From Day One, President Trump has delivered on shrinking the federal government and reducing its interference in the lives of Americans. Conservatives should celebrate his success on this major campaign promise, but a new threat to the MAGA mandate emerges: government control over college sports.
Tune into college football these days, and you may have seen an ad featuring Cody Campbell, a billionaire from Texas, talking about the need to save college sports. On this point he is right: college athletics are in dire straits. The lack of name, image, and likeness (NIL) standards nationwide has created an uneven playing field for student-athletes. However, rather than fixing this issue, Campbell’s proposal would create a host of new problems.
His idea is to create a federally commissioned agency dubbed the United States Collegiate Athletics Corporation, which will operate with government oversight to meddle in media rights negotiations between broadcasters and athletic conferences. Campbell has not found much support among Republicans for his proposal, but three liberal senators recently introduced a bill that embraced many of his proposals.
Campbell’s proposal would lump every school’s athletic media rights together and be sold to broadcasters as one package. He claims this change will generate more money for schools to fund their sports programs, but the reality is this move will break up existing contracts and give the federal government unprecedented control over college sports. It also does nothing to protect opportunities for student-athletes or save the non-revenue sports Campbell claims to prioritize.
Campbell’s wish-list items recently appeared in the Senate in the newly introduced Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement (SAFE) Act. Campbell called this partisan bill introduced by three far-left Democrat senators “a good step forward.” Why would Campbell—a Republican donor—align himself with anti-Trump lawmakers? The SAFE Act does not preempt a deeply unpopular policy—treating student-athletes as employees—something most athletes themselves reject because it creates additional problems that will jeopardize opportunities in non-revenue sports.
If Campbell and the Democrats pushing the SAFE Act were serious about saving college sports, they would champion legislation that has enough momentum to become law: the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act. Unlike the SAFE Act, it has been vetted through committee markups, received the input of athletes, and has gained support from lawmakers Left and Right. It establishes a federal standard for NIL while investing in student-athletes’ well-being through measures like degree competition programs and mental health resources. The SCORE Act is a limited government approach that would stabilize college sports, but his approach seems more like sabotage than genuine reform.
To his credit, Campbell and his Democratic allies have shown the right sense of urgency for securing the future of college sports. But the call to grow government while backing a partisan Democrat bill neither advances President Trump’s agenda nor benefits student-athletes. Expanding Washington’s reach over any industry – whether it be a cherished American tradition like college sports or otherwise – is always the wrong fix.
Philip Labonte is a singer-songwriter, social commentator, and co-host of Timcast IRL.
