There is no simple solution. No waving of a magic wand that will give every party exactly what they want.
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Tad Boyle is reasonable enough to understand all the people don’t get what they want all the time.
Still, in the case of the Protect College Sports Act, something is better than nothing.
That was the generalization offered by Boyle, Colorado’s men’s basketball coach, and his counterpart on the women’s team, JR Payne, as their clubs opened preseason practice this week.
On Monday, the Protect College Sports Act will head to a vote in the U.S. Senate. It’s expected to pass, and while that result would only be the first hurdle in turning the Act into law — it also would have to pass a vote in the House, which might not happen for months — it would signal a major victory for the NCAA and its member universities, including Colorado, that have pushed for legislation to rein in the rampant lawlessness that has marked the era of NIL and unlimited transfers in collegiate athletics.
“It’s a good starting point. Certainly doesn’t solve all of our problems, that’s for sure,” said Boyle, who’s starting his 17th season at CU. “Personally, I think there’ll be lawsuits coming down the pike even if it does get passed. But it’s better than nothing. It’s better than what we have right now. So I’m in favor of it, but I’d like to get this where there’s some competitive equity in our games, whether it’s college football or college basketball. Women’s basketball, baseball, it doesn’t matter the sport.”
CU has been a proponent of the Protect College Sports Act, with football head coach Deion Sanders recording a pro-PCSA commercial with Folsom Field as a backdrop. That the university backs the measure is no surprise. Most power conference athletic programs have been aligned on the PCSA, as it would set a uniform cap on NIL income (although it would increase the revenue-sharing pool to $50 million per school). That Sanders — long a proponent of players’ rights and the ability of his football players to make as much as they can, while they can — would publicly back the measure raised some eyebrows.
“I was asked to do something,” Sanders said by way of explanation on Sept. 15. “I did it because it was the right thing to do. I shot it, and that was it. I haven’t thought about it since, man.”
The PCSA also would grant the NCAA an antitrust exemption, giving it protection from many of the eligibility-based lawsuits that have put those issues in a constant state of flux throughout the country.
Boyle has always supported the professional model of collective bargaining — “I really like the NFL model. I like the NBA model,” he said — but doing so would almost have to require turning student-athletes into employees, a stance the NCAA has long abhorred.
“Personally, and I’m not an attorney, but I don’t understand how we can put caps on things when there’s not collective bargaining,” Boyle said. “I don’t know if we can get to collective bargaining without calling them employees. That would be, I think, a perfect solution for everybody. Because I know universities don’t want to have (athlete) employees. And I know a lot of student-athletes don’t want to be employees. So if there’s a way we can get to collective bargaining where they’re not employees, to me that’s the perfect situation.”
The PCSA offers protections for women’s sports as well as Historically Black Colleges and Universities, but it also sets transfer limits to one without penalty per five-year collegiate career. Pundits believe the freedoms athletes have received in recent years, from the unlimited transfers to player compensation, will be upended if the PCSA becomes law.
“I can’t really speak to the details of it, because I don’t know it as intimately as I need to,” Payne said. “But I think we need parameters. We need framework that we can all operate under the same guidelines. It just doesn’t feel like we’re all operating by the same rules at times. Or we’re not all following the same guidelines. So I’d love that. I love some of the protections they’d put in place, if it passes, for women’s sports. Health and safety and things like that post-grad. One-time transfer I think is great just to kind of rein it back in a little bit. But, again, there’s a lot to it I can’t really speak to.”
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