Last week, after months of negotiating, the Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act (PCSA) by an overwhelming 77-22 vote. Co-authored by Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the PCSA proposes a remarkable degree of federal regulation for an industry that officials said just a few years ago should operate as a free market. More importantly, it asks athletes to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burdens of reform without offering them the power to collectively bargain over restrictions on their earnings and mobility.

The PCSA impacts almost every aspect of college athletics. It would impose a cap of roughly $49 million per school on revenue sharing and payments from school-affiliated name, image, and likeness (NIL) collectives, restrict repeat transfers, and establish a five-year eligibility window. It would also bar certain football coaches from moving schools during the season, generally limit conferences to 20 schools, and provide the NCAA with a limited antitrust exemption to enforce specified rules.

Beyond these restrictions, the PCSA would cap agent fees at five percent of NIL earnings, provide guarantees for athletic scholarships and medical coverage, and impose minimum participation and scholarship requirements for women’s and Olympic sports. The bill would also preempt conflicting state NIL laws and permit schools to negotiate media rights collectively. Notably, the legislation explicitly leaves unresolved whether college athletes are employees or can bargain collectively.

To justify the PCSA’s far-reaching intervention into college athletics, supporters emphasized controlling costs. Senator Cantwell argued that the PCSA was necessary to rein in “the runaway arms race in sports spending,” while her co-author, Senator Cruz, was even blunter, stating: “If we don’t act, we will see 30 to 50 competitive football programs in this country and the remainder of the programs go under.” Others argued that federal intervention was necessary to protect the NCAA from antitrust challenges and restore enforceable rules amid never-ending litigation. Finally, supporters cast the PCSA as preserving college sports traditions by protecting historic rivalries from conference realignment and restoring roster continuity amid frequent transfers.

The PCSA reflects legitimate frustration with the direction of college sports. Conference realignment has broken up regional rivalries, constant litigation has increased uncertainty over what rules are enforceable, and frequent transfers make it harder for fans to build lasting connections with players. These are real problems that may even require federal solutions, given the decentralized nature of the college athletics landscape.

But acknowledging the pressing challenges facing college athletics does not make the PCSA the right solution. To be sure, the bill contains worthwhile provisions, namely the restriction on agent fees and protections for athletic scholarships and medical care. However, the PCSA’s solution to out-of-control costs is strikingly selective. It caps athlete compensation while leaving untouched coaching salaries and administrative and facilities spending, with schools remaining incentivized to compete for talent by pouring money into flashy hires and amenities. The same imbalance applies to mobility: the bill restricts repeat transfers by athletes but generally leaves coaches free to change schools between seasons.

While the PCSA’s supporters frequently tout the bill as raising athlete compensation, this argument is misleading. Yes, the House settlement currently allows schools to share up to just over $21 million in revenue with their student-athletes. However, that ~$21 million cap does not include NIL spending by school-affiliated collectives or other third-party payments, which together account for a large chunk of athlete compensation. In contrast, the PCSA’s much higher ceiling of roughly $49 million does include school-affiliated collective spending. The higher cap therefore does not necessarily mean higher compensation: increased earnings directly from schools could be outweighed by the loss of collective-funded payments previously available outside the cap.

Even if compensation caps and transfer limits would improve college sports, the PCSA’s fatal flaw is that its restrictions were never negotiated with the athletes themselves. Negotiation participants included the SEC and the Big Ten, Texas Tech mega-booster Cody Campbell, and New York Yankees president Randy Levine. Meanwhile, in a letter to Congress, a group of athletes challenging the NCAA’s eligibility rules wrote: “We have never been consulted by our school, our conference, the NCAA, or anyone in Congress on any of the issues addressed in the PCSA.” Though the PCSA requires that at least one-third of college sports governance boards consist of current or former student-athletes, minority representation within a system currently dominated by conference executives and university leaders does not equal the power that comes from full-fledged seats at the negotiating table. As Oluchi Okananwa, a Maryland women’s basketball player, put it, “[t]here is a real difference between being heard and having power.”

The solutions the PCSA proposes come with tradeoffs for players that deserve to be negotiated at the bargaining table. For example, the one-time free transfer limit will likely improve roster continuity, helping athletes develop deeper relationships with their coaches and allowing fans to further connect with players. Yet there are clear downsides. Athletes lose the ability to test their value on the open market, seek opportunities for more playing time, or find a school that better fits their educational and personal needs. While the bill permits penalty-free transfers when a head coach departs, it offers no such exception when an assistant coach leaves, even if that coach was central to an athlete’s decision to attend the school. Nor does remaining at a school guarantee an athlete a place on its roster. The PCSA thus asks athletes to give up their freedom of movement without requiring schools to make corresponding commitments in return.

Collective bargaining would provide college athletes with the power to demand meaningful concessions from schools in return for restrictions on their earnings and mobility. Schools seeking roster stability could offer multiyear compensation guarantees in exchange for transfer limits or buyout clauses. Alternatively, as Wilma Liebman and Lance Compa argue in their two-part series, schools could offer annual pay increases for athletes who remain in their programs, encouraging continuity without restricting transfers. Rather than negotiate individually beneath a predetermined compensation ceiling, athletes could bargain over the ceiling itself, the share of revenues that schools must distribute, and minimum payments that ensure those revenues reach beyond the highest-paid stars. It is entirely possible that any bargaining would produce restrictions similar to those created by the PCSA. But such an outcome would come as a result of athletes possessing an equal seat at the negotiating table—not mandates legislated from afar by Congress.

Creating a collective bargaining scheme for college sports is certainly a challenge. It would require resolving difficult questions about representation across sports, the distinction between public and private universities, and how to ensure union continuity as athletes enter and exit college. Yet Congress would not be starting from scratch. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) offered an amendment to the PCSA recognizing college athletes’ collective bargaining rights, while a former NLRB general counsel proposed treating the NCAA and athletic conferences as joint employers to reach college athletes at public universities. Athletes.org, a players advocacy organization, has even published a framework for a future collective bargaining agreement. Congress should scrap the PCSA and build on these proposals. If preserving college sports requires athletes to sacrifice certain economic opportunities, then they deserve the power to negotiate what they receive in return.