https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/30533536/congressional-proposal-overhaul-college-sports

That link has an article about the latest proposal in Congress to overhaul compensation for college athletes.  The segments of the proposal are very helpfully laid out.  Because this is the Internet, I have opinions, and those opinions need sharing.  Here are the various points that the senators have suggested:

Name, image and likeness

• College athletes would be allowed to sign endorsement deals with a wide variety of companies. They would be required to report any deal to their athletic department within 21 days. That information would be stored in a private database.

Endorsement deals are the lowest-hanging fruit here; it seems like this should've been addressed a long time ago.  It's been a problem especially for people like skiers and swimmers, and might actually help push such athletes back into college, thereby raising the profile of NCAA schools.  One thing missing is a requirement for the athlete to actually do the endorsement; it doesn't prevent boosters from promising no-show endorsement deals in recruiting.

• Athletes would be able to sign deals with apparel brands that compete with their school's apparel brand, but schools can require them to wear school-sponsored gear during any mandatory team events. The one exception is footwear. Athletes would be allowed to wear shoes from their individual sponsor during team events.

Seems reasonable.  It may have a tremendous benefit, in that athletes (basketball players in particular) would no longer be steered toward a particular school.  No more Adidas trying to sign up players for Louisville.  Colleges may complain about the reduced benefit they might get from apparel companies (who would be less likely to lavish money on them if not all the athletes were on board), but in general, getting them out from under the thumb of Nike and Adidas would be beneficial in the long run.

• State governments can create laws that prohibit athletes from endorsing companies in certain industries (gambling, illicit substances, etc.) as long as the universities are also prohibited from endorsing the same industry. Unlike other proposals, individual schools would not be able to place any restriction on the type of business an athlete can endorse.

On the surface it makes sense, but does that mean there can't be beer signage at the stadium if a 19-year-old athlete can't be sponsored by Bud Light?

Revenue sharing

• Athletes in sports that generate more revenue than the total amount of money that is spent on scholarships in that sport would be entitled to share 50% of the money left after scholarships are paid. In FBS-level football, for example, the commission would add together the revenue generated by all 130 football programs and subtract the total costs of scholarships at all those programs. Half of the money that is left would be distributed evenly among all players at the FBS level. The sports that currently generate enough money to qualify for this revenue sharing, according to Booker's office, are football (both FBS and FCS levels), men's and women's basketball, and baseball.

This is probably the big kahuna.  What's not clear is this: in the football example, when they say "total costs of scholarships", do they mean the cost of just the football scholarships, or all scholarships?  If it's the former, it's a complete disaster.  It would mean taking half the football revenue away from everything else it funds - which, given Title IX, means the complete annihilation of all men's sports other than the revenue generators.  Football money would pay for, in this order: football scholarships, football revenue sharing, football coaches and administrators, women's non-revenue sports, and men's non-revenue sports.

Now if Michigan would get to count all scholarships and then drop the 50% into the revenue-sharing bucket, it would be a huge relief to that problem, but not eliminate it entirely - you still need to pay for coaches for the men's programs, and you don't necessarily want to be cheap about things like hockey coaches.

As well, 50% is an enormous amount.  I get that college sports are being run like a business, but there is no business anywhere in which the government mandates that 75% of the business's revenue be spent on labor costs.  Even unions don't demand that.

The sharing of money evenly among schools is probably a positive, so that the Alabamas and Texas's of the world don't recruit by essentially offering huge salaries.  But this 50% number is a huge problem, IMO.

Agents

• Athletes would be allowed to hire agents or join groups that would help them secure group-licensing fees. Schools, conferences and organizations like the NCAA would not be allowed to dictate which agents an athlete could hire. The proposed commission would create and oversee a process for certifying agents.

Once you start letting athletes get endorsement deals, an agent almost seems like a requirement.  There's not really a good reason to force someone to represent himself.  Schools ought to really be happy that the athlete has more time to focus on the sport.  The only complication is recruiting: will coaches now have to negotiate with agents too?  I don't think that would be healthy.

Medical care

• Schools would be required to contribute annually to a medical trust fund to cover the cost of medical care for injuries related to an athlete's sport. Athletes would be eligible for funding during their college career and for five years after it ends.

Some of this seems redundant.  If a player tears an ACL on the football field, the school does not pin a $20 bill to his shirt and wish him the best of luck in his recovery.  They take charge of his care themselves.  They already get really good medical care, at least while they're at school.  Even Dwan Mathis's brain surgery was covered by the school.  This is well-intentioned, but needs safeguards to prevent bloat down the road.  Inevitably, there will be stories about players getting cut off after five years and pressure to extend it.

• The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services would create standards of care related to health, wellness and safety. Those standards would address concussion protocols, sexual assault, long-term injuries and more. Any schools that violate the standards would be subject to fines of up to 30% of their annual athletics revenue, which equates to tens of millions of dollars for Power 5 schools.

