate beyond the compensation rules that shaped most of those coaches’ careers.
College sports lost control. It lost much of its old ability to establish and enforce the terms of athlete compensation and movement largely on institutional terms. Universities still own facilities, hire coaches, distribute resources, and control access to competition. The athlete marketplace has become harder for those institutions to govern as they once did.
The Protect College Sports Act would help build a more controllable system around athletes who get paid. Its supporters call that stability, guardrails, and national standards. Those descriptions have substance. They also describe forms of control: rules that determine which payments count, what leaving a program costs, and which institutional decisions survive a legal challenge.
The Senate passed the bill 77–22 on September 28. It still needs House consideration and is not law. SportsEpreneur’s PCSA explainer covers the legislative details. For now, the question underneath them is whose rules will stick in the marketplace that comes next.
The old model made an athlete’s alternatives expensive
Restrictions on compensation and movement worked together. A school could offer an athlete a place in its program within a tightly bounded compensation system. Leaving could carry an eligibility cost. Those conditions gave institutions greater control over both the price of participation and the consequences of walking away.
Several changes weakened that arrangement. The Supreme Court’s 2021 Alston decision concerned education-related benefits, rather than unrestricted athlete pay. It nevertheless demonstrated that the college model did not put NCAA economic restrictions beyond antitrust scrutiny.
The NCAA’s interim NIL policy, effective July 1, 2021, opened opportunities for athletes to earn from their names, images, and likenesses. It also operated alongside state NIL laws. Institutions were trying to govern a national competition while athletes’ economic relationships developed through outside businesses and different legal environments.
In April 2024, the NCAA approved Division I transfer changes allowing immediate eligibility for academically qualified athletes, including those who had transferred previously. The automatic competitive penalty for another move weakened.
An outside payment opportunity and a usable exit change a negotiation. A coach may still control playing time, but an athlete has a stronger alternative to remaining in that coach’s program. For athletes with substantial demand, competing schools and commercial opportunities can raise the cost of retention.
Those changes did not distribute equal power to every athlete. Many still have limited financial options. A transfer can disrupt education, relationships, and development even without a mandatory sit-out season. Yet the institutional ability to dictate terms changed enough to alter roster planning and spending decisions.
The House settlement’s capped compensation and enforcement structure has already rebuilt some financial control. In his June 2025 letter on the House settlement, NCAA President Charlie Baker described a new framework with the defendant conferences responsible for financial enforcement. College sports is already rebuilding rules around a paid marketplace.
The federal bill would strengthen the durability of selected rules in that marketplace. Institutions would have a firmer basis for restrictions they increasingly struggle to defend through association policy alone.
Listen to what the coaches want back
Calipari signed a June 10 National Association of Basketball Coaches letter supporting an earlier version of the legislation and federal action on transfers, eligibility, and academic standards. The coaches supported one immediately eligible transfer, an exception for a coach’s departure, and a sit-out requirement for subsequent transfers. They left broadcasting and financial questions to other stakeholders.
The coaches’ proposed transfer structure would restore a competitive cost to repeated movement. A coach would have more reason to expect a player to remain, because another departure could delay the player’s return to competition. The athlete would have to weigh an outside opportunity against that cost. The Senate-passed bill includes further immediate-eligibility exceptions, including discontinued sports, sexual assault or harassment, and graduate study.
Roster continuity has operational value. Coaches allocate playing time, recruit replacements, and invest in development before knowing which players will stay. A movement restriction protects part of that investment. It also changes the athlete’s ability to respond to a better offer or a disappointing experience. Both effects belong in the discussion.
In an October 1 NewsNation report on his BIFF interview, Nick Saban said NIL had “created an environment with no control, no guardrails.” He pointed to transfers, salaries, and budgets, while saying he supported players making money. That is an experienced operator describing the limits of the system he once worked within. His diagnosis also points toward his preferred remedy: enforceable boundaries.
Saban was direct about enforceability in his June 3 prepared testimony, calling for action “so the people inside college sports can enforce fair rules.” His argument included legitimate NIL opportunities, development, and Olympic-sport protection.
Saban wants institutions to be able to enforce the rules they consider fair. Whether those rules are fair to athletes depends on the costs they impose and the protections they deliver. Calling them guardrails does not resolve that question.
Spending limits need a perimeter
The SEC and Big Ten opposed an earlier version of the legislation before endorsing revised terms on July 31. The revision released by Senate Commerce on August 4 addressed associated-entity spending, retention spending, and voluntary media pooling.
The committee connected their support with those changes, showing that the shape of federal regulation—especially its treatment of spending and commercial arrangements—affected whether the conferences were willing to back it.
A compensation limit works only if the system can identify the payments inside it. If an associated entity can finance the same recruiting or retention competition outside the limit, the formal ceiling loses force. Institutions seeking an enforceable perimeter are seeking control over a market that outside money helped reshape.
