New collective-bargaining bill looms as historic day arrives

Yahoo

6 days ago

Within college athletics over the last several months, few topics have garnered more interest than collective bargaining — from football and basketball coaches as well as top athletic administrators.
On Capitol Hill, at least two lawmakers are interested too.
Two Democrats, Rep. Summer Lee and Sen. Chris Murphy, are reintroducing on Wednesday a bill to affirm and expand college athletes' rights to organize, form unions and collectively bargain with their universities and/or conferences, according to the legislation obtained by Yahoo Sports.
The bill's introduction comes on what could be a historic day for the college sports industry: Two House committees are expected to consider a separate bill, the SCORE Act, and potentially advance that legislation to the House floor.
In the NCAA's more than five-year lobbying effort for congressional legislation, no all-encompassing college sports bill, such as the SCORE Act, has advanced out of a committee in either chamber. A full House of Representatives vote could come as soon as this fall — a potentially groundbreaking moment but one that should come with a caveat.
The NCAA-friendly SCORE Act, while bipartisan, faces stiff pushback in a divided U.S. Senate, where at least seven Democrats are needed to overcome the filibuster and reach the 60-vote margin for any bill passage.
Murphy and Lee's bill, perhaps a longshot to pass in this Congress, serves as a reminder of what could transpire in the future as the college sports industry barrels toward a more professionalized model with the approval of the House settlement's athlete revenue-share concept.
The bill would amend the National Labor Relationship Board Act to cover both private and public universities and require the board to recognize conferences and schools as 'multi-employer bargaining units.' The bill establishes 'equitable terms and conditions' for college athletes to choose representation in order to negotiate collective-bargaining agreements.
'College athletes exhibit the markers of employment as established under the common law definition of the term 'employee,'' the bill says. 'The NCAA and its member institutions have denied college athletes a fair wage for their labor by colluding to cap compensation; they maintain strict and exacting control over the terms and conditions of college athletes' labor; and they exercise the ability to terminate an athlete's eligibility to compete if the athlete violates these terms and conditions.'
The bill is contradictory to the mostly Republican-backed SCORE Act, which provides the NCAA, power conferences and new enforcement arm, the College Sports Commission, with many of its requests from Congress: (1) limited antitrust protection to enforce rules; (2) the preemption of various state NIL laws; (3) codification of the House settlement terms; and, perhaps most notably, (4) a clause deeming athletes as students and not employees.
The bill is facing pushback not only from Democrats but from a variety of avenues, including players associations of the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS; the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committees; and one of the leading Democrats in the Senate, Maria Cantwell.
'If you thought the dissolution of the Pac-12 was a heist, the SCORE Act is the National Championship of all heists,' said Cantwell, representing the state of Washington. 'This legislation is a power grab by the two biggest conferences that will leave athletes, coaches, and small and mid-sized institutions behind.'
All three entities — the players associations, Olympic committee and Cantwell — each provide a criticism to the SCORE Act: It prevents a path for collective bargaining and employment of athletes; and codifies a House settlement that, many believe, will negatively impact women and Olympic sports and grows the already looming financial gaps between major conference programs and those other lower-resourced schools in Division I.
In a recent letter to House lawmakers, four state attorney generals — from Florida, Tennessee, Ohio and New York — urged Congress to reject the SCORE Act, describing it as 'a misguided effort that will enshrine in federal law the arbitrary and biased authority of the NCAA at its worst.'
But the bill has plenty of supporters who point to the many benefits, such as the legislation's oversight of agents and its requirement to provide athlete degree completion and post-graduate healthcare.
Meanwhile, Murphy and Lee's bill gestures toward a completely different system, one that turns athletes into employees who can collectively bargain — a concept that many in college athletics believe should be explored deeply as a way to bring stability and regulation.
'Collective bargaining and employment status shouldn't be seen as negative terms,' Tennessee athletic director Danny White told Yahoo Sports last month. 'I think there's a lot of people who think the same way I do. We can go through another three or five or 10 years of a difficult environment. Or we can accept the reality and fix it right now.'