Future of college sports shouldn’t be dictated by Congress: Sen Rand Paul

College sports are woven into the fabric of American culture.

We build our fall calendars around Saturday start times, and we all fill out our brackets in March. Rain or shine, hot or cold, we tailgate in parking lots.

We invite our neighbors over to watch the game at our house, then we fire up the grill while all the kids run around the yard — and yes, we start our kids early, dressing them in baby clothes with the logo of our alma mater or hometown.

College sports can be anything from conversation starters to the foundation of our most meaningful relationships in life. While we celebrate with our family when our team wins, we wish we could also celebrate with those we miss.

As Kentuckians proudly stand shoulder to shoulder, there are a few days each year when we let everyone know whether we’re wearing Cardinal red or Wildcat blue.

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These are our traditions. This is our community, our county, our community and our country.

Yes, rapid changes are occurring in college sports.

Numerous decisions in our courts, including the Supreme Court, have gutted the old rules in college sports, and today there is little left to hold them together.

Players change schools every year to find the highest bidder, while institutions feel powerless to stop rapid change and the quest for more revenue. The academic element of college sports feels like an afterthought.

The pressure to find solutions is increasing.

But I don’t want Congress to dictate what happens next.

Why should we leave the responsibility of protecting college sports to an institution as popular as cockroaches and traffic jams?

Former University of Alabama Head Football Coach Nick Saban speaks as Senator Ted Cruz addresses a roundtable on the future of college athletics and the need to legalize name, image and likeness rights for student-athletes on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on March 12, 2024. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

In an effort to rebuild college sports for this new era, numerous bills have been introduced to Congress that would determine how athletes can and cannot participate in sports, how they can be compensated, and how universities can and cannot manage their athletic programs.

So is there anyone in the American public who is happy with the reform recently passed by Congress? Anything?

Congress can’t fund federal agencies and government workers are missing paychecks. Congress allowed airport security check lines to creep up for weeks. Congress can’t balance the budget, and the government seems to be shutting down regularly.

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And now the American people are expected to believe that Congress can effectively govern college sports, despite all evidence to the contrary?

College sports certainly should not be subject to a governing council of 535 members of Congress and should not be regulated from Washington, D.C., like the Postal Service.

College sports must have the ability to adopt their own reforms, and Congress’s role should be to give them that power; just this.

Whether we like it or not, college sports is a marketplace and should not be subject to restrictive federal regulations or the open-ended threat of congressional intervention.

That’s why I proposed the College Sports Integrity Act (S. 2147), which works on a simple premise: Eliminate antitrust liability from college athletics.

This solution will enable those who establish, train and sustain college sports to decide the next step.

Where disagreements arise, allow stakeholders to sit down, reach an agreement, and resolve them internally.

Where there is a patchwork of court-imposed rules, let’s empower institutions, athletes, and conferences to figure out how to balance the demands of this new environment while maintaining the traditional roles of college sports and academics.

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Once agreement is reached, everyone signs these rules and agrees to play by them.

Who better to protect the integrity of college sports than those who built college sports and will have to work, live and compete under the new rules?

Revenue sharing, television contracts, corporate alignment, player transfers, and similar issues should be handled by stakeholders in college sports, not on terms set by Congress.

We cannot allow Congress to establish a regulatory regime that picks winners and losers; effectively federalizes the management of state institutions; determines in federal law what can be addressed through underlying agreements; it will be almost impossible to reform in the future; inseparable from politics and parochial interests.

NCAA president Charlie Baker arrives at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Name, Image and Likeness and the Future of College Sports” at the Hart Building on Oct. 17, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images)

In addition, it is unlikely that any college sports “framework” created by Congress will receive sufficient debate and review before becoming law, as Congress often passes legislation by cobbling together hundreds of unrelated measures behind closed doors and then uses looming deadlines and expirations to gain influence with rank-and-file members.

In other words, embracing the idea that Congress will create and regulate rules for college athletics means blindly believing in an opaque process within an institution that is not widely liked or trusted.

To paraphrase former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: We’ll probably have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.

I certainly don’t want to subject college sports and our sacred traditions to that kind of risk.

But the good news is that we don’t have to.

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If we pass the College Sports Integrity Act and send it to President Donald Trump, we can put college sports on a sustainable path for the future and keep politicians out of it.

Sounds like a win-win plan to me.