The Senate-passed bill distinguishes associated entities from independent NIL activity. That distinction preserves a channel for genuine outside commerce while extending oversight around school-connected spending. Its targeted antitrust protection and preemption provisions would help specified national rules withstand selected challenges and conflicting state requirements.
For an athletic department, durable spending rules make budgets more governable. For an athlete, a payment brought inside those rules can become a constrained option. Protecting independent NIL does not eliminate the leverage consequences of regulating school-associated money.
In a paid system, institutions regain control by gaining a stronger legal foundation for enforcing specified boundaries around compensation arrangements, even as athletes continue to earn.
Some control may need rebuilding
A national competition is harder to run when conflicting state laws and legal challenges repeatedly unsettle its common standards. Schools need to know which commitments they can make. Athletes need predictable eligibility rules and confidence that protections will survive beyond a recruiting pitch.
Olympic-sport supporters add a substantial argument. In a June 16 joint letter, Team USA Athletes’ Commission chair Joel Rosinbum joined Olympic and national governing-body leaders in backing the legislation as it stood then. They warned that financial pressure was prioritizing revenue sports and cited collegiate affiliations for 75% of U.S. Olympians at Paris 2024.
Those athletes have an interest in maintaining a development system that depends on institutional resources. Their support complicates the idea that restoring enforceable rules serves only administrators. Preserving a program can be more valuable to an athlete than expanding a compensation opportunity the athlete is unlikely to receive.
Institutions seeking authority would also accept duties. The September 28 Democratic committee summary identifies scholarship protections against cancellation for injury or athletic performance and Division I coverage for out-of-pocket expenses for sports-related injuries and diseases during participation and, for athletes enrolled in their final eligibility year, five years after their last competition. Federal commitments can constrain schools as well as athletes.
Support also includes a capacity argument. Florida A&M athletic director John Davis emphasized HBCU broadband, technology, media production, and broadcast infrastructure in an op-ed excerpt circulated by Senate Commerce. The coalition contains constituencies seeking resources and opportunities alongside those seeking spending discipline.
The serious counterargument is that some authority must become durable for the entire system to function. That makes the allocation of authority more consequential. Restoring order can solve an operating problem while strengthening the organizations that decide what order looks like.
Athletes want to know what they can still contest
Athlete opposition crosses sports. Tennessee cross-country athlete Kaitlyn Vanderkolk challenged the reach and enforceability of the bill’s opportunity protections in a September 15 AFL-CIO release. Olympic-sport preservation is therefore a contested promise even among athletes whose opportunities the bill seeks to protect.
In the same release, Maryland basketball player and United College Athletes Association interim president Oluchi Okananwa said, “There is a real difference between being heard and having power.” She sought collective bargaining and an enforceable agreement alongside professional regulation of athletes’ careers.
The bill remains neutral on employment status and reserves at least one-third of covered association governing-board and rulemaking-committee membership and voting power for current athletes or qualifying graduates from the preceding 10 years. Those are meaningful checks. They do not settle the separate question of whether athletes negotiate the economic restraints institutions enforce. SportsEpreneur’s representation analysis examines that distinction.
The AFL-CIO’s August opposition centered on targeted antitrust protection without a collectively bargained agreement. A lawsuit is expensive, but the possibility of one can affect institutional behavior before it is filed. Protecting a restriction from that route of challenge redistributes leverage.
The bill would build a new paid marketplace in which institutional rules are harder to evade, override, or overturn.
That is the control many supporters want back. The House now gets the next say over which rules receive that protection and what athletes receive alongside it. The next balance of power will depend on who gets to write durable rules, who enforces them, and what athletes can still challenge.
Want the legislative details? Read our full Protect College Sports Act explainer for the Senate-passed provisions, athlete protections, antitrust rules, transfers, and what happens next.
Related Reading
- The Protect College Sports Act Explained: NIL, Transfers, Antitrust, and the Future of College Sports
- What the Protect College Sports Act Reveals About Athlete Representation
- The Economics Behind College Football’s NIL Spending Explosion
Eric Kasimov is the founder of SportsEpreneur, part of the KazSource media network. Since launching the platform in 2015, he has hosted over 500 podcast episodes, written and published more than 1,500 articles, and advised business leaders, founders, and creators on building authority through media strategy.
Through his brands — KazSource, KazCM, SportsEpreneur, and QuietLoud Studios — Eric leads teams that produce podcasts, develop brand platforms, and help companies grow through modern content ecosystems. He also scaled KazSource Insurance into a seven-figure boutique agency, providing the foundation for the broader media network he operates today.
His work has been featured in Forbes, Axios, and Front Office Sports, and his podcasts have included conversations with top founders, investors, and athletes turned entrepreneurs.