Bipartisan Act Would Ensure National College Athlete Protections
WASHINGTON — The College Athletes Protection and Compensation Act discussion draft released on Thursday would establish national name, image and likeness standards, cover athletic injury expenses and increase transparency in college athletics.
The three U.S. senators behind the act — Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Cory Booker, D-N.J. — each started with their own bills, but have come together in a bipartisan effort aiming for 60 Senate votes to pass it.
The act would establish NIL standards through the creation of the College Athletics Corporation, a “central oversight entity that would set, administer and enforce rules and standards to protect athletes who enter into endorsement contracts,” according to a press release.
CAC would uphold the provisions in the act and would not be an “agency or instrument” of the government, according to the bill. One of these provisions includes allowing athletes to have representatives assisting them with NIL standards.
The bill shields athletes from punishments by their college, providing protections for committing to professional drafts, from colleges revoking grant-in-aid and for signing representation contracts. Universities would have to provide endorsement contract rules to athletes before participating in their athletic programs.
The bill would also create a medical trust fund and require universities to pay for all out-of-pocket expenses of college athletes’ injuries. For colleges reporting over $50 million in revenue, the institute would continue these payments for four years following the athlete’s last competition day.
Speech restrictions on college athletes would become prohibited as institutes would not be allowed to put stricter speech restrictions on athletes than they could other students.
Athletes would retain their aid until they graduate even if they pursue a career in professional sports. Additionally, colleges could not revoke aid because of the athlete’s performance, physical or mental conditions, or as a result of injury or illness.
Increased transparency is another goal of the act. Colleges would be required to post each athletic program’s revenue and expenditures, including “third-party donations, federal funds, state funds and compensation for athletic program personnel, individually and in aggregate, by athletic program,” according to the bill.
More athlete information would become public as well. Colleges would have to post the average number of hours athletes spend at events and competitions, outcomes and majors of athletes, and the amount and value of endorsement contracts.
Gender parity is also addressed, the bill’s text stating that the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics “shall not discriminate on the basis of sex with regard to the provision of medical care, rest, hotel stays, food, athletic facilities, transportation and sporting event promotions.”
This would have prevented the disparities between the men’s and women’s training facilities in the NCAA basketball tournaments in 2021. In that year, the women’s San Antonio, Texas, weight room originally featured less equipment — a single dumbbell rack — than the men’s respective weight room in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Booker played football at Stanford during his college years and said his time there opened his eyes to injustices in the system.
“I was having a lot of my friends who played ball, who were seeing challenges — knee injuries [and others] … going into their own pocket to pay for medical expenses that they incurred,” Booker said.
Booker said over the past two years, he and two other senators and their staffs spoke to college presidents, athletic directors and athletes in creating the act.
Blumenthal expanded on Booker’s statement, saying they have been talking to “everyone who has ideas.”
Moran said the senators encourage involved parties to provide input to help create this bill to produce the result they are looking for.
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