The Act, an amended version obtained by Yahoo Sports, codifies the settlement, grants liability protection, preempts state NIL laws & includes anti-employment clause," Dellenger wrote on social media. "It brings regulation to agents & requires schools provide athlete degree completion, post-grad healthcare, etc."
This bill would give the NCAA and CSC the enforcement power to require athletes to disclose NIL deals and would also allow enforcement of the one-time transfer rule. There would be additional rules regarding agent involvement.
This would be a major step forward to some stability in college sports.
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Oh you mean what the NCAA should have done instead of creating a Wild West shitshow and sitting by idly acting like this is what the fans always wanted
To be fair, the NCAA has been lobbying Congress for an anti-trust exemption for close to 15 years but Congress never acted on it.
And without some legal framework the NCAA largely functioned as a body to be sued and lose in court under restraint of trade. Still shitty that they cannot be considered employees since they're being compensated for performing a job and all. But if there are comparable protections for the athletes without some of the thornier Labor Law issues attaching it could be workable.
"allow enforcement of the one-time transfer rule"- If this doesn't happen, the sport is dead. The fans will check out and coaches won't want to deal with the shit either. The good ones will go to the NFL, where you know who is on a multi year contract or not.
I think you could make a multiple xfer rule but it would be penalizing each xfer. First xfer is just a transfer, the 2nd time is sitting out 12 regular season games (applies to graduate transfers too), 2nd xfer is 24 games.
If you get the you have 5 years to play 5 seasons (get rid of the play 4 games rules), then you basically get to play 2 years if you transfer 3 times.
This is a big thing for sure. It's a big part of why, after 25 years, I am not a season ticket holder anymore. I'm all for the kids getting their fair share but without contracts and some certainty to allow recruiting and development to have a horizon beyond 12 months, what hope does a development program have? In this current era we wouldn't have Sam Rogers, he'd have been picked up and paid to be a 3rd string TE by Penn State.
I was just on vacation with family and was talking about college football with my father-in-law. He asked how our team was looking this year and I told him, "I have no idea. I can barely keep track of who is on our team any more. I don't have the mental bandwidth to keep up with all the transfers in and out." He felt the same way about his alma mater. I used to follow the offseason intently, now I have no interest. We'll see who suits up when the whistle blows on August 31.
Yeah, this is where I am at. Why even bother following recruiting and the off-season? It's all transitory until the season starts and then it's still potentially subject to change. I also can't really be bothered to pay attention to recruiting for the 2026 class because the 2026 staff might be completely different from the 2025 staff. It's exhausting and it's not a good use of my time or money at this point. I love the community. I cheer for the team but this real life fantasy football nonsense... it's not for me. Especially knowing how uneven the financial playing field is now.
I think a large majority of non Blue Blood fans are somewhere along the spectrum of:
befuddlement-->exhaustion-->total apathy.
I personally have now crossed from exhaustion and inching close towards apathy.
I made some attempt to follow our transfer portal pickups, but Even with some light research it's hard to know if any of these players are really impact players or simply roster fillers. The time commitment to try to get to know the team is barely worth it, because they can all be gone by the next semester.
Ultimately, I think this is where the system will crack and fail. The fans are the people who keep the sport financially viable and other than a few select teams, most of the fans have little reason to think their team can be competitive. And even if they do somehow beat the odds and become competitive despite extensive Financial disadvantages, they are at constant risk of their team being picked to pieces in the Transfer Portal.
All the more reason to have a subscription to a fine site like TKP to help you keep up with the latest and greatest!
People say this, but ratings last season were at all time highs.
College football wasn't really a 'year round sport' until recruiting took off in the mid-aughts. I can see college football going back to something similar where there's a handful of sicko fans involve the sport in great detail year-round, and there's a handful of players who demand off-season coverage but other than that, it's mostly about the season.
And, if you were to position it that way, I bet a lot of people would prefer it.
Which ratings are we speaking of??
Because the CFP semifinal and final were both down. The Semi -17% and Final -12%.
The 2025 Championship Game was the 3rd lowest viewed since 2014 - despite featuring two of the Bluest of the Blue Bloods.
There have been plenty of pre-built excuses for this, but I think if we're going to be realistic, one would have expected the first year of a new format to have had maximal attention, rather than the opposite.
And if we're talking about overall ratings, I would attach a huge grain of salt with whatever ESPN, CBS, and NBC reporting. After paying huge sums of money for broadcasting rights, I don't think anyone rationally thinks they're going to report declining ratings publicly.
And as far as making it a year-round sport, the Transfer Portal has made following recruiting largely pointless. Virtually all of the 247 Top-150 are going to the SEC or B1G and most of them to the same 6-8 teams.
Even if your team signs all it's coveted recruits, there's no guarantee that half of them aren't gone by the next semester.
And trying to follow the disaster that is the Transfer Portal is nearly impossible, even if one wanted to.
When your sport is focused on caterting to "sickos" and Superfans of the 5-6 teams that have most successfully exploited NIL and the Transfer Portal, you don't have a very robust foundation.
Everyone alive knows this is going to collapse without major reform. Half of Alabamas roster leaving every year is not good for : The coaches, the fans, ESPN, Pat McAfee, etc. It's not. The constant player turnover is a huge issue in basketball and football. If you think CBS or anyone was excited about 90% of the SEC getting into the field of 68 in hoops, you are kidding yourself. Nobody wanted that and fans tuned out and mid major coaches aren't going to stand for it much longer. There are 300 D 1 hoops teams- not 18. Without the rest of the dance, the SEC doesn't make money and nobody watches on CBS. It's going to collapse.
