Senators offer latest bill aimed at college sports, NIL reform - ESPN

A bipartisan trio of U.S. senators shared a draft Thursday morning of legislation that aims to create a uniform national law for how college athletes can make money and push many schools to provide more health care benefits for athletes.

The draft is one of at least three potential bills that have been floated on Capitol Hill this summer as the NCAA and leaders across college sports continue to ask Congress to help regulate how athletes can make money from their names, images and likenesses. This proposal — co-authored by Sens. Cory Booker, Jerry Moran and Richard Blumenthal — goes beyond NIL regulation by suggesting that NCAA schools should be required to be more transparent about their finances and set aside funds for post-career medical expenses and long-term guaranteed scholarships for athletes.

«It would make college athletics fairer, safer, and more just, and empower more young people to succeed in sports and beyond,» Booker said in a statement.

Federal lawmakers have proposed more than a dozen bills to reform college sports in the past three years, but thus far none has made it beyond the first step in the legislative process. Leaders from the NCAA, its most powerful conferences and many of its schools have traveled to Washington this summer to try to convince Congress to act. They say that the current lack of a nationwide standard has created a «race to the bottom» among state legislatures that are passing laws designed to try to give teams in their state a competitive advantage in recruiting.

«Congressional action is the only way to provide a national uniform standard for name, image, and likeness activity and to draw the lines around the boundaries that do not become simply pay for play,» SEC commissioner Greg