This draws heavily on two interviews with University of South Dakota Athletic Director Jon Schemmel, his conversation with John Thayer on YoteCast, and his June 2025 appearance on Sioux Falls Live’s “Happy Hour” with John Gaskins. My legal analysis is based on the amended version of the Protect College Sports Act w/ Big 10 and SEC amendments and my limited antitrust knowledge from law school.

The Protect College Sports Act is no longer merely another proposal collecting dust in Congress and a source of anger in my Twitter Drafts.

Senate Majority Leader and fellow Coyote grad John Thune has filed cloture on the motion to proceed to the 171-page bill, beginning a process that could bring it before the full Senate. The bill which is known as the Cruz-Cantwell bill does not mean the Senate has passed the legislation—or even formally agreed to begin debating it—but the bill has already cleared the Senate Commerce Committee by a bipartisan 19–9 vote.

As the old Schoolhouse Rock song taught us, it is still “just a bill.” The Senate must agree to consider it, work through any amendments and pass it. The House must then approve identical language before it reaches the president. All of this to say, I doubt it will get passed before Congress recesses at the end of the week, but it would put it on track to officially get passed in September.

The White House appears unlikely to be the largest obstacle. President Donald Trump’s administration has already called for structured transfer rules, a five-year eligibility window, medical protections and restrictions on improper pay-for-play—the same general policies found throughout this bill. A presidential signature therefore appears likely if Congress sends him legislation that remains substantially similar to the current version.

For the University of South Dakota, the bill would address several of the exact problems Athletic Director Jon Schemmel identified after USD entered the House settlement.

It would place significant restrictions on athlete agents. It would make it much harder for NIL collectives to operate as unofficial recruiting payrolls. It would limit repeated immediate transfers, establish a national eligibility standard and give the NCAA legal protection when enforcing rules Congress has specifically authorized.

That last point may be the most important.

For years, the NCAA has responded to problems by writing another rule… only to watch athletes, states or federal regulators challenge that rule under antitrust law. The Protect College Sports Act attempts to replace that cycle with a national framework created by Congress rather than a private organization acting on its own.

For USD, the legislation promises something college athletics has lacked for years: rules that might remain in place long enough for schools to plan around them.

Why USD entered the House settlement

South Dakota initially wanted no part of the House settlement.

Schemmel told Thayer on YoteCast that the original roster limits could have forced USD to eliminate approximately 52 athlete positions.

That was a nonstarter.

“Fifty kids is a lot of kids on a campus these days,” Schemmel said.

His position was even more direct:

“We were never going to opt in if we had to cut anyone.”

The calculation changed after U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken approved protections for current athletes and certain committed recruits who otherwise would have been displaced by the new roster limits.

Only schools opting into the settlement could use those protections. Schemmel therefore concluded that joining was the best way to protect athletes already at USD.

The settlement allows participating Division I schools to compensate athletes directly up to a national cap that began at $20.5 million in 2025–26 and is expected to rise annually. It does not require a school to provide any minimum amount. It also permits outside NIL agreements while subjecting qualifying agreements to reporting, valid-business-purpose and fair-market-value requirements.

USD did not opt in because it intended to spend the full cap. It opted in because doing so protected its current roster, preserved the ability to compensate athletes and kept the university within the same national structure as the rest of Division I.

The grandfather protection is temporary

Schemmel explained that the grandfathered designation belongs to the athlete.

A designated athlete can transfer, assuming the athlete is otherwise eligible, and retain the designation at the new school. The athlete would not count against the receiving institution’s ordinary settlement roster limit.

USD cannot replace that athlete above the limit after the athlete leaves.

As grandfathered athletes graduate, transfer or exhaust their eligibility, USD will gradually reach the regular House settlement roster limits. Schemmel estimated that the transition would take approximately three or four years.

The House settlement therefore protected roughly 52 USD roster positions from disappearing immediately. It did not permanently preserve USD’s former roster sizes. The federal bill builds around the House settlement but does not appear to create a new right for USD to replace grandfathered athletes above those limits.

