The Protect College Sports Act Wouldn’t End NCAA Litigation. It Would Rewrite It.

Strategic Analysis | September 12, 2026

Three days before the Senate’s latest push on the Protect College Sports Act, the Ninth Circuit offered a nearly perfect explanation for why the legislation matters.

In Blythe v. NCAA, the court held that the NCAA’s Five-Year Rule is a commercial restraint subject to the Sherman Act. The NCAA still won the appeal because the athlete had not presented enough evidence to establish a likely antitrust violation. But the larger proposition was unmistakable: calling something an “eligibility rule” does not automatically place it beyond antitrust review. A court can ask whether the rule restrains the market for college-athlete services, whether it harms competition, whether the NCAA has a legitimate justification, and whether a less restrictive alternative exists.

That is the world college sports lives in today.

The Protect College Sports Act would build a different one.

The pending Senate bill expressly provides that it would not be unlawful under the antitrust laws for the NCAA, conferences, and schools to enforce or comply with specified federal rules governing eligibility, transfers, compensation, recruiting, athlete agents, and related matters. It separately protects specified sanctions used to enforce those rules.

That is not a blanket exemption from antitrust law. And it would not stop college athletes from suing.

But it would change the question at the center of many of those lawsuits.

Today, an athlete may ask:

Is the NCAA legally allowed to impose this rule?

If the Act is enacted, the more important question may become:

Did the NCAA impose the rule Congress authorized—and did it stay inside the boundaries Congress established?

That sounds like a subtle distinction.

It is not.

It would amount to a significant transfer of rulemaking authority from courts applying general antitrust principles to Congress establishing a federal code for college sports.

And that means the legislation would not end the litigation era.

It would begin a different one.

Modern college-sports law has been built through antitrust litigation.

O’Bannon challenged restrictions on NIL compensation. Alston dismantled limits on certain education-related benefits. House attacked compensation restraints on a much larger scale. More recently, athletes have challenged rules governing junior-college participation, seasons of competition, professional experience, and the NCAA’s changing eligibility framework.

The legal mechanism is usually the same: NCAA members agree on a rule that limits what athletes can earn or where and when they can compete; athletes argue that agreement restrains competition under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

The NCAA can still win those cases. Blythe is proof. The Ninth Circuit held that the Five-Year Rule was subject to antitrust review but concluded that the plaintiff had not carried the evidentiary burden required for preliminary relief.

But being forced to justify the rule at all matters.

The Protect College Sports Act would remove that inquiry for a defined category of rules.

Section 118 says that enforcing or complying with the bill’s provisions on eligibility, transfers, specified NIL restrictions, prohibited compensation, recruiting, and other covered subjects would not violate the antitrust laws. It extends protection to fines, participation restrictions, and athlete-eligibility sanctions imposed for violations of those provisions. The association receives that protection only if it has adopted rules or regulations implementing the relevant statutory framework.

That last qualification matters.

Congress would not be handing the NCAA a piece of paper reading, “Do whatever you want.”

It would be creating something closer to a statutory lane.

Stay inside that lane, and the NCAA gains substantial antitrust protection.

Leave it, and ordinary antitrust law can still matter. The bill itself says that where antitrust liability is not limited by the Act, its preemption section does not displace antitrust law.

That distinction is likely to become one of the first major litigation battlegrounds.

Future cases may spend less time asking whether an eligibility restraint is procompetitive and more time asking whether the challenged rule actually implements Section 113—or goes beyond it.

The same will be true of recruiting rules, compensation restrictions, transfer sanctions, and enforcement policies.

Antitrust does not disappear.

It moves to the boundary line.

And boundary litigation can be just as fierce as the litigation it replaces.

Nowhere is that clearer than the eligibility litigation unfolding across the country.

The current Class-of-2022 fight has produced precisely the sort of fragmented system Congress is trying to address. A Colorado federal court initially granted classwide preliminary relief to athletes challenging their exclusion from the NCAA’s new eligibility model; the Tenth Circuit then stayed that injunction pending appeal. Meanwhile, individual athletes have pursued emergency relief in state courts elsewhere, with different judges reaching different interim results.

