Since the NCAA acceded to demands that college athletes be allowed to use their NIL rights in July 2020, the intercollegiate athletics industry has undergone seismic change at a speed few anticipated. What was once expected to take years—like the emergence of booster-backed NIL collectives—materialized in mere months. Changes previously thought to be decades away, including direct payments from schools to athletes, arrived within just a few years.
Given this precedent, it seemed only prudent to assume that once word leaked of schools and conferences fielding calls and Zooms with private equity firms, formal PE partnerships wouldn’t be far behind. Indeed, those conversations soon moved from behind closed doors to press conference podiums, a further indication that this next once-unthinkable development would soon become the new normal.
Instead, the courtship between institutional capital and college sports has been more of a slow stumble to the altar—full of fits, starts and revised announcements. Remember College Sports Tomorrow, the Wall Street-backed “super league” proposal The Athletic broke in April 2024? Might have been better called College Sports Someday.
This week, another obstacle reared its head: Congress.
On Monday, Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-Wash.), introduced legislation that would amend the Title IV Program Participation Agreement (PPA) under the Higher Education Act to effectively bar colleges from entering into agreements with private equity or sovereign wealth funds that give those entities ownership stakes or profit-sharing rights in athletic departments. That includes areas like multimedia rights, ticketing, premium seating and other commercial rights—the very domains such investors would be most interested in monetizing.
“Colleges aren’t pro franchises,” Baumgartner said in a statement announcing his bill, dubbed the PROTECT Act. “They’re stewards of a public trust. The money always comes with strings—and the cuts hit the sports and opportunities that matter most in our communities.”
The bill’s introduction came just days after new media reporting on the Big Ten Conference’s ongoing pursuit of private equity bids, dating back to the league retaining Evercore last year, as Sportico first reported in January, despite commissioner Tony Petitti’s previous public stance against such investment.
Baumgartner’s torch—or wet blanket—was quickly picked up by another fellow Washingtonian, Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, who during a Knight Commission panel discussion Thursday voiced concerns that direct PE deals could imperil the nonprofit, tax-exempt purpose of American universities. (Of course, many such relationships with institutional capital already exist, at least indirectly.)
Cantwell, the lead sponsor of the Democratic college sports reform bill called the SAFE Act, followed up on Friday by memorializing her Knight Commission remarks in a letter sent to each of the Big Ten school presidents, warning them away from the temptation of Wall Street.
“The primary goal of these companies is to make money for the firm, which is unlikely to align with the academic goals of your university or its obligations as a not-for-profit organization,” wrote Cantwell, who is the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee. “These investors will be focused on maximizing their investment, not on preserving and growing athletic and academic opportunities for student athletes.”
A Democratic committee aide said Cantwell did not have plans to introduce or join legislation addressing this topic in the immediate future, but it remains an option.
To be sure, Congress has struggled to move any college sports-related bill to a floor vote, let alone pass a bill. But in this case, it may not need to proactively legislate the issue at all to have a defining impact.
As Sportico’s Michael McCann noted this week, the reported $2 billion private capital deal involving the Big Ten Conference could already complicate the NCAA’s and its members’ ongoing battles in the federal judiciary.
Now, the prospect of scrutiny from Congress might be simply one too many branches of government for the stakeholders to deal with.