The bill directly targets dishonest agents

Schemmel has been blunt about agents operating in college sports.

“There’s a lot of good ones out there doing a lot of great work,” he said, “but there are a lot of really, really bad ones doing a lot of really slimy things.”

That concern is especially relevant at the FCS level.

A successful USD athlete may be told that a larger program is prepared to offer significant compensation, a scholarship or a starting role. The athlete may enter the portal—and potentially surrender a secure position at USD—only to discover that the promised opportunity was exaggerated or never existed.

The Protect College Sports Act would make it unlawful for an agent to materially misrepresent the existence, nature or value of an NIL opportunity connected to recruitment or a transfer.

It would also:

• Cap an agent’s fee at 5% of an endorsement contract.
• Require agents to register with a state.
• Require certification with the relevant athletic association.
• Create a public, searchable agent registry.
• Prohibit agency agreements extending beyond an athlete’s college eligibility.
• Require written agreements clearly identifying fees, services and compensation.
• Allow athletic associations to fine or decertify agents for violations.

The athlete would not have to rely exclusively on the NCAA to punish misconduct.

A current or former athlete could sue an agent in federal or state court. A prevailing athlete could recover actual damages and ask the court to declare the agency or NIL contract void. In qualifying cases, the court could award attorney fees and litigation costs.

The bill would also make predispute arbitration agreements and class-action waivers unenforceable for claims under the federal agent provisions. An agent could not require an athlete to waive access to court before a dispute even exists.

That gives the agent rules substantially more force than another NCAA bylaw.

The legislation would not prevent an honest agent from advising a player to transfer. It would not stop larger programs from making legitimate offers to USD athletes.

It would create actual legal consequences for agents who invent offers, inflate their value or convince an athlete to leave based on false information.

Of the concerns Schemmel has discussed, this is one the bill addresses most directly.

The transfer rule would create one free move—not unlimited movement

The bill would establish a national transfer standard.

An athlete transferring between four-year institutions would generally receive one immediate transfer without losing or delaying eligibility.

A second ordinary transfer would require the athlete to sit out the first academic year at the new institution.

Additional immediate transfers would remain available when:

• The athlete’s sport is discontinued.
• The athlete’s head coach leaves.
• The athlete experiences qualifying sexual assault or harassment connected to the institution.
• The athlete transfers to pursue a graduate degree.

The legislation would also require narrower recruiting and transfer-contact periods and generally require an athlete to opt in before schools, agents or associated entities begin recruiting contact.

For USD, one immediate transfer means the Coyotes could still lose a successful athlete making his or her first move to an FBS program. The bill does not eliminate that route.

It would, however, prevent athletes from moving repeatedly between four-year schools with automatic eligibility every time. That could improve roster continuity and reduce the constant cycle of annual renegotiation.

The rule would also affect USD’s incoming transfers. A player attempting a second ordinary transfer into Vermillion might have to sit for a year.

The coaching-change exception is particularly significant. If a USD head coach leaves, athletes on that team could receive another opportunity to transfer immediately. That could make a coaching transition more disruptive.

Why this transfer rule would be harder to sue out of existence

College sports has fallen into the exact same cycle:

1. The NCAA creates a rule.
2. The NCAA says the rule is necessary to preserve college athletics.
3. An athlete, state attorney general or federal agency sues.
4. A court concludes that the rule violates antitrust law.
5. The NCAA withdraws or rewrites the rule.
6. Someone challenges the replacement.

Drink. Rinse. Repeat.

That pattern has affected compensation, NIL and transfer rules. In NCAA v. Alston, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the NCAA’s challenge to an injunction against certain athlete-compensation restrictions. More recently, the Department of Justice and a coalition of states challenged the NCAA rule requiring many athletes making a second transfer to sit out a season. That case ended with a permanent injunction preventing the NCAA from enforcing the challenged rule or adopting a substantially similar restriction.

