Anyone watching college football these days might have noticed a splashy ad featuring billionaire Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell pitching a plan to save college sports. His proposal seems straightforward: amend an obscure law from 1961 – the Sports Broadcasting Act – which he claims will generate more money for schools to fund their sports programs. Not much has been reported about Campbell’s proposal, but Ross Dellenger, a well-respected college sports reporter, recently wrote an explainer that is a must-read for anyone who has seen the ads. If you consider what Dellenger wrote, it’s clear Campbell’s proposal would be devastating for collegiate athletics and American consumers who enjoy them.
College sports conferences, Campbell argues, should package their media-rights deals as a whole instead of individual leagues negotiating their own contracts. This conglomerate of conferences would then negotiate the rights to broadcast their content with a brand new government bureaucracy that Campbell has dubbed the United States Collegiate Athletics Corporation.
While the enthusiasm to address the problems college sports have faced in recent years is appreciated, Campbell’s proposal is something conservatives should instinctively reject. The end result of his plan would put the federal government in charge of college sports and expect consumers to pay more to watch their favorite teams.
Missing from Campbell’s ad is his plan to give new power to unelected officials in Washington to rewrite antitrust laws and allow broadcasting rights to be renegotiated. Campbell believes this will result in billions of dollars of new profits for college sports programs – which means he expects consumers to pay a lot more than we do right now. If you think your streaming service bills are high now, just wait until the federal government raises the price of college sports.
GOP lawmakers should also be extremely skeptical about Campbell’s proposal to put the federal government in charge of running college sports. Since when have conservatives supported new government agencies to stifle industries from innovating, competing, and lowering costs for consumers? The inevitable result will be more compliance burdens that institutions and athletics departments will need to bear – largely at the expense of smaller sports programs like Olympic and women’s sports.
To make matters worse, Campbell dismisses a bill working its way through Congress with strong Republican support that does fix college sports: the SCORE Act. In a recent piece, he suggests the legislation is too modest and brands it as a power-grab by the NCAA and big universities. Instead, he suggests that his new governing body – i.e., the federal government – should oversee disputes related to college sports, especially name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights. Every college fan has their own issues with the NCAA, but the solution cannot be putting the federal government in charge instead.
The SCORE Act isn’t perfect, but at least it prioritizes the well-being of student-athletes while seeking to maintain the educational identity of college athletics. It mandates that schools offer scholarship protections and degree completion programs for athletes, along with career readiness resources. By establishing a national NIL standard, it also delivers a level playing field for all sports across all schools in all states, eliminating the current patchwork of laws that make navigating college sports so confusing for student-athletes.
Campbell is right that Congress must do something to bring stability to college sports after years of tumult. But putting the government in charge of college sports and charging consumers more money is not the solution.
Emily Austin is a sports journalist and former Miss Universe judge.