If you are just waking up from a 10-year coma, chances are the landscape of college sports looks drastically different for you than it did. The next 10 years will feature even more changes, ultimately rendering college athletics almost unrecognizable from its previous form.
Things have changed a lot in the last few years, from the Transfer Portal to NIL to now revenue-sharing, which could officially begin starting July 1. It was long past time for players to earn money from the fruit of their labors, but things have changed so much, so quickly, that a lot of people in powerful positions are unsure of what the rules even are. Or if there is a legitimate governing body for the sport. What will be the role of the NCAA going forward?
College sports have taken a sharp turn toward professional sports. A new bill being introduced to the Senate would make that all but official.
New Senate bill would allow college athletes to unionize, collectively bargain
A bill has been introduced in the Senate that would allow college athletes to unionize & collectively bargain.
— Mit Winter (@WinterSportsLaw) July 23, 2025
It would amend the NLRA so that it covers private and public universities, and require the NLRB to recognize schools and conferences as multi employer bargaining units. https://t.co/YgVaKC1wxt pic.twitter.com/EGvdb61xE1
According to Yahoo's Ross Dellenger, two Democrats are reintroducing the bill: Rep. Summer Lee and Sen. Chris Murphy.
The Bill would amend the National Labor Relationship Board Act and would require the board to recognize conferences and schools as "multi-employer bargaining units." College athletes would then be able to collectively bargain, and the door would be fully open for the institution of a salary cap in college sports, something that is prevalent in most major professional sports aside from Major League Baseball.
This comes one day after House attorneys and power conferences came to a deal to relax roadblocks that had been set for NIL collectives to deliver payments to athletes. Now, collectives will be considered like any other business, allowing boosters to once again funnel money to athletes with minimal oversight.
Many head coaches and athletic directors across the country, particularly from leagues outside of the "Power Two" (SEC and Big Ten), have been calling for a salary cap in college football. In order to institute such a thing, college athletes would finally have to be recognized as what they are: employees.
There's no guarantee that this bill will pass, but if it does, college sports will be forever changed, perhaps for the better. Most would agree that the amount of money being thrown around is not a sustainable model moving forward, and certainly further divides the power conferences from the other leagues. Only a handful of programs truly have the money to consistently spend $30, $40, and even $50 million+ on a roster.
This bill could be a last-ditch effort to allow college sports as we know them to function in the same model. Without collective bargaining and a cap, a split seems to be inevitable between the haves and have-nots, leading to the formation of new leagues for football and basketball.