The Protect College Sports Act attempts to end that repetition by changing who creates the rule.

Instead of the NCAA independently deciding that athletes should receive only one immediate transfer, Congress would establish that transfer standard in federal law. This bill would provide one immediate transfer between four-year institutions, require an athlete making a second ordinary transfer to sit out the first academic year at the new school and create defined exceptions for coaching changes, discontinued sports, graduate transfers and certain cases involving sexual assault or harassment.

It further provides would then provide that it is not unlawful under federal or state antitrust law for the NCAA, a conference or an institution to enforce or comply with that transfer standard. The same protection would cover the bill’s rules involving eligibility, recruiting, tampering, compensation, NIL disclosures and the House settlement’s revenue-sharing system. The NCAA and conferences could impose fines, postseason restrictions or athlete-eligibility sanctions for violations without those enforcement decisions themselves becoming antitrust violations.

In practical terms, that is a targeted antitrust exemption, or at least an antitrust safe harbor, for the rules Congress specifically approves.

The distinction matters because the Sherman Act is not a constitutional provision that courts are free to apply regardless of what Congress says. It is a federal statute enacted by Congress. Section 1 declares contracts, combinations and conspiracies in restraint of interstate trade unlawful. Because Congress created the law, Congress can amend it, narrow it or declare that certain specifically identified conduct does not violate it.

That is where the comparison to Major League Baseball becomes useful.

Similar to baseball—but more limited and more deliberate

Major League Baseball has operated for more than a century with a unique exemption from federal antitrust law.

The Supreme Court first created that exemption in its 1922 decision in Federal Baseball Club v. National League. The Court refused to change it, leaving it to Congress to decide whether baseball’s special treatment should continue.

Congress eventually acted through the Curt Flood Act of 1998, but it did not eliminate baseball’s entire exemption. The law made antitrust rules applicable to matters directly affecting the employment of major-league players while expressly leaving other areas—including much of the minor-league system, franchise relocation and certain ownership matters—outside that change.

The Protect College Sports Act would work in the opposite direction.

Baseball began with a broad, judicially created exemption that Congress later narrowed. College sports currently operates under ordinary antitrust law, and Congress would create a new, expressly written exemption covering only certain subjects.

The college-sports exemption would therefore not be as broad as baseball’s historic protection. The bill would not say that everything the NCAA does is immune from antitrust scrutiny. It would identify particular areas in which enforcement would be protected:

• The federal transfer standard.
• The five-year eligibility standard.
• Recruiting and tampering rules.
• Institutional compensation restrictions.
• The revenue-sharing cap and retention allowance.
• NIL disclosure requirements.
• Agent registration and certification.
• Certain disciplinary sanctions connected to those rules.

The analogy to MLB is that Congress would be removing a defined portion of sports governance from the ordinary antitrust system. An athlete generally could not defeat the second-transfer restriction merely by filing another Sherman Act case and arguing that the rule reduces competition for the athlete’s services.

But the comparison should not be taken too far.

MLB’s exemption historically protected broad areas of the business of professional baseball. The Protect College Sports Act would provide a limited statutory shield tied to specific rules and specific conduct. The NCAA would receive protection only if it actually adopts and enforces rules implementing the provisions Congress approved. The Act expressly conditions the exemption on the association establishing those implementing rules.

The NCAA would not receive immunity from every lawsuit

The bill would not make the NCAA untouchable.

Athletes could still sue when the NCAA, a conference or a school fails to follow the transfer or eligibility rules Congress enacted. The bill explicitly creates a private right of action for an athlete alleging noncompliance with the federal transfer standard or five-year eligibility standard. A prevailing plaintiff could receive actual damages, an injunction or other appropriate declaratory or equitable relief.

The bill also preserves other types of claims involving matters such as:

• Contracts and fraud.
• Civil rights.
• Personal injury and wrongful death.
• Sexual assault and harassment.
• Privacy.
• Intellectual property.
• Campus safety.