The result is strange even by college-sports standards.

A national eligibility rule can produce a nationwide federal injunction, an appellate stay, and then separate state-court TROs that allow particular athletes to play anyway.

That is not merely inconvenient. It directly affects rosters, scholarships, NIL contracts, revenue-sharing allocations, depth charts, recruiting decisions, and competitive results.

The Protect College Sports Act would federalize much of that eligibility framework.

Its current text provides a maximum five-calendar-year eligibility period for Division I and Division II athletes, beginning with the earlier of full-time enrollment or the academic year following the athlete’s 19th birthday, with specified exceptions for circumstances including pregnancy, religious missions, active-duty military service, and certain uniformly adopted additional absences.

Transfers receive their own statutory framework. The bill generally guarantees one transfer between four-year institutions without delayed eligibility, imposes a one-academic-year eligibility consequence for a second transfer, and creates exceptions including discontinuation of the athlete’s sport, departure of the head coach, sexual assault or harassment, and pursuit of a graduate degree.

If those provisions became law, an athlete challenging future eligibility enforcement would have a new cause of action—but a very different one.

Section 119 expressly authorizes an athlete to sue in federal court when the NCAA, a conference, or an institution allegedly fails to comply with the federal eligibility or transfer standard. At the same time, Section 118 protects enforcement of those statutory standards from antitrust attack.

So imagine the same dispute two years from now.

Instead of retaining economists to define a labor market, prove anticompetitive effects, litigate procompetitive justifications, and propose less restrictive alternatives, the case may look much more like statutory interpretation:

Does this athlete fall inside the five-year period?

Does an exception apply?

Did the second-transfer restriction apply?

Was the sanction one Congress authorized?

Did the NCAA’s implementing bylaw add a restriction Congress did not?

The litigation does not vanish.

The legal battlefield changes.

Enactment would also create an immediate problem that should not be oversimplified:

What happens to cases that are already pending?

The answer is not obviously “they disappear.”

The bill contains a specific applicability provision saying that one portion of its eligibility section—the restriction concerning sports wagering and event contracts—applies to proceedings pending on or commenced after enactment. The text does not contain an equally broad statement expressly making all of the new eligibility and antitrust provisions applicable to pending litigation.

That drafting choice matters.

Courts generally distinguish between changing the rules governing future conduct and retroactively altering legal consequences for conduct that occurred before a statute was enacted. Exactly how that principle would apply to any particular NCAA case would depend on the claim, the requested remedy, the timing of the challenged conduct, and the final statutory text.

A pending claim for damages based on past conduct presents one problem.

A request for an injunction governing next season presents another.

A lawsuit challenging a rule that Congress has now replaced presents yet another.

Some prospective claims could become moot or materially altered because the governing rules themselves have changed. Others may survive. Parties will almost certainly fight over retroactivity, mootness, statutory displacement, and whether new federal standards govern the requested prospective relief.

The important point is that enactment would not produce a magical docket-clearing event.

It would generate a transition litigation phase.

And because college sports runs on a calendar that does not wait for appellate briefing, those transition fights would likely arrive through emergency motions, TRO applications, expedited appeals, and requests for stays—the same procedural weapons driving eligibility litigation now.

This is the feature of the legislation most likely to be lost in shorthand descriptions of it as an “antitrust exemption.”

The bill gives institutions meaningful protection from certain antitrust suits.

It also creates new rights athletes could enforce in court.

Section 119 provides private rights of action for specified violations involving NIL protections, disclosure requirements, academic protections, healthcare, health and safety, athlete representation in governance, transfers, eligibility, and certain benefits. A prevailing plaintiff can obtain actual damages and appropriate equitable or declaratory relief.

The bill also generally prevents schools, conferences, and athletic associations from requiring athletes to agree before a dispute arises to arbitrate claims under the statute. It restricts certain pre-dispute joint-action waivers as well.

