Because I am lazy and lack the patience to dig through an entire proposed piece of federal legislation, I asked AI for a breakdown of
the Protect College Sports Act of 2026, (There is also a separate College Athlete Economic Freedom Act.). I applaud the effort, but I am skeptical that anything like this will ever pass.
The bill you are asking about is H.R. 9137, introduced June 4, 2026, by Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-Wash.). A Senate companion, S. 4668, has also been introduced. As of today, it is still in committee, not close to enactment yet.
The big picture
I would describe the Protect College Sports Act as an attempt to put federal statutory structure around the chaotic NIL/revenue-sharing era of college athletics.
It tries to accomplish several things simultaneously:
- Protect athletes’ ability to make NIL money.
- Put some rules around NIL transactions and agents.
- Give athletes additional academic, medical and transfer protections.
- Make the current college-athlete revenue-sharing system more permanent.
- Give colleges/conferences some antitrust protection for collectively selling television/media rights.
- Put some brakes on conference realignment and the destruction of traditional rivalries.
That last group makes this considerably broader than simply an NIL bill.
- NIL: athletes get an explicit federal right
The bill would prohibit colleges, conferences and the NCAA-type governing organizations from restricting an athlete’s ability to enter legitimate name, image and likeness agreements.
In particular, a school generally could not:
- declare an athlete ineligible because he or she has an NIL agreement;
- revoke a scholarship because of legitimate NIL activity; or
- discriminate against an athlete because of NIL compensation.
That’s significant because it would turn what has largely developed through court decisions, NCAA rules and settlements into federal statutory rights.
- But it doesn’t mean “anything goes”
There are disclosure and transparency requirements.
For Division I athletes, NIL compensation of more than $600 would have to be reported. The bill also creates an NIL-agreement database containing information about these arrangements.
It also regulates sports agents, including registration requirements and limits on certain agent compensation.
So the basic philosophy is:
Athletes may earn money, but the system should be transparent and regulated rather than an unrestricted bidding war.
- Medical and academic protections
This is one of the less-publicized parts of the bill.
It contains provisions concerning:
- academic protections;
- medical coverage;
- health, wellness and safety standards;
- access to facilities and services;
- an Office of the Student Athlete Ombudsman; and
- protections concerning transfers and eligibility.
The bill would also give an athlete one transfer without losing athletic eligibility, subject to the bill’s conditions.
That is a fairly substantial federal intervention into matters traditionally controlled by the NCAA and individual universities.
The really important—and controversial—part: revenue sharing
Here’s where the bill gets particularly interesting.
The 2025 House settlement fundamentally changed college sports. It permits participating universities to share substantial amounts of their athletic revenue directly with athletes. The settlement established a roughly $20.5 million initial annual cap per school, subject to increases over time.
The Protect College Sports Act essentially says:
Let’s take the basic structure of that settlement and put it into federal law.
It would prevent schools, conferences and associated entities from simply finding creative ways around the revenue-sharing limit.
And it would make the revenue-sharing cap permanent, with an annual inflation adjustment.
That is a very consequential provision.
- A limited antitrust exemption for television rights
This may be the most important provision for the future structure of college football.
The bill would permit colleges/conferences to create certain collective media-rights arrangements—essentially pooling television and other broadcasting rights and selling them collectively.
Ordinarily, that sort of cooperation among competitors can raise serious antitrust questions.
The bill therefore creates a limited antitrust exemption for qualifying arrangements. One important condition is that at least 75% of Football Bowl Subdivision institutions participate.
In practical terms, Congress is contemplating telling the NCAA/college conferences:
You may cooperate in selling the television product without constantly worrying that the cooperation itself violates antitrust law.
That’s a very different philosophy from the recent NCAA litigation, where restrictions on athletes were repeatedly attacked under antitrust law.
- It actually tries to preserve traditional rivalries
This is the part I suspect you, as an Utah football fan, would find particularly interesting.