Extra layers of bureaucracy, extra cost.  Schools will inevitably need to hire more six-figure administrators to handle what is likely to be a shifting set of standards in the long run.  Why do we need special athlete rules on sexual assault, for example?  I find it hard to believe we don't have existing rules that can cover the things in this bullet.

Education

• Schools would be required to continue paying for an athlete's scholarship until they finish their undergraduate degree, as long as the athlete maintains a GPA of 2.2 or higher.

Fine, but schools ought to be able also to put some requirements on this, like a minimum course load.  That may already be covered in a school's academic rules, so may not be needed in the bill.

• Schools would not be allowed to discourage athletes from taking certain classes or participating in other extracurricular activities. Those that violate that rule could face fines of up to 20% of their annual athletics revenue.

Is this a problem?  Well, certain classes I get - I know that a lot of schools have told athletes they're not going to be allowed to take too rigorous of a course load, and they discourage them from pursuing, say, an engineering degree.  But if a coach doesn't want his football players getting hurt playing IM basketball, I feel like that should be within their bounds to restrict.  And schools definitely need to be able to ban athletes from playing intramurals in their own sport, for the sake of fairness to the student body.

Transfers and drafts

• Athletes would be allowed to transfer schools without facing penalty. Athletes would not be able to transfer during their sport's season or in the 45 days leading up to the start of the season.

The whole idea of a transfer waiver has become a farce anyway.  I do like the limit of not transferring midseason or during the preseason.

• Athletes would also be able to enter a draft for a professional sports league without losing their eligibility. If the athlete decides not to turn pro after entering the draft, they would have to let their athletic director know they are returning to college within seven days of the draft ending.

A very good thing in that it mitigates the Korleone Young effect: a player forgoing college for the draft, blowing his eligibility forever, and bombing out of the pros with no safety net.  It doesn't completely solve it: Young went pro anyway.  But at least a player doesn't have to weigh the potential of being maybe a first-round NBA pick or maybe a second-round pick with no guaranteed contract, vs. losing eligibility forever.  But the pro leagues may balk: imagine an NFL team using a valuable third-round pick on someone who decides to go back to school.  They may adjust their rules - the NFL might institute draft-and-follow, for example, as hockey does.  That would defeat a lot of the purpose of a player being able to go back to school, and codifying this into federal law rather than NCAA regulations would make it impossible to adapt to unintended consequences.  The senators need to invite the leagues to the table on this one.

Commission

• The commission would consist of nine members with various expertise and background. The members would serve five-year terms. At least five of them would have to be former athletes at any given time. No university or athletic department administrators would be allowed to serve on the board.

I assume they mean current administrators.  But even that seems heavy-handed when the board is already mandated to be tilted toward the athletes.  It's not mentioned in this bullet, but the commission would be entirely appointed by POTUS, which honestly ought to be below his pay grade.  A more balanced commission would be three former athletes, three members nominated by the NCAA, one health and safety expert, one labor expert, and perhaps one agent.  And it would make more sense to have them appointed by whichever Cabinet member this falls under, so as to de-politicize the process.  Presidential appointments come with too much spotlight, and with spotlight comes politics.  If it's going to be five former players, then even more so I think the NCAA should be able to nominate a member or two, who is presently an administrator.  Any fox-in-the-henhouse concerns should be settled by the fact that said administrator would obviously be in the minority at all times on contentious issues.

• The commission would collect and publicly share an annual report from every college athletic department -- both public and private schools -- that outlines their finances. The reports would include their annual revenue and their expenses, including coaching salaries and booster donations.

Transparency is good.  You would have to include rules on coaching compensation (to name just one); schools like to say their coach has a salary of $500,000 and then put his bonuses into other nebulous categories.

In general, the proposals mostly make sense, but need some fine-tuning.  Unintended consequences abound in Title IX, which is completely unfixable because politics.  This commission they propose needs the power to change the rules, because anything codified into federal law may as well be written on stone tablets for all the changeability it has.  The 50% revenue sharing in particular needs to be drawn down significantly.  Running some quick numbers on that:

Let's say the median FBS athletic department has $60M in football revenue.  130 schools means $7.8B of revenue.  85 scholarship players means 11,050 scholarships, and if each one is worth $50,000 a year, schools spend $552.5M on scholarships.  That leaves about $7.25B of revenue, and if you divide that by 2 for the shared portion and then 11,050, each scholarship player gets a salary of almost $330,000.  This is assuming the first scenario, in which only football scholarships are subtracted.

While it sounds like not very much compared to the head coaches, it's basically assistant coach pay - and what do you need a scholarship for in that case?  And why should you get six figures to be a backup linebacker at North Texas?  If subtracting all scholarships at a particular school, the number gets a lot more reasonable (and the Title IX danger to other men's sports is greatly reduced.)

At least there is some effort to bring the NCAA's Wild West recruiting situation under control.  Bringing compensation more out into the open should reduce the shadiness - if you let the honest people work honestly in a new system, you reduce the need for shady characters and slimeballs.