So Congress would be doing two things at once.

It would narrow one of the most powerful legal tools athletes have used to challenge NCAA rules—antitrust law—while supplying a new federal set of athlete protections and an express mechanism for enforcing many of them.

Supporters of the bill emphasize that combination: national rules plus enforceable federal athlete rights, healthcare and safety protections, transfer standards, and access to court.

Opponents, including the AFL-CIO and its Sports Council, argue that the antitrust protection would shift too much rulemaking power back to the NCAA, conferences, and institutions without requiring those rules to be collectively bargained with athletes.

Both sides are identifying a real structural consequence.

The question is not whether athletes would retain legal rights. They would.

The question is who defines the baseline rule before the lawsuit begins.

Under antitrust law, a court can ultimately conclude that the NCAA’s chosen restriction is too anticompetitive.

Under the proposed statutory model, Congress itself would establish many of the substantive boundaries. Courts would largely police compliance with those boundaries rather than independently determine whether the underlying restraint should exist.

That is the bigger change.

The same shift would occur in NIL enforcement.

Right now, the College Sports Commission and NIL Go operate through the infrastructure created after the House settlement and incorporated into NCAA legislation.

NCAA rules require covered noninstitutional NIL arrangements to be submitted for review, place the burden of supplying sufficient information on athletes and institutions, and allow the CSC—after specified notice—to decline to clear a transaction when necessary documentation is not provided. NCAA Bylaw 23 separately provides a neutral arbitration process for disputes involving designated-enforcement decisions, with penalties stayed during arbitration absent good cause.

That arrangement is already producing legal disputes.

In June, for example, the House special master rejected, at that stage of the proceedings, an effort by the athlete plaintiffs to obtain a declaration limiting when multimedia-rights companies and third-party sponsors could be treated as “associated entities.” The order illustrates an important point: once parties begin applying phrases such as “associated entity,” “valid business purpose,” and fair-market compensation to real transactions, interpretation becomes litigation.

The Protect College Sports Act does not replace that machinery.

In important respects, it builds around it.

The bill defines its “revenue share cap” by reference to the Benefits Pool Limit established in the House injunctive settlement. Its compensation provisions prohibit institutions and associated entities from circumventing that cap, require third-party NIL deals within the covered structure to have a valid business purpose, and impose additional certification requirements.

Most strikingly, the bill expressly permits an athletic association or conference to designate an entity under its control pursuant to the House settlement to enforce the statutory compensation provisions, with antitrust protection for covered enforcement.

And certain disputes do not go directly to ordinary court litigation at all.

Claims over whether an NIL agreement has a “valid business purpose,” along with specified disputes about compliance with the revenue-cap provisions, must follow the dispute procedure established by Article 6, Section 2 of the House settlement.

That creates an unusual hybrid system:

Federal statute.

Private sports-governance rules.

A settlement-created enforcement body.

Neutral arbitration.

Ongoing judicial supervision of the settlement.

And federal courts enforcing separate statutory rights.

College sports would not suddenly become simple.

It would become institutionalized.

This may be the most underappreciated part of the legislation.

House is, fundamentally, a class-action settlement approved by a federal court. Its injunctive provisions create the current revenue-sharing framework and much of the third-party NIL enforcement architecture.

The Protect College Sports Act would effectively use that settlement as legislative scaffolding.

The bill imports the settlement’s revenue-share cap into federal law. It refers repeatedly to the settlement’s definitions and enforcement process. It provides a mechanism through which Congress could approve continuation of the revenue-share cap after the settlement expires or terminates; without that approval, the statutory cap provisions would eventually cease to operate. If Congress authorizes continuation, the statute supplies a process for future cap increases and recalculations.

That is remarkable.

A private antitrust settlement negotiated to resolve litigation could become the foundation of a federal regulatory system.

And that would change the strategic significance of attacks on the House framework.

Today, arguments over revenue caps, associated-entity rules, and NIL clearing procedures are deeply connected to the enforceability and interpretation of the settlement.

