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With college football games on tap for West Virginia and much of the nation this weekend, some athletes are raking in hundreds of thousands – sometimes millions – of dollars. That’s because of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) rules that allow them to collect endorsements and to share revenue with their schools.
“We know that the college sports system is just run amok,” U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said during a conference call to reporters on Thursday. “It’s the wild, wild west.”
That same day, the Senate voted 77-22 to move forward with S-4668, commonly known as the Protect College Sports Act.
Capito is a co-sponsor of the bill. She and other supporters say it would bring badly needed stability back to college sports.
“It’s become a point where students are transferring all over the place every year,” Capito said. “They’re getting paid under the table types of things and extraordinary payments. And honestly, the NCAA hasn’t handled it and the legal system’s caught up with them. So we are going to do this.”
The bill establishes sweeping federal regulations that cap revenue sharing with athletes to just over $21 million per school, ties retention funds to a school’s academic performance and limits athletes to one “free” transfer before penalties set in.
Capito was a Division I athlete and said she has talked to college presidents, athletic directors, coaches and student athletes in West Virginia to find out how the legislation might impact sports programs here.
“This protects that athlete, and it also brings it back a little bit closer to what college athletes are and college athletics was meant to be,” she said.
This week’s vote to move forward with the legislation sets up debate and a possible final vote in the Senate to send the bill to the House of Representatives as early as next week.