Jun. 19—Count the University of Dayton among the 267 colleges and universities that support the Protect College Sports Act.
The legislation will be considered by the U.S. Senate after being advanced on Thursday, June 18, from the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
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“It is absolutely necessary,” said UD Vice President and Director of Athletics Neil Sullivan. “We support it fully.”
The act, sponsored by Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), has many aims, including:
* Ending “roster chaos” by allowing undergraduate athletes to transfer once.
* Giving athletes five years of eligibility in a five-year span.
* Enabling “enforcement of House settlement on revenue sharing and fake NIL deals.”
* Protecting “women’s sports, Olympic sports and scholarship opportunities.”
* Stopping “Super League consolidation.”
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* Keeping coaches from leaving one program during a season and joining another program.
This all sounds good to Sullivan, who said this is the most “unstable period in history” for college sports.
The start of the name, image and likeness (NIL) era in 2021 and the revenue-sharing era in 2025 have coincided with the dismantling of the old transfer rules. Athletes once had to sit out a season after transferring but now can transfer as often as they want without penalty. These changes that have had a major impact in a short time.
Sullivan pointed to various litigation and conflicting court rulings that brought college sports to this point.
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“It’s just created a chaotic system that’s impossible to govern,” he said.
The press release promoting the act also referenced the court decisions.
“The courts have produced a system with unlimited transfers, pro athletes playing college ball and shady NIL deals,” it read. “Schools and governing bodies need the ability to preserve fair competition, protect student athletes from exploitation, and ensure that programs across the country can survive. Without legislative action, more athletic programs will vanish, as will longstanding rivalries, and much of what generations of Americans have loved about college sports will soon fade away.”
The advancement of the legislation is a big step, Sullivan said.
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“There have been a lot of bills that haven’t made it this far,” he said. “One previous bill made it through a committee in the House, but the Senate was always going to be the challenge, because it needs 60 votes, so it truly has to be bipartisan. I think the alternative of the status quo is just not acceptable in any way. I think we’ve had enough of the ideological tests and pontificating and talk by people. This is the first step toward real action. Of course, I’m not naive to the fact that it can stop on the Senate floor, and then it’s got to make its way to the other chamber, but I think this is as much optimism as the business has had since really this chaos began about a decade ago.”
For Sullivan, the most important issues the act addresses are related to transfers, eligibility and unregulated compensation — all of which are interconnected. He wants “clear eligibility rules” and “common-sense transfer rules and enforcement.”
“There’s obviously a lot of other pieces to the bill,” he said. “It’s not a small bill, and it has a lot of other student-athlete protections and various things. I’m not being dismissive of those, but at the end of the day, the business has to have some common set of rules where enforcement is tied to something that’s real versus a governing body that is owned and operated by the people going over the rules.”
