The biggest debate in college sports today is not about athletes. It is about power. As lawmakers, college presidents, and athletic directors rally around the Protect College Sports Act of 2026, the conversation has centered on governance, regulation, and lawsuits — and less on the students whose futures hang in the balance. The landmark piece of proposed legislation establishes a uniform framework to codify the rights of student-athletes and regulate college athletics in order to save college sports. But save it for whom?
College sports has become a marketplace with too few rules and too little accountability — and student-athletes are often paying the price. They are expected to navigate compensation, transfers, contracts, and eligibility in a system defined by inconsistent state laws, shifting policies, judicial inconsistency, and competing financial interests. As billions of dollars flow through college athletics, power has increasingly shifted to agents, collectives, and other intermediaries, while the students at the center of the enterprise are caught in the middle with the least certainty and protection.
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The public’s attention is captured by the handful of athletes signing life-changing name, image, and likeness deals. But those stories are the exception, not the rule. For nearly every student-athlete, the real payoff is an education culminating in a college degree and the character forged through competition. We should not accept a system that treats those outcomes as secondary to short-term transactions. College athletics should remain a pathway to lifelong opportunity, not a race to the next deal.
The Protect College Sports Act is not a cure-all for college athletics. It is, however, a long-overdue set of guardrails for a system that has operated without them.
The legislation replaces today’s patchwork of state laws and institutional approaches to name, image, and likeness with clear, enforceable standards that protect student-athletes’ ability to earn compensation from their NIL. It curbs one of the system’s most harmful practices: agents who pressure student-athletes to transfer with promises of better NIL opportunities that might not exist, then profit by charging higher fees on the deals they broker.
The bill requires agents to register with their states, prohibits deceptive conduct, and caps endorsement fees at 5%. The bill also gives student-athletes access to anonymized market data to better assess their value while requiring third-party and collective NIL deals to reflect fair market value, helping prevent the circumvention of revenue-sharing limits.
The PCSA would also reform transfer rules so that student-athletes can return to the original North Star of college sports: obtaining an education and enjoying the opportunities that follow.
The PCSA does not limit its focus to simply revenue sport student-athletes, but calls for increased protection for Olympic sports that will safeguard scholarship and roster levels for women’s and men’s Olympic sports — a critical move endorsed by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
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Our student-athletes have consistently told university leaders and Colorado’s congressional delegation that they want the clarity, structure, and protections this legislation provides. We join a growing coalition of universities in supporting the Protect College Sports Act because college athletics needs a stable, sustainable framework that serves student-athletes, institutions, and the future of the game.
The PCSA gives colleges and universities the ability to refocus on what has always mattered most: preparing student-athletes for both competition and life beyond it. Congress should act now to protect the future of millions of student-athletes whose greatest victory will never be measured on a scoreboard, but in the lives they build, the communities they strengthen, and the generations they inspire.
Justin Schwartz is the chancellor of the University of Colorado Boulder.