College football is bigger than ever — so Congress – Latest News
When the school football playoffs kick off this weekend, they’ll affirm the sport’s standing as one of the most popular tickets in all of American sports activities, its reputation persevering with to surge even within the face of current rule adjustments that make traditionalists cringe.
Controversial pay-to-play “name-image-likeness” guidelines now permit star gamers to make hundreds of thousands of {dollars} whereas they compete as student-athletes.
Then there’s the new “transfer portal,” which permits gamers to buy their abilities and soar from college to high school to play for the very best bidder.
It’s created a lot of turmoil for sure, however so far it hasn’t ruined the game, as many feared.
The grand pageantry and traditions of faculty football, performed at on-campus stadiums full of as many as 100,000 crazed college students, stay intact.
One of the large worries — that wealthy and highly effective colleges like Michigan and Louisiana State University would spend their strategy to domination — has undoubtedly been put to relaxation.
Sure, conventional powerhouses like Ohio State and Alabama are close to the highest of the standings, however this 2025 season has been full of fantastic surprises, with the upstart Indiana Hoosiers — the losingest group in faculty football historical past — now the No. 1-ranked group.
Even little James Madison University has crashed the playoffs social gathering. How’s that for parity?
But thorny issues persist: College football means huge money and massive business.
TV rights to video games now herald billions of {dollars}, quickly to be tens of billions.
The Big 10 simply grew to become a $1 billion group, and the SEC is proper behind it.
Remember, the NCAA and its tons of of member colleges are technically “nonprofit” organizations.
Really? They’re about as nonprofit as ExxonMobil.
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Their paid athletes are something however amateurs; their loyalty to the Old U is extremely questionable after they observe the money and switch from college to high school.
It’s a heady gold rush proper now, and often I’m all for that sort of factor.
But the dearth of oversight implies that faculty football may quickly devolve into simply one other skilled sport — with the athletes sporting the jerseys of academic establishments, however not being half of them, stripping the sport of its treasured traditions.
What may be achieved to avoid wasting the NCAA from itself?
Washington politicians have some diametrically opposed concepts.
Republicans in Congress, led by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, have proposed a law known as the SCORE Act, which they are saying is “the free market, individual liberty, limited government fix” to varsity athletics.
I’ve joined with the heads of about a dozen different free-market teams in signing a letter of assist for a lot of of the SCORE Act reforms.
The law isn’t excellent by any means, however it will require faculties to share the wealth with the gamers, maintaining colleges from hoarding all of the money rolling in from the skills of their “student athletes.”
It additionally protects the gamers from being required to affix a union and pay union dues, and prevents trial legal professionals from suing the colleges below archaic antitrust legal guidelines.
The different “fix” is a lot, a lot worse.
Senate Democrats’ invoice, known as the SAFE Act, may power gamers to be labeled as “college employees,” which might imply they could possibly be required to affix their universities’ unions and pay obligatory union dues.
For what, precisely?
The Democrats’ invoice offers nosy regulatory companies just like the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys common the suitable to sue the NCAA.
Why ought to this be the business of authorities?
With the school football money machine spinning quicker and quicker, each curiosity group in Washington — from the unions to the legal professionals to the bureaucrats — desires a piece of the pie.
But that money rightly belongs with the wonderful athletes who entertain us and the colleges who recruit and now pay them — not the financial parasites in Washington who wish to destroy this great recreation.
Stephen Moore is co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a former Trump senior financial adviser.