If Congress incorporates substantial portions of that architecture into federal law, attacking the system solely as an anticompetitive private agreement becomes considerably more difficult where the challenged conduct falls within the statutory protection.

The litigation would instead shift toward questions such as:

Did the CSC correctly apply the statutory definition?

Is a particular entity really “associated”?

Was a transaction genuinely for a valid business purpose?

Did the enforcement body follow the required procedure?

Did an institution actually circumvent the cap?

Did a rule implement the statute—or enlarge it?

That is less dramatic than Alston.

It may be more important to day-to-day college-sports compliance.

The Act also attacks the state-by-state regulatory problem directly.

Section 121 would prohibit states and local governments from maintaining laws that conflict with the federal statute or that govern institutional, conference, or association rules concerning covered NIL compensation, transfers, or eligibility.

That would matter enormously.

One reason college-sports governance has become so unstable is that a national association operates in fifty states while state legislatures and state courts increasingly impose different rules.

Federal preemption can reduce that fragmentation.

But anyone expecting preemption to eliminate state-law litigation should read the rest of Section 121.

The bill expressly preserves broad categories of state law—subject to conflicts with the federal regime—including civil-rights law, tort law, criminal law, fraud, privacy, contract, trademark, copyright, consumer protection, and specified personal-injury and harassment claims. And the bill says antitrust law remains available where the Act has not itself limited antitrust liability.

That means plaintiffs’ lawyers will not simply stop pleading state claims.

They will test the border.

Is a breach-of-contract claim genuinely about a contractual promise, or is it an attempt to invalidate a federally protected eligibility rule?

Does a consumer-protection claim survive because it targets deceptive conduct, or is it functionally regulating NIL compensation?

Can a state tort claim proceed without conflicting with the federal transfer framework?

When does a state right of action “conflict” with the new statute?

Those are classic preemption questions.

And they produce litigation of their own.

The bill may reduce the current race to find the most favorable state rule governing college sports.

It will not eliminate forum strategy.

It will redirect it toward preemption.

One procedural provision deserves more attention than it has received.

Before bringing many of the Act’s private claims, a plaintiff must give the defendant 30 days’ written notice identifying the alleged violation. If the violation is curable, and the defendant cures it within that period and provides a written assurance that it will not recur, the action cannot proceed.

That sounds mundane.

In litigation strategy, it is not.

For schools, conferences, and governing bodies, the notice period creates an opportunity to fix certain problems before they become lawsuits.

For athletes, it means some disputes may begin not with a complaint or TRO application but with a carefully drafted statutory notice identifying the precise violation and demanding immediate correction.

Then come the inevitable questions.

What counts as a cure?

Can lost eligibility for a game already missed be cured?

Can a lost NIL opportunity be restored?

What if the institution fixes the policy but the athlete already suffered financial harm?

Is the problem actually capable of cure?

Expect those issues to matter quickly, particularly in a business where a single missed contest, transfer window, recruiting period, or postseason opportunity can create irreparable consequences.

A statute designed to create national certainty will still be applied to an industry governed by very short clocks.

Procedure will remain strategy.

There is also one enormous issue Congress deliberately does not resolve.

The bill states that it is neutral on whether college athletes are employees.

That means enactment would not itself settle future disputes over employee classification, wage-and-hour law, organizing, collective bargaining, or other labor questions.

That omission matters because antitrust and labor law are alternative ways of organizing economic power.

Antitrust litigation asks whether competitors may collectively impose restraints.

Collective bargaining allows certain restraints that emerge from negotiation between labor and management.

Critics of the Act argue that collective bargaining would provide a more durable model because athletes would participate directly in negotiating the rules affecting compensation and working conditions. Supporters instead emphasize national statutory standards, athlete protections, and stability across a system containing hundreds of institutions with dramatically different resources.

The bill does not settle that policy debate.

It essentially says: whatever ultimately happens on employee status, this statutory system operates in the meantime.

So even if the Act greatly reduces antitrust exposure for core NCAA rules, labor litigation could continue developing on a parallel track.

