Amid College Sports Chaos, Florida Moves To Influence Senate Legislation

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida university leaders are asking Congress to take a timeout and call some audibles in the college sports legislation that could pass the Senate as soon as this week.

Athletic directors and other top officials in the college-sports-crazed Sunshine State see the proposal, the country’s most substantial attempt yet to govern this chaotic athletics marketplace, as “progress over perfection” — a potential shift they welcome yet hope will evolve in the Senate or eventually the House.

Notably, they are apprehensive about how the legislation could put schools in purgatory if they want to switch athletic conferences, and they’re unsure about the idea of capping the number of colleges in those conferences. They also want more guardrails around third-party name, image and likeness deals they contend schools are using to funnel money to student athletes.

With senators positioned to possibly vote soon on the so-called Protect College Sports Act, the state university system’s Board of Governors is sensing it’s time to kick off on lobbying the Florida delegation. And there appears to be an open channel, as some Florida athletic directors spoke Monday night with Florida Sens. Ashley Moody and Rick Scott about the bill. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) released a new version of their legislation Tuesday after weeks of negotiations with the largest athletics conferences and the Trump administration, as Cruz remains adamant about passing the bipartisan measure before senators leave for August recess at the end of this week.

“Getting something done in Congress is difficult; changing it later is going to be really difficult,” Keith Perry, a former GOP state lawmaker serving on the Board of Governors, said Tuesday during an athletics task force meeting. “The only opportunity, really, to have any kind of influence is there now.”

One key policy Florida is pushing to rework would create a five-year waiting period during which colleges must be independent after leaving one of the four largest and most prominent conferences. This concept is aimed at tapering off the flurry of schools switching athletic conferences in recent years, but Florida officials fear it would ultimately restrict colleges from growing their programs and competing at the highest level.

“If I live in California for 30 years — 30 years ago, it was great; today, not so great — [and] I want to move to Florida, [the] government says, ‘Sure, you can move to Florida, but you’ve got to go to Cuba for five years,’” Florida State University board Chair Peter Collins said Tuesday. “That makes no sense.”

University officials gave mixed reviews to another aspect of the Senate bill that could cap the number of teams in each of the Power Four conferences at 19 schools. Some questioned the seemingly arbitrary number of 19 colleges proposed in the legislation while supporting the possibility of a cap, so long as the figure is higher. In the same vein as the five-year purgatory piece, school leaders worry this wrinkle would make it “difficult, if not impossible” for schools to move up the ladder to larger conferences.

“If you're in the SEC or the Big Ten, you're not really paying attention to that language because those arguably are the two conferences everyone's aspiring to reach,” said Scott Carr, Florida International University’s athletic director.

The Senate also is suggesting a shakeup to the revenue-sharing deal that ultimately altered the collegiate landscape by allowing schools to make direct payments to student athletes.

The legislation reportedly would allow schools a $22.5 million cap for retaining athletes on top of the original revenue-sharing cap slated to reach $21.3 million in the fall. This, along with another $5 million the bill would permit colleges to dedicate toward women’s and non-revenue sports, could give schools up to $48.8 million at their disposal for paying athletes.

But even with the possibility of more cash on hand, Florida officials want the federal legislation to ensure the cap is actually enforceable, as some schools have apparently used “fake” third-party deals to pump more money into sports.

“It's the third-party, what has been synthetic NIL, that gets created, because of just the highly competitive nature of the enterprise, that is really hard to govern and track,” said Scott Stricklin, the University of Florida’s athletic director.

As Florida’s university system board prepares to dial up an official slate of recommendations for the Senate bill, Stricklin said many of the tweaks have already been floated to Moody and Scott.

“These messages were delivered,” Stricklin said. “They were asking good questions. The senators themselves were engaged, it wasn't staff. And so, I feel like they have a pretty good sense.”

Timing will be tight though, and the Senate will have to cram votes in before their scheduled summer recess. There’ll be one bright spot, though, to their recess leisure time: College football gets started Aug. 29.