Emerging bipartisan proposals and White House-backed reform discussions suggest that college athletics governance is entering a new phase of federalization, where NIL enforcement, transfer regulation, and compensation oversight may increasingly move from NCAA-centered governance toward federally codified structures. At the center of those efforts was the SCORE Act, a federal proposal designed to standardize athlete compensation oversight, transfer rules, eligibility requirements, and institutional protections in the NIL era. Yet the political coalition behind those efforts has already begun to fracture. House Republican leadership pulled the SCORE Act from a planned floor vote for a second time after failing to secure sufficient support, while the Congressional Black Caucus announced unanimous opposition to the legislation, citing the relationship between college athletics, Black labor, and institutional silence surrounding attacks on Black political representation across the South.
The debate now centers institutional control, athlete labor, financial power, and the responsibilities colleges and conferences owe the communities sustaining college sports. Race, political representation, and institutional accountability increasingly shape federal college athletics governance.
President Donald Trump’s recent executive order establishing a five-year eligibility window, limiting transfers, targeting booster collective NIL activity, and supporting revenue sharing initially intensified congressional momentum surrounding the SCORE Act and related bipartisan reform proposals that sought to further centralize control over athlete mobility, compensation, and eligibility before the legislation’s recent political setbacks.
The order also lacks a clear enforcement mechanism. Because the NCAA operates as a private governing body, any federal impact depends largely on future legislation, funding pressure, or judicial support. Policymakers have increasingly pursued centralized oversight aimed at regulating collectives and limiting litigation exposure, yet many of those proposals remain legally vulnerable without congressional authorization or antitrust protection.
Governance, discipline, and institutional control
The system it targets has already changed. Transfer activity captures the scope.
In early April, immediately after the national championship games, more than 1,500 men’s basketball players entered the transfer portal on the first day, while women’s basketball saw more than 1,000 early entries. Football transfer activity reached into the tens of thousands across divisions, reflecting a system defined by high mobility and rapid roster turnover. Men’s basketball portal entries increased by roughly 75% from 2020 to 2021, and a single opening-day surge can now rival a full pre-2021 transfer cycle. Efforts to restrict that movement face immediate legal constraints. In Ohio v. NCAA, antitrust challenges brought by state attorneys general and the Department of Justice forced the NCAA to withdraw its transfer restrictions. Any renewed limits would likely face the same scrutiny. Federal directives do not provide antitrust immunity.
Programs now regulate compensation and discipline within a system increasingly shaped by direct athlete payment. Following the implementation of the House settlement, schools integrated compensation into roster management, budgeting, and enforcement, expanding institutional authority while creating new legal and constitutional tensions.
Those tensions are already visible on campuses. At the University of Colorado, team rules reportedly include fines ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars for missed obligations and up to $5,000 for public or social media misconduct. As athletes increasingly use their platforms to speak on race, labor conditions, gender equity, and mental health, questions surrounding speech protections and institutional authority are no longer theoretical.
When public universities fine athletes, withhold compensation, or regulate athlete speech, they trigger Fourteenth and First Amendment scrutiny. Vague social media policies invite viewpoint-based enforcement and suppress protected expression, reinforcing how quickly speech monitoring can become embedded within athletic governance.
The SCORE Act fails to establish meaningful due process protections for athletes contesting eligibility decisions, compensation disputes, or institutional penalties while expanding institutional authority over athlete governance.
The NCAA has responded with targeted enforcement. “Ghost transfer” penalties include automatic sanctions, head coach suspensions, and fines tied to program budgets. These violations generally involve schools facilitating or coordinating athlete movement outside official transfer portal rules or before athletes formally enter the portal. These rules govern timing and procedural compliance within the portal system.
NIL governance and financial aid
NIL enforcement follows the same logic. Federal policy targets compensation above fair-market value and increasingly centers governance on price regulation and valuation oversight. Ongoing federal discussions surrounding collective enforcement further institutionalize systems where athlete compensation becomes subject to centralized scrutiny without equivalent transparency governing how those valuations are determined.
