The Protect College Sports Act took a step forward Thursday with a Senate committee approval. Plenty of potential pitfalls remain ahead, including opposition from the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences.

The two most powerful conferences in college sports made clear that “revisions are needed to secure our support” for a bill designed to stabilize college sports. The opposition has renewed speculation that the two leagues and their 34 schools stretching from coast to coast will split from the NCAA and form a super league.

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, has heard the concerns about the Big Ten and SEC breaking away.

“We are interested in them understanding an economic future where there is more revenue for everybody and there is an upside,” Cantwell said. “But if the discussion is we just want to hold everybody else back and being king of the hill, I think that’s where they’ll run into trouble.”

Money the driver

The potential for leagues breaking away and consolidating seeming inevitable keeps growing for a simple reason.

“The economics are simply pointing in that direction,” said sports law professor Michael LeRoy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The Big Ten recently distributed $79.9 million to each of its full members with the SEC paying $72 million per school compared to $45 million by the Atlantic Coast Conference and $40 million by the Big 12. The Big Ten and SEC also netted 83% of five-star athletes and 65% of four-star athletes last December in LeRoy’s tabulation for the Seton Hall Law Review.

“The idea that you’re going to legislate parity when parity doesn’t exist is simply going to promote all kinds of mischief and work arounds,” LeRoy said.

Earlier this month, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua testified that Congress must act to help keep the cost of competition affordable or risk schools choosing to play football at a “super league-level.”

Never will happen

Cody Campbell, the billionaire booster who is chairman of the Texas Tech regents and a senior member of the Presidential Roundtable on Fixing College Sports, said this bill isn’t perfect. He called it likely the best chance to save a broken system.

Campbell said he takes the SEC and Big Ten commissioners at their word in having no interest in expansion or forming a super league. He encouraged those leagues to “get on board” even with their objections to help move the bill through Congress.

He also noted the bill specifically prohibits a super league and any such conference still would have the same issues that college sports currently is trying to address in Congress. That super league also wouldn’t have any antitrust exemptions.

Won’t end legal challenges

Judges still will be involved with college sports even if the act is passed into law.

LeRoy, who hasn’t supported the Protect College Sports Act, sees issues under the Sherman Antitrust Act and can’t see how Congress can legislate economic regulations that prevent more competitive leagues from breaking away.

Leagues are treated as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, he said, so they could sue over perceived violations of the Fifth Amendment protecting property from government takeover without just compensation.

“That’s one sort of low-hanging fruit argument that conferences could make if they wanted to challenge it in court,” LeRoy said.

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