College sports remain divided over NIL issue

They’re no longer stalking opposite sides of the gridiron, but former college football coaches Nick Saban and Tommy Tuberville are currently on opposite sides of proposed legislation designed, its backers say, to save college athletics.

Saban, the retired former coach at Alabama and LSU, testified before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee this week in favor of the Protect College Sports Act, introduced last week by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

The act, according to The Hill, “would set a national standard for NCAA member schools on issues like the transfer portal, revenue sharing, and name, image and likeness (NIL) endorsement opportunities used to lure student athletes to elite programs around the country each year.

“It would also ban athletic departments from recruiting coaches to leave their school during the season or during the playoffs.”

The prohibition on poaching coaches midseason has been nicknamed the “Lane Kiffen rule,” after the former Ole Miss coach who said his jump to LSU during last season’s playoffs was motivated in part by LSU’s larger NIL stash.

Tuberville, now one of Alabama’s two U.S. senators and the Republican nominee to be Alabama’s next governor, has said he cannot support the bill as is.

The two most powerful conferences in collegiate athletics, meanwhile, have left no doubt where they stand on the Protect College Sports Act: They’re against it.

In a joint statement, the Southeastern Conference and the Big 10 argue the bill “does not meaningfully preempt the patchwork of state laws or provide the protections needed to make and enforce consistent rules. … It also shifts ongoing rulemaking to Congress, limiting the ability to adapt quickly as the landscape evolves. Rather than reducing litigation, the bill likely expands it without offering clear alternatives for dispute resolution. Finally, the bill alters the House settlement revenue sharing framework in a way that may result in fewer student-athletes receiving direct revenue share payments.”

That all sounds reasonable enough, but what’s left out is the Protect College Sports Act would prevent the SEC and Big 10 from merging into a “super league,” or pooling media rights, to the disadvantage of college sports’ smaller conferences.

But the SEC and Big 10 are almost certainly correct that the Protect College Sports Act would lead to even more lawsuits, especially the Kiffen rule and greater restrictions on college athletes transferring from one school to another. The same courts that took a dim view of college athletics prohibiting athletes from benefiting from their own name, image and likeness, are likely to look even less favorably on rules that effectively keep student athletes as indentured servants.

Student athletes, under the bill, would be allowed “one transfer without losing eligibility” while those who transfer a second time would have “to sit out a year except in certain cases, including the discontinuation of their sport or sexual assault or harassment.”

That is meant to create the kind of stability college sports fans may like, but at the expense of the athletes who are putting their bodies on the line.

Ultimately, it’s a choice between the status quo, with college sports governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which brought this mess about in the first place, or by Congress, which is one of America’s least popular institutions for a reason.

Imagine the rules for college sports being dependent on Congress and rule changes held hostage by partisan squabbles over the budget or some hotbutton cultural issue. If Congress gets involved, it will stay involved, and whatever rules it passes will be subject to revision by any future Congress.

Perhaps college sports are better off with what we already know, the NCAA, even if the NCAA’s rules got us here by treating college athletes differently from any other scholarship student. A computer science major doesn’t lose their scholarship if they write computer programs for cash on the side, but student athletes were punished for receiving any benefit related to their skills.

Put that way, it seems like a simple problem with a simple fix. Unfortunately, it’s too late for simple fixes.