Social media-driven NIL deals, follower metrics, engagement analytics, and platform visibility increasingly shape compensation outcomes, producing uneven earning opportunities across gender, race, and institutional scale.
Compensation oversight is only one layer of control. Financial aid increasingly functions as the second gate shaping who can remain enrolled, compete, and access athletic opportunity as costs and compensation structures shift.
The NCAA includes more than 550,000 student-athletes across its divisions, many of whom rely on need-based federal aid, including Pell Grants, alongside athletics scholarships to remain enrolled. Division I athletics programs generated approximately $17.5 billion in total revenue in 2022, yet $6.3 billion came from institutional support, government funding, and student fees rather than self-generated athletics income. Financial dependency remains especially pronounced outside the wealthiest conferences, where institutional support accounts for much of the operating structure sustaining athletics programs. More than $3 billion in annual expenditures are directed toward student-athlete financial aid across Division I. Research estimates that roughly 31 percent of Division I scholarship athletes receive Pell Grants, with rates climbing substantially higher in certain sports and at some institutions.
Policy changes tied to credit completion thresholds or enrollment definitions therefore operate as de facto financial constraints. By limiting access to need-based aid, these changes threaten both athlete persistence and enrollment-dependent athletics programs. For many athletes competing outside the wealthiest Division I conferences, particularly at tuition-dependent institutions, losing access to Pell Grants or federal aid could determine whether continuing enrollment remains possible at all. These risks are compounded by federal efforts to restructure student aid administration, adding uncertainty to how support is distributed and maintained.
Federal policy increasingly shapes college athletics through eligibility restrictions, compensation oversight, and financial aid regulation. The most recent version of the SCORE Act proposed expanding that authority by requiring athletes to complete a full academic year before transferring, establishing a five-year eligibility clock, restricting former professional athletes from returning to college competition, and formalizing federal preemption over state NIL laws. The bill also included restrictions on recruiting coaches during active seasons.
Recent developments across institutions show how these pressures are already playing out. At the University of Kansas, faculty issued a vote of no confidence amid disputes over athletic spending and the use of institutional funds to support athlete compensation. At Rutgers University, a lawsuit alleges more than $500 million in accumulated athletic deficits tied to public subsidies and institutional support. These conflicts expose tensions between compensation, institutional funding, and academic priorities. Student-athletes navigate this environment as both beneficiaries and risk-bearers without consistent procedural or financial safeguards.
Race, representation, and accountability
Additional criticism surrounding the SCORE Act has expanded beyond athlete compensation alone and increasingly centers questions of institutional accountability, equity, and transparency. The Congressional Black Caucus argued that institutions and conferences profiting from Black athletic labor have remained largely silent amid ongoing attacks on Black voting rights and political representation, framing the legislation within broader questions surrounding race, governance, and institutional responsibility.
The NAACP’s #OutofBounds campaign further intensified those critiques by urging athletes and supporters to withhold support from public universities in several Southern states following Louisiana v. Callais, arguing that institutions continue profiting from Black athletic labor while remaining silent on attacks against Black political representation.
Together, these responses shift the SCORE Act debate toward broader questions surrounding democratic accountability, racialized labor extraction, and institutional obligation. Advocacy groups have also raised concerns that the legislation lacks clear Title IX protections and expands federal protections for institutional governance without equivalent transparency standards governing athlete compensation, disciplinary procedures, or NIL valuation systems.
What safeguards could look like
Any federal response should establish independent appeal processes for athlete discipline, transparent standards governing NIL valuation and compensation disputes, public accountability requirements for revenue-sharing systems, and protections for need-based financial aid supporting enrollment and degree completion.
Without those safeguards, federal reform risks expanding institutional authority over athlete labor, mobility, and compensation while leaving athletes with limited transparency, procedural recourse, and financial protection.
Ajah Hawley-Alexander is a clinical lecturer at Iona University and a doctoral candidate in higher education administration at the University of Southern Mississippi.
