What’s actually in the Senate bill that’s supposed to stop the madness in college sports?

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The yearslong, multimillion-dollar effort to get Congressional action on college sports passed a historic hurdle Monday night, as the U.S. Senate voted 77-22 to pass the Protect College Sports Act, which could dramatically change the future of the industry by freezing much of the tumult of the last several years.

At least, that’s the plan.

The bill must still pass the House of Representatives, which is not expected to convene until after the midterm elections. Its chances remain to be determined.

But what’s actually in the bill? Everything from transfer restrictions to conference expansion caps to coach-departure limitations to a supposedly harder cap on revenue sharing. There’s also a clause about the date of the football national championship game.

If you haven’t been in the legislative weeds over the past few months, here’s a rundown of key provisions that would become law if the bill passes as it’s currently written.

Limiting conference expansion and a Super League

After the mad rush of conference realignment that reshaped college sports geography a few years ago, this bill would amend the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to freeze some of what’s in place. Conferences that report more than $700 million in revenue (aka the Power 4: the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC) would be limited to 20 members.

Additionally, within the first six years of the bill’s implementation, any team in a Power 4 league wanting to move to another P4 league must first spend three years as an independent. The bill originally listed five years as an independent, but that was lowered to three this week after lobbying from some ACC schools. The cap was also raised from 19 members to 20.

The six-year window added this month also happens to expire right around the time many conference TV deals expire, which is when realignment usually happens, meaning this new bill text takes out some of the realignment teeth of the original text.

The Big Ten has 18 teams, the ACC has 17, and the SEC and Big 12 have 16 each. That would allow six spots to be filled in the Big Ten and SEC by schools like Notre Dame, North Carolina, Clemson, Florida, Miami (Fla.) or others — if the Big Ten and SEC even want them.

There would be no timeline limit on adding independent or Group of 6 programs. The bill also prevents any outside entity from consolidating schools to create a new conference or association, aka a Super League.

The return of transfer restrictions

The PCSA would curtail the unlimited transfers currently in place. Undergraduate players would be allowed one free transfer without having to sit out a year, and graduate players would remain free to transfer without limit. This would take the rules back to the short-lived change introduced by the NCAA in 2021, before the courts opened unlimited transfers. All players would still be able to transfer in the event of a head coaching change, the discontinuation of a sport or misconduct-related circumstances.

So while there would no longer be unlimited transfers for everyone, there would still be many paths to transfer, especially in the new world of five years of eligibility, which would also be enshrined as law with the age-based clock. The bill additionally gives the NCAA antitrust protection to enforce transfer rules, including tampering.

Increasing revenue sharing, while adding a harder cap

The money opened up for athletes by the House v. NCAA settlement (around $21 million this year) would increase by way of a new $22.5 million “retention fund” limit to be used on a school’s current players, plus another $5 million capped pool exclusively for women’s sports and nonrevenue sports, totaling nearly $50 million per year. The retention fund would have academic benchmark requirements.

To close spending loopholes and create a harder cap, the bill also adopts the House settlement’s definition of an “associated entity.” It requires school multimedia rights holders and third parties to provide signed certification that a school is not the source of NIL compensation to the athlete. This final change got the SEC and Big Ten on board in August.

The bill also preempts various state laws on NIL, eligibility and transfers that complicated the NCAA’s pursuit of a national standard. It also bars professional athletes from returning to school. Pending legal cases or claims for damages from past conduct would be preserved from the bill’s impact.

Preventing in-season coaching moves

Coaches leaving for other jobs before a season ends is nothing new in college football, but Lane Kiffin’s acceptance of the LSU job before Ole Miss’ College Football Playoff run drew so much attention that it made its way to Congress. The bill would prevent any Football Bowl Subdivision coach from participating in head-coaching duties at a new school before the end of that team’s season or the season of the coach’s prior team, whichever occurs later. People involved have colloquially referred to the provision as the “Lane Kiffin Rule.”

It’s not only about head coaches leaving. The bill covers “any individual” who serves as football personnel and accepts a head coaching job elsewhere. That means former Oregon coordinators Will Stein and Tosh Lupoi couldn’t do any work for Kentucky or Cal, respectively, until Oregon’s season ended. Technically, these coaches can accept a new job, but they cannot recruit, make roster decisions, supervise staff or even publicly represent the new school in a football capacity until after the teams’ final games. Penalties for violations of this include a one-season suspension and potentially more.

Could this slow the college coaching carousel to put it on an NFL-like timeline? That’s the idea, but it dramatically squeezes the timeline for certain new head coaches, given the early signing period in December and the lone transfer portal, which opens in early January.

An option to pool conference media rights

The bill gives conferences the right to pool all their TV rights into one package if it includes at least 75 percent of FBS teams, along with antitrust protection under the Sports Broadcasting Act, which currently covers only pro sports.

You might have seen Texas Tech megabooster Cody Campbell’s commercials last fall calling for this change to the SBA. The SEC and Big Ten have made clear they have no interest in pooling their rights with other conferences, but this provision gives everyone the option to do so. Not coincidentally, the Big Ten, SEC and Notre Dame combined make up 25.4 percent of the FBS, enough to veto any such pooling. Any pooling of rights cannot replace an active media rights contract, including the College Football Playoff.

If a new joint entity includes at least 75 percent of the FBS, schools would have additional requirements to play a certain number of “historic rivals” within that entity, depending on whether those games were previously conference or out of conference.

Moving up the national championship? Not quite

One line near the end of the bill raised some eyebrows, stating that the football postseason should “conclude not later than January 8 of any year, to the extent practicable.”

This clause is nonbinding. A Republican Commerce Committee aide noted to The Athletic that it doesn’t preempt current media rights contracts. The current CFP deal runs through 2031, and national title sites through the 2029 season have been announced. So this is not expected to have any effect anytime soon, if at all.

Capping agent fees

The bill would add NIL deals under the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act to cap agent NIL fees at 5 percent of the endorsement contract value, while also limiting agency contracts that last beyond the player’s college eligibility. Agents must register within a state before representing a player for an endorsement deal and cannot make “false, deceptive, or fraudulent representation as an athlete agent.”

The NCAA must also maintain a publicly available, searchable database of registered agents, and it can decertify or fine agents for violations. There are additional requirements for what must be written out in an endorsement deal.

Athlete employment

There is just one line addressing athlete employment, stating, “This title is neutral on, and does nothing to alter, employee or non-employee status for student athletes.” This topic was a key issue that doomed the previous SCORE Act, which would’ve deemed athletes as non-employees and therefore lacked Democratic support. This bill leaves the matter unresolved, hoping to garner enough Democratic support to finally pass through Congress.

Other notes

Other parts of the bill include forming a commission on the future of college athletics within the legislative branch, which would study and develop recommendations on many topics covered in the bill, such as changing revenue-sharing numbers. Within the commission would be a student-athlete retention council that would include athletes.

There is also an HBCU sports media and connectivity program meant to help media infrastructure for live events, local journalism and student learning.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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