WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� Senate negotiators worked Wednesday to resolve thorny differences with leaders of the Southeastern and Big Ten Conferences over designed to regulate college sports that sponsors want a vote on before the chamber goes on summer break next week.
鈥淭hose conversations are ongoing,鈥� said one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Cruz and co-sponsor Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., are pushing to bring the Protect College Sports Act to a vote before Aug. 7, the last day the Senate meets before going on break. Senators return for the second half of September, before breaking for all of October — leaving little time remaining before the November midterms.
A pair of documents outlining concessions the lawmakers have made in the negotiations were headlined by a $20 million-plus 鈥渞etention pool鈥� that schools could use to keep players from leaving. It would amount to a doubling of the revenue-sharing 鈥渟alary cap,” which is currently set at $21.3 million for this school year.
The conferences are seeking answers on whether the increase in revenue share would impact rules governing third-party payments to players, the likes of which are largely blamed for spiraling roster costs.
There’s also the question of whether such an increase would comport with the House settlement 鈥� the $2.8 billion lawsuit settlement that dictates rules around revenue sharing. Jeffrey Kessler, the plaintiffs’ attorney, has said he would need to see the language before weighing in on whether it impacts the settlement.
Absent from the documents was any mention of rewrites regarding antitrust protection or preemption of state laws. Those have been core requests surrounding legislation from virtually all the conferences and NCAA since Congress began this process.
Earlier this month, the outlining 10 鈥淐ommon Sense Improvements鈥� for the PCSA. The first two鈥� and three of the 10 鈥� entries on their list dealt with those two issues.
Other topics have been addressed in the negotiations, including adding flexibility to requirements over how many Olympic and women’s sports programs some schools should have and relaxing language over conference expansion to allow leagues to grow to up to 19 teams.
There has also been language designed to prohibit private equity investors from paying schools to form a super league, though the conferences could seek more refining to that language.
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Pells reported from Denver.
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