Between that and the housing market, I'm hoping for a lot of collapses these days
Let the housing market wait a few months before collapse, as mine is on the market right now.
That said, if anybody is interested in buying a home in King George...
We finished building a year or two ago. I am hoping to see the end of my roof warranty when I turn 99.
You are within 500 miles of DC/NOVA- your house will sell super fast
if anyone is selling in cary/apex NC let me know
Upon deeper research, ABC and ESPN had all time highs for regular season ratings, mostly due to SEC - ABC averaged 5.8 million viewers for 46 regular season games, a 56 percent increase year-over-year, making it their best season in 15 years. Across ESPN platforms (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU), viewership reached an average of 1.9 million viewers per game, up 19 percent year-over-year
B10 let their relationship with Nielson expire mid season, so they're ratings aren't captured accurately.
Some sources:
Look, I know/understand that ratings are heavily fudged. Simultaneously, we can all recognize that it's not like viewers are leaving the sport in droves.
Anecdotally, for every CFB fan I know who complains about the sport being ruined, I know of an NFL fan who's more interested in Saturdays than ever before.
I think the ratings thing depends on how you slice it. The CFB Playoff, the "Whole Reason" why we do the sport now, in the eyes of the chattering class, has seen year over year drops in viewership. Even the blue bloods aren't selling out their home stands, signs of apathy are everywhere IMHO.
Because the playoff made the first 12 games less meaningful. It's like the NBA now, regular season has almost no urgency, just need to win enough to make the payoff then play like every minute matters.
Personally, I 10000% agree this is the fatal flaw of the playoff.
IMO this is due to:
"the bowl game format. If the CFP did home games until the finals, then they would be all sellouts."- LMAO the biggest, most high stakes games of the entire year might sell out yall. Nothing to see here.
I realized a few years ago that I really enjoyed the off weekends when we were not traveling to a game in Blacksburg quite a bit. I get to sit in my own house, and watch a bigger slate of games from a much more comfortable seat. Combine that realization with the slow and steady decline of the fan service experience in Lane Stadium and going to the games just wasn't the highlight of the year for me anymore.
I am slowly getting there. But last year was better than the year before.
I've been there a while the only thing I really miss about seeing games in person is getting to watch the whole game and not just what the camera shows. If I could get a lm all22 constant shot with zero announcers it would be amazing
What, getting rid of shyster agents? Can't happen soon enough
DC has been pounding this for a while now. NIL deal numbers are just unsubstatiated rumors at this point. Being able to accurately calculate how much teams are spending on NIL is the first step to getting some sort of transparency.
Are we going to give up on the unlimited transfer ability for these downtrodden players?
Codify it, please.
The sooner the legislative brand of government can give the NCAA actual teeth and reign this shit under control the better. And I would absolutely hope that whatever is being passed would be future-proof and kneecap the desire for the SEC and Big Ten to split away in order to skirt around NCAA regulations.
That would be the hope, but as it stands now the NCAA is still a voluntary organization. I still think absent some dire consequences the BIG BRANDS (TM) will eventually leave their conferences and make a super league, at which point a whole bunch of things fall down and go boom.
I might be the only one to focus on this part.. "It brings regulation to agents & requires schools provide athlete degree completion, post-grad healthcare, etc." Which schools are going to be responsible, first school, last school, what level of health care?
It will be capped, like any plan. The NFL has strict rules around post career healthcare and who is eligible etc. This won't be a blank check, in fact it will be a paltry benefit if I had to guess. healthcare for every ex player would cost trillions
It could be done easily by grouping as a conference. Buy prepaid health care plans for limited things such as physical injury and rehab, (to clarify, not to include disease such as diabetes, bacterial infections, etc) for a period of time with the exception of verified long term injuries suffered as a college player.
it gets slightly harder because of different states, but the school you go to can put in money based on amortized rates amd then each school is paying a part of it. It would be amazing for Americans if the NCAA was a forcing function to get a national health insurance plan.
I am trying not to get too political but it just always seemed dumb that Healthcare is tied to a state. Even after the laws were removed to allow for states to sell plans to people in other states the insurance companies didn't do that. So any forcing function to help make Healthcare more attainable is a good thing.
In the United States, healthcare is tied to multi billion dollar insurance and pharma lobbies. They tend to have a loud voice and influence law makers.
Don't forget the Pharmacy Benefit Managers and the 340B hospitals raking in cash on a loophole!
Yes, but universities are billion dollar institutions that have a lot of fans and donors, which is why it would have to be something like this to make change.
The difficulty would be that insurance is regulated by states and not nationally.
While this would appear to be a step in the right direction, I would like to see more specifics before making assumptions.
But clearly a framework of Rules and some level of transparency are desperately needed. The NCAA clearly has been a bad actor for years, but I would vehemently disagree with anyone who thinks the current Wild West shitshow is in any way a meaningful improvement.
Also, I am 100% for the complete and total elimination of NIL "agents" who are mostly untrained parasites on a broken system.
This article seems thorough and well written with simple, fairly concise language:
College sports bill introduced by bipartisan group of House members
Barring schools from using student fees would be a major positive for normal students. It would destroy JMUs athletic department, where student athletic fees amount to over $13K per student in 4 years.
I'm here for both of those
There's no reason for student fees to help cover any of the major revenue sports. Unsure how this would affect the olypmic non rev sports. But overall is a step in the right direction.
Couldn't this lead to students having to buy tickets like the general public?
The colleges would still want student sections for TV.