The legislation would reduce antitrust litigation over the wisdom of a transfer or eligibility rule. It would not prevent a court from determining whether the NCAA followed the statute, applied a rule consistently or violated another legal right.

That creates an important trade:

The NCAA would receive protection when it enforces the rules Congress approved. Athletes would receive the right to sue when the NCAA or a school fails to follow those rules.

That is more durable than the current system.

Today, the NCAA creates a restraint and then must persuade a court that the restraint survives the Sherman Act. Under the Protect College Sports Act, Congress would make the policy decision itself: athletes receive one immediate transfer, a second ordinary transfer carries a year in residence, and enforcement of that rule is not an antitrust violation.

Courts could still interpret the statute. They could still determine whether an athlete qualifies for an exception. They could still hear constitutional, contractual or statutory claims.

But they would not be deciding from scratch whether the NCAA’s one-transfer rule is an unreasonable restraint of trade. Congress would already have answered that question.

What should happen less frequently is a national rule changing from one semester to the next because the NCAA created another restriction without clear congressional authority and then lost another antitrust case.

The Protect College Sports Act would not end college-sports litigation.

It would change the litigation from “Can the NCAA legally have this rule?” to “Did the NCAA properly follow the rule Congress enacted?”

That is a much firmer foundation—and the closest college athletics has come to receiving its own limited version of baseball’s antitrust protection.

The Colorado fifth-year ruling shows the current problem

The need for a stable eligibility rule became more obvious this summer.

U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Colorado issued a class-wide preliminary injunction covering certain Division I athletes who began competing in 2022–23 and exhausted four years of eligibility by the end of the 2025–26 academic year.

Those athletes fell between classes that received COVID-era eligibility relief and later athletes who may benefit from the NCAA’s new five-year structure. The ruling potentially gives qualifying members of that class another opportunity to compete in 2026–27.

It is not an automatic fifth year for everyone who graduated from high school in 2022.

The court later clarified that the injunction does not override every other NCAA eligibility rule, including restrictions involving athletes who signed professional contracts. The NCAA has said it will appeal.

For USD, the immediate question is whether any current or former Coyotes fit the class, remain academically eligible and have not lost eligibility under another rule. Even then, the ruling does not require USD to provide the athlete a roster position or scholarship.

The bill would establish a five-calendar-year eligibility period

Going forward, the Protect College Sports Act would generally give Division I and Division II athletes a continuous five-calendar-year eligibility period.

The clock would begin at the earlier of:

• Initial full-time college enrollment; or
• The academic year following the athlete’s 19th birthday.

Exceptions would exist for pregnancy, religious missions and active-duty military service. Athletic associations could also establish uniform exceptions for circumstances such as serious injuries or medical conditions.

That does not necessarily guarantee every athlete five full competitive seasons. It creates a five-year window during which the athlete may compete, subject to academic and other eligibility requirements.

The bill does not clearly resolve every transition issue affecting the current 2022–23 class. Those athletes may still depend on the Colorado litigation, any appeal and the NCAA’s implementation decisions.

For future classes, however, putting the standard into federal law and protecting its enforcement from antitrust claims should make midseason eligibility changes less common.

The traditional collective would probably have to change

Schemmel also predicted that USD’s third-party NIL collective was likely headed toward extinction.

The bill would not formally ban collectives, but it would make it much harder for one to function as an unofficial payroll for recruiting or retaining players.

Its definition of an “associated entity” includes organizations created substantially to support one institution or arrange NIL opportunities for its athletes. The definition can also reach:

• Employees, officers and owners of those organizations.
• Individuals who assist in recruiting or retaining athletes.
• A person or entity that has contributed more than $50,000 over a lifetime to the institution or an associated organization.
• Affiliated organizations controlled by those people.

A payment would not automatically be considered independent simply because the check came from outside USD.

