SEC and Big Ten must decide on Protect College Sports Act by Wednesday, Congress says

CHICAGO — The SEC and Big Ten are on the clock.

Congressional lawmakers distributed to the two conferences on Tuesday the revised language of the Protect College Sports Act and set a deadline of 9 a.m. ET Wednesday for them to deliver their position on the legislation. Sources with direct knowledge of the situation shared the deadline and portions of the revised bill.

The 61-page legislation, which stands to regulate the college athletics industry, arrived to conference leadership about an hour after Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti kicked off his three-day football media days with an address in front of hundreds of reporters here at the downtown Hilton Chicago.

The deadline looms as perhaps the most notable new bit of information from the co-authors of the bill, Sens. Ted Cruz, Maria Cantwell and Eric Schmitt. League administrators must now review the revised bill and present it to conference university presidents and chancellors, who must vote to either formally support or continue to oppose the legislation.

The Big Ten and SEC's positions serve as a key determining factor of the fate of the bill. Their support is likely to send the legislation through the U.S. Senate and into the House of Representatives. Their opposition may result in the bill's death or delay.

A tight timeline exists. Lawmakers are attempting to bring the legislation to the floor of the Senate for a vote next week — the last week that senators are in session before a month-long recess starts Aug. 7. The legislation faces longer odds of passage if it does not reach the floor before the recess.

The senators and their staff contend, privately, that they've made enough changes to the legislation to garner the Big Ten and SEC's support, but conference leaders fear that portions of the bill do not provide enough long-term stability and leaves open the possibility of more legal challenges. This weakens antitrust provisions in the bill, such as the re-implementation of the one-time transfer, the five-year eligibility standard, stricter athlete compensation cap and an agent registry and certification process.

A full summary of the latest revisions to the bill are available here:

Portions of the full revised bill received by conference leaders on Tuesday are in draft form as they remain under discussion — perhaps a critical hurdle in conferences changing their stance. Also, the bill includes a new section, Title III, which is called "Ignite HBCUs Sports and Media Act." Title III is left blank and appears to be under discussion.

SEC and Big Ten officials are the loudest critics of the legislation when most conferences and the NCAA support the measure. The situation has grown more and more divisive, both between the SEC and Big Ten versus lawmaker staffs and between the two conferences and all other leagues.

During his 45-minute address and question-and-answer segment here on Tuesday, Petitti said the league is on "standby" to review legislation changes and called the revisions "imperative." Because of the league's busy media day schedule, the Big Ten may not be able to meet with its university presidents and chancellors until later this evening.

Petitti expects intense negotiations over the revisions, which may mean missing Wednesday morning's deadline.

"I don't think anybody expects that we get the changes and check the box, 'It's all good.' There will be a back and forth," he said. "We'll go as fast as we can."

SEC presidents and chancellors reviewed a summary of the bill revisions on Monday evening, but did not take action as they waited for the full text to arrive.

If Congress doesn't pass a revised bill, Petitti says the next solution for bringing regulation to the industry is striking a compromise with the other power leagues over changes to the College Sports Commission and the athlete revenue-share cap, which is far below the current compensation market. If a compromise isn't reached, a self-governance model is necessary, Petitti suggested, where leagues create and enforce their own rules. However, that "doesn't mean you're not going to play anybody else," he said.

SEC officials have seriously discussed for months now a self-governing model as a way to enforce rules and evade antitrust scrutiny with a smaller group of programs (16 schools vs. the 350-plus in Division I). But some attorneys believe that the leagues still hold market power and may not escape all legal challenges.

The bill, though, is the top priority.

"We recognize it's not going to be perfect," Petitti said. "Are we in a position that it provides a lot more help than not?"

The NCAA and conferences have spent seven years lobbying Congress for a bill to provide regulation to an industry whose policies crumbled at the hands of legal court losses, thrusting the landscape into a rudderless ecosystem of unlimited player movement, loose compensation restrictions and extended eligibility for athletes.

"When you ask for help, it doesn't mean you're always going to get the help you asked for," Petitti said here Tuesday. "We prefer a much skinnier bill than this."

That, this is not.

The bill is incredibly prescriptive and specific, even touching on conference expansion, coaching movement, pooling television rights and even increasing the revenue share cap. The legislation…

• Caps conference membership at 19 and requires schools moving from one power league to another to operate as an independent for five years.

• Allows, but does not require, FBS schools to pool their television rights if at least 75% of them agree to the concept.

• Prevents coaches from leaving their teams before the season ends.

• Creates a $20 million retention pool for schools to use to retain current players in addition to the $21.3 million revenue-share cap, as well as allowing programs an additional $5 million to be spent only on women's athletes. All of this would raise the cap to roughly $46 million.

Even before receiving the full language of the revised bill, SEC and Big Ten officials have expressed to lawmakers problems with the summary of the changes. The leagues want more restrictive language to close a loophole allowing non-school third parties to recruit high school prospects by prohibiting NIL compensation to recruits. They do not want the revenue-share cap language to terminate as it does now after nine years. They want stricter tampering restrictions, and they want language preventing third-party entities, such as private equity firms, from poaching their members to create a super league should be more refined.