The legislation contains provisions dealing with conference realignment and preservation of historic opponents.
It specifically addresses situations in which conference realignment has separated traditional rivals and directs covered entities to preserve certain conference opponents and traditional rivalries to the maximum practicable extent.
In other words, Congress is not merely talking about money.
It is implicitly saying:
The commercial transformation of college athletics shouldn’t completely destroy the traditional structure of college football.
That is a pretty remarkable federal-policy statement.
- It tries to prevent “pay-for-play” disguised as NIL
This is another important distinction.
The bill protects genuine NIL compensation but contains restrictions against arrangements that effectively circumvent the revenue-sharing rules.
So there is an underlying distinction between:
“Here is $2 million because you are a famous quarterback and we’re going to use your image to sell our product.”
and
“Here is $2 million simply for agreeing to play football for our university.”
The first is NIL.
The second starts looking like direct compensation for athletic services—essentially pay-for-play.
The legislation attempts to draw a statutory line between the two. Critics, however, argue that some of those definitions could be sufficiently vague to produce more litigation.
- It says nothing definitive about whether athletes are “employees”
This is an especially important legal point.
The bill contains a provision entitled “Neutrality on employee or non-employee status.”
In other words, rather than definitively declaring:
“College athletes are employees,”
or
“College athletes are not employees,”
the bill largely leaves that question open.
That is significant because employee status is one of the enormous unresolved legal questions in modern college athletics—with implications for minimum wage, workers’ compensation, collective bargaining, NLRA rights, and other employment law.
So who is this bill really trying to protect?
There are competing ways of looking at it.
The supporters’ argument
They would say:
Athletes need certainty.
The old amateur model has collapsed. NIL is here. Universities are now sharing revenue with athletes. Conferences are becoming enormous commercial enterprises. Congress needs to establish a uniform national framework rather than having 50 states, the NCAA, courts and individual conferences making conflicting rules.
That is a fairly powerful argument.
The critics’ argument
The criticism is essentially:
This gives the NCAA and universities too much power while putting limits on the athletes.
Sen. Chris Murphy, for example, has sharply criticized the proposal, arguing that its revenue limitations and proposed NCAA antitrust protection could suppress athlete compensation while protecting the people who run college athletics.
That criticism gets to the central tension in the legislation:
How do you protect college sports without giving the institutions that control college sports the ability to control the athletes economically?
And there’s another bill you may have heard about
The College Athlete Economic Freedom Act, H.R. 4868 / S. 2470, takes almost the opposite philosophical approach.
It would give athletes extraordinarily broad freedom to monetize their NIL, including individual and group NIL agreements, and would prohibit colleges and athletic associations from limiting those opportunities. The Senate version was introduced by Sen. Chris Murphy.
So there are really two competing philosophies in Congress:
| Protect College Sports Act | College Athlete Economic Freedom Act | |
|---|---|---|
| Basic philosophy | Regulate and stabilize college sports | Maximize athlete economic freedom |
| NIL | Protected but regulated | Very broad freedom |
| Revenue sharing | Cap/structure it | Much less restrictive |
| NCAA | Give it some protection | Much more skeptical |
| Antitrust | Limited protection for media arrangements | Preserve athletes’ antitrust leverage |
| Employee question | Leave largely open | More favorable to athlete rights |
| Conference structure | Tries to preserve stability/rivalries | Less emphasis |
My short take
The Protect College Sports Act is best understood not as an “NIL bill,” but as an attempt to establish a federal constitution for the post-amateur era of college sports.
It is trying to answer the question that the NCAA, courts and conferences have so far been unable to answer satisfactorily:
What is college athletics supposed to be now that the athletes are unquestionably participating in a multibillion-dollar commercial enterprise?
And I think that’s the really interesting question behind the legislation.
If you’d like, I can also give you a “Utah fan’s version”—i.e., what this bill could mean specifically for Utah, BYU, the Big 12, football revenue sharing, NIL collectives, the transfer portal, and the future of college football conferences.