That is another reason “Congress will end NCAA lawsuits” is the wrong frame.

It may close some doors while leaving others deliberately open.

If enacted substantially in its current form, the balance of litigation risk would change.

The NCAA, conferences, and schools would gain their biggest advantage in defending covered rulemaking itself. If Congress authorizes a particular eligibility, transfer, recruiting, or compensation restriction and Section 118 protects enforcement from antitrust liability, defendants no longer begin every major case facing the possibility that the rule itself must survive full rule-of-reason scrutiny.

Athletes, however, would gain something different: express statutory rights.

An athlete alleging that the NCAA ignored Congress’s eligibility standard would not need to turn that dispute into a sprawling economic challenge to the college-athlete labor market. The statute itself would provide the rule and a cause of action.

The CSC—or whatever entity ultimately occupies the settlement-created enforcement role—would gain firmer statutory footing for covered enforcement, but its discretion would not be unlimited. The more authority federal law gives the enforcement system, the more important procedural compliance and statutory interpretation become.

States would lose some ability to create their own competing NIL, transfer, and eligibility regimes, while retaining substantial authority in traditional fields such as contracts, fraud, civil rights, torts, consumer protection, and safety.

And lawyers on every side would adjust.

The sophisticated plaintiff’s complaint would become less focused on proving that the entire NCAA restraint is unreasonable and more focused on showing that the challenged conduct falls outside the federal safe harbor, violates an express statutory right, survives preemption, or was imposed without following the required process.

The sophisticated defense would begin with the statute.

Not: “Our rule is reasonable.”

But: “Congress authorized it.”

That is a materially stronger opening position.

There is an obvious counterargument.

Maybe this changes less than it appears.

College sports has always generated disputes, and Congress cannot draft away every factual question. Courts will still interpret rules. Athletes will still seek emergency injunctions. Schools will still fight over money. The NCAA will still face claims under laws the Act preserves. The House settlement will still need administration. Employee-status litigation remains unresolved.

All true.

But that measures the change by the number of lawsuits rather than by the source of governing authority.

The important shift is not whether courthouses remain busy.

It is who writes the first rule the judge applies.

Over the past decade, the NCAA’s power has repeatedly been constrained by courts applying general antitrust law to privately adopted restrictions. The Supreme Court’s warning in Alston—that NCAA rules do not receive special judicial immunity merely because they regulate college sports—changed the leverage behind almost every subsequent dispute.

The Protect College Sports Act would not reverse Alston as a matter of constitutional hierarchy or erase antitrust law.

It would do something more targeted: Congress itself would authorize particular restraints and insulate specified enforcement from antitrust liability.

That fundamentally changes the starting point.

If Congress enacts the Protect College Sports Act, NCAA litigation will not end.

It will become different.

Antitrust challenges to federally protected eligibility, transfer, recruiting, and compensation rules would become harder because Congress—not merely the NCAA—would have authorized the framework. State-by-state regulation would shrink in covered areas because federal law would preempt much of it. The House settlement and its enforcement machinery would become embedded more deeply in federal law.

At the same time, athletes would receive new statutory rights, new causes of action, protection from many pre-dispute arbitration requirements, and federal standards they could invoke when institutions fail to follow the rules.

Then the next generation of lawsuits would begin.

They would ask whether a rule really falls within the antitrust safe harbor.

Whether an NCAA bylaw went beyond the statute.

Whether a state claim is preserved or preempted.

Whether an NIL transaction has a valid business purpose.

Whether the CSC followed the required procedure.

Whether a statutory violation was cured.

Whether pending litigation survives enactment.

And whether the unresolved employment question eventually creates an entirely different legal structure around college athletics.

Congress would not remove judges from college sports.

It would change their job.

For years, courts have increasingly been asked to decide how much power the NCAA should have.

Under the Protect College Sports Act, they would more often be asked to decide whether the NCAA properly used the power Congress gave it.

That is not the end of the college-sports litigation era.

It is a new operating system for it.