Despite claims that it protects Women’s and Olympic sports, the PCSA leaves athletes at most Division I schools without roster and scholarship protections, includes loopholes allowing NCAA to eliminate protections, and ends key safeguards after just four or nine years.
The Protect College Sports Act (PCSA) is being promoted as legislation that will protect Women's and Olympic sports from cuts. However, an examination of the bill rushed through the U.S. Senate on September 28, 2026, reveals a very different picture.
The PCSA leaves athletes at most Division I schools without guaranteed protections against cuts to aggregate roster spots and scholarships. Even at covered schools, those protections expire after four or nine years. Worse, the bill ties important safeguards to NCAA rules and future successor bylaws, opening the door to NCAA-imposed cuts that can eliminate the very protections that PCSA supporters claim the bill provides. Here is what the legislation actually does…
1. About 70% of Division I schools can still cut roster spots and scholarship opportunities
An NCPA examination of athletics revenues reported to the U.S. Department of Education found that The PCSA excludes women's and Olympic sports athletes at 252 of 358 Division I schools (about 70%) from guaranteed protections for aggregate roster spots and scholarship opportunities because their schools report less than $50 million in annual athletics revenue.
The athletes at these 252 schools will remain exposed to cuts if the PCSA becomes law: CLICK TO SEE WHICH SCHOOLS
The bill dangles a separate protection for schools that receive new revenue from a proposed pooling of college sports media rights. But participation is voluntary, and the SEC and Big Ten have already expressed opposition to media-rights pooling proposals. There is no guarantee this arrangement will materialize or provide protections to these athletes.
Congress does not need to make protections for Women’s and Olympic sport athletes conditional on speculative new media revenue. Congress can and should directly require universities to permanently and unconditionally preserve these opportunities.
Sources: PCSA Sections 125(b)–(c), pp. 116–120; Section 203, pp. 133–140; NCPA examination of 2025 U.S. Department of Education athletics-revenue data.
2. Even at covered schools, roster and scholarship protections expire after 4 or 9 years
The PCSA requires the roughly 30% of DI universities that report at least $50 million in annual athletics revenue to maintain their aggregate 2024–25 nonrevenue-sports roster spots and scholarship opportunities. But these guarantees are temporary:
The bill explicitly states: "This subsection shall terminate." The injustice is even more glaring because the PCSA grants the NCAA, conferences, and universities permanent antitrust immunity for restrictions that could deprive athletes of billions in compensation.
Sources: PCSA Sections 125(b)(2), 125(b)(4), 125(c)(2), and 125(c)(4), pp. 116–120.
3. NCAA bylaw loopholes allow future NCAA rules to undermine or eliminate protections
Even more troubling, the PCSA gives the NCAA the power to reduce or eliminate aggregate roster and scholarship protections without congressional approval. Sections 125(b) and (c) make the aggregate roster and scholarship protections conditional by requiring them to be "consistent with applicable intercollegiate athletic association rules". This loophole could allow the NCAA to reduce or eliminate these protections by simply adopting new rules, without congressional approval.
Similarly, although Section 125(a) purports to prohibit athletic associations and conferences from reducing certain minimum sports-sponsorship and participation requirements, the PCSA grants the NCAA the power to dictate (reduce or eliminate) the minimum standards with “a successor bylaw”. Congress could have explicitly prohibited any future NCAA rule or successor bylaw from lowering the existing minimums. It did not.
The NCAA has already voluntarily eliminated an estimated 5000 Division I roster spots as part of its implementation of the House v. NCAA settlement. The NCAA is also hypocritically fighting in court to deny athletes from the Class of 2022 a fifth season of competition while granting that opportunity to later classes. Congress should not give those same decision-makers absolute power to eliminate protections for Women’s and Olympic sports.
Sources: PCSA Sections 125(a)–(c), pp. 115–120; Section 203(e), pp. 139–140.
4. Athletes cannot directly sue to enforce the protections
The PCSA's limited protections for Women's and Olympic sports have another major flaw: athletes are denied a federal private right of action to enforce Section 125.
Section 119(a) specifically lists the PCSA provisions that individuals may sue to enforce. Protection of Women’s Sports and Olympic Sports (Section 125) is excluded from that list.
That means athletes in Women’s and Olympic sports cannot file a lawsuit under Section 119 simply because their university or the NCAA violates Section 125's protections. What good are federal protections if the athletes who lose opportunities cannot directly enforce them?
Source: PCSA Section 119(a), pp. 103–105.
Congress Can Protect Women's and Olympic Sports. The PCSA Fails to Guarantee It.
Congress has the power to permanently protect minimum sports sponsorships, aggregate roster spots, and athletic scholarship opportunities at every Division I university. There is no need to suppress lawful NIL compensation or depend on voluntary media-rights arrangements to accomplish this.
Women's and Olympic sports athletes deserve permanent protections - not loopholes, expiration dates, and promises they cannot enforce.
Source: Senate-passed Protect College Sports Act, S. 4668, September 28, 2026.