Regulators could examine whether the university helped arrange the payment, whether the donor was closely connected to USD, whether the agreement served a real commercial purpose and whether the amount reflected an actual market rate.

A USD-focused organization could still connect athletes with genuine local endorsements and help businesses use athlete NIL rights commercially.

What it could not safely do is serve primarily as an outside fund paying athletes to come to—or remain at—South Dakota.

The likely outcome is not the end of all NIL activity. It is the movement of athlete compensation into a more regulated and transparent structure.

One financial provision USD cannot ignore

The bill would allow a school to exceed the House settlement cap by as much as $22.5 million annually to retain athletes who have completed at least one competitive season at that institution.

Schools could receive up to another $5 million in authority based on compensation directed toward athletes in women’s, Olympic and nonrevenue sports.

That is spending authority, not federal funding.

USD is unlikely to use anything close to the full allowance (as are most if not all of the FCS schools), but the provision matters because larger schools could use it to make substantial, institution-controlled retention offers. It may replace some collective-driven payments with direct and regulated compensation without ending the upward transfer pressure on successful FCS players.

That point is worth making once. It does not need to dominate the article.

The bill reaches every USD sport

The legislation would affect more than football and basketball.

Division I institutions would have to cover sports-related out-of-pocket medical expenses during participation and for five years after an athlete’s final competition. Athletes would also receive access to independent second opinions, catastrophic coverage and end-of-college physical examinations.

Medical professionals would have autonomous authority over treatment and return-to-play decisions, and each institution would designate a health and safety officer independent of the athletic department.

The bill would also create stronger scholarship protections. Athletic aid generally could not be reduced because of poor performance, injury, illness or a roster-management decision.

For women’s, Olympic and nonrevenue sports, the legislation creates preservation requirements for certain higher-revenue institutions and for schools participating in the proposed national media-rights pool.

It also contains a Title IX savings clause. That means the bill would not override existing sex-discrimination law—but it would not resolve how direct athlete compensation must be distributed between men and women.

Those questions would remain for future federal guidance and litigation.

Has Congress answered what Schemmel was looking for?

In several respects, yes.

Agent misconduct: The bill creates registration, fee limits, contract standards, decertification and civil liability for false promises.

Transfer chaos: It permits one immediate transfer while limiting repeated moves and creating more structured recruiting periods.

Collectives: It makes the outside-payroll model substantially more difficult to maintain.

Unstable NCAA rules: Federal authorization, antitrust protection and state-law preemption would make the national transfer and eligibility system more durable.

Athlete protections: Scholarships, medical care and contractual rights would be strengthened across USD’s athletic department.

The bill does not solve every problem.

A player may still use a first transfer to leave USD for a better opportunity. Larger programs will still have more compensation available. Title IX questions remain unresolved. The Colorado ruling creates immediate uncertainty for athletes who exhausted eligibility this spring.

But the bill does not need to make every institution financially equal to be significant.

Its primary purpose is to create a national framework that athletes, schools, agents and conferences can understand—and that courts are less likely to rewrite every few months.

The bottom line

USD entered the House settlement because it was the best way to protect the athletes currently in the athletic department.

The Protect College Sports Act would determine what comes next.

It would regulate agents who make false promises. It would limit repeated transfers. It would force collectives into a more legitimate commercial structure. It would establish clearer eligibility rules and provide stronger medical and scholarship protections.

Most importantly, it would give those rules federal legal authority.

That does not mean the NCAA could never be sued again. It means the NCAA would be protected when enforcing the specific rules Congress approved, while athletes could sue when schools or governing organizations failed to honor the rights Congress created.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not (I will discuss in an article I am currently writing about how this will affect the future of FBS and FCS football tomorrow… including a certain school in North Dakota). There are still Title IX concerns and overarching spending concerns across all levels of NCAA athletics.

However, in a Wild West in which there is total anarchy, Congress is finally saying there needs to be a Sheriff in town.