Congress has taken the first tangible step toward cleaning up the college-sports mess that the college should be expected to clean up themselves.
Via Tom Schad of USA Today, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade voted to advance the so-called SCORE Act with a party-line vote, 12-11.
The bill, which now goes to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, would create an antitrust exemption and, in turn, allow the NCAA to do what current law prohibits — bring together distinct and competing businesses under a set of rules that will be good for them, and bad for the players.
As least one Republican member of the House objects to the Score Act.
“In its current form, the SCORE Act fails to protect what makes college sports special,” Congressman Michael Baumgartner (R-Wash.) said in a statement issued before the vote. “It puts student-athletes at risk by empowering the wealthiest programs to poach talent and control the system. This bill accelerates the erosion of competitive balance, tradition, and opportunity — especially for smaller schools. I want to make sure that college athletics at WSU, Gonzaga, and EWU continue to have a strong future. If we truly care about student-athletes, we should be strengthening the institutions and values that support them, not stacking the deck against them.”
If the argument in favor of an antitrust exemption is to create competitive balance, that balance should extend beyond the “power” conferences. Given Baumgartner’s remarks, it seems that the balance will apply only to the handful of teams that have the juice to seize it.
Here’s the reality. The pro-business-in-populist-clothing party has the votes to push this through. Order will be restored in college sports.
For the schools, that is. For the players, their pockets will surely be picked and their earning potential will surely be limited and their right to transfer to other schools will surely be restricted — and their coaches will surely retain the power to hopscotch around the nation in search of the next, bigger bag.
And then, when the playing field is supposedly equal as to resources available to recruit players, Nick Saban will come back and use his selective charm to stack the deck in his favor with great players and win another national championship, or three.
