The Protect College Sports Act cleared the U.S. Senate by a bipartisan 77-22 vote Monday, moving one of the most consequential attempts to reshape college athletics to the House of Representatives.
Much of the national conversation has focused on the Power Four, NIL compensation and the NCAA’s authority. But for HBCUs — particularly programs competing at the FCS and Division II levels — the legislation presents a different set of potential benefits, costs and unanswered questions.
The bill would establish national rules governing athlete compensation, transfers and eligibility while providing limited antitrust protection for enforcement of certain rules. It also contains health-care requirements, increased athlete representation in NCAA governance and an entire federal grant program specifically targeting HBCU media infrastructure.
HBCUs could receive major sports media investment
The HBCU Sports Media and Connectivity Program could become one of the legislation’s most significant provisions for historically Black colleges and universities.
The Senate legislation authorizes up to $180 million annually from fiscal years 2027 through 2032 for HBCU broadband, information technology, journalism and sports-media infrastructure.
Eligible projects go well beyond campus internet access. The program could support infrastructure for producing, transmitting and distributing live college sporting events — potentially including production facilities, cameras, replay and graphics technology, audio systems and streaming capabilities.
The legislation also requires two HBCU representatives on the proposed Commission on the Future of College Athletics, along with two representatives from mid-sized conferences. Athlete representation would make up at least one-third of NCAA-type governing boards and rulemaking committees.
For schools attempting to increase the value of their athletic content and develop their own production capabilities, the media program could represent a substantial opportunity.
There is, however, an important distinction between authorization and actual funding.
Athletes.org, an athlete advocacy organization opposing the legislation, notes that Congress has not appropriated the HBCU money. A future Congress would still have to provide the funds, federal agencies would have to implement the program and HBCUs would have to compete for individual grants. The organization argues that the potential $1.08 billion should not be used as a political “bargaining chip” to secure support for permanent antitrust protections sought by the NCAA, conferences and schools.
SWAC and MEAC could experience a different impact than DII HBCUs
The legislation also illustrates why all HBCUs would not experience the new system equally.
The SWAC and MEAC compete in Division I, while the CIAA and SIAC compete in Division II.
Under the Senate framework, Division I institutions would be required to cover out-of-pocket medical expenses associated with athletic injuries and provide five years of post-eligibility medical coverage for sports-related injuries. The bill also establishes a national medical trust fund intended in part to help lower-resource schools meet those obligations. Division II athletes are not covered by the same across-the-board post-eligibility mandate.
Transfer and eligibility rules reach more broadly. The legislation establishes a five-year eligibility framework and generally gives athletes one transfer between four-year institutions without losing a season. A second transfer would normally require an athlete to sit out a year, although exceptions include a head coaching change, graduate study, a discontinued sport and sexual assault or harassment.
For HBCU football programs accustomed to losing productive players through the transfer portal, those rules could change roster movement. Whether they ultimately make it easier for smaller programs to retain talent remains uncertain.
Black organizations are divided over the legislation
The debate has also produced a notable divide among organizations representing HBCU and Black interests.
The MEAC and SWAC are publicly listed among conferences supporting the Protect College Sports Act.
SWAC Commissioner Dr. Charles McClelland expressed support for the legislation while acknowledging that unresolved issues remained, including athlete employment status and barriers to revenue sharing. In the conference’s letter to Congress, McClelland concluded: “Finding common ground is the only way to build a sustainable future for college sports.”
The Congressional Black Caucus, however, said it could not support advancing the legislation in its then-current form. The CBC argued that Black athletes, coaches, agents, HBCUs and their communities had not been meaningfully included in developing rules that could shape their economic futures.
The NAACP also opposed the bill, while acknowledging that it contains provisions addressing scholarships, health care, athlete agents, safety and athlete representation. Its objection centers in part on granting new antitrust and other legal protections to institutions and conferences while, in its view, leaving athlete economic and political concerns insufficiently addressed.
PCSA moves on the House
That creates a complicated picture as the Protect College Sports Act heads to the House.
The legislation could provide HBCUs access to significant federal investment in sports-media infrastructure, increased representation in future college-sports governance and expanded medical protections for Division I athletes. It would simultaneously give the NCAA, conferences and schools greater legal authority to enforce national rules governing compensation, transfers and eligibility.
For HBCUs, the debate is therefore about considerably more than NIL.
It is also about who will have power in the next version of college athletics, what protections athletes will receive and whether institutions operating far outside the financial world of the Power Four will have the resources to compete within it. That could be a game changer for conferences like the SWAC and MEAC, or just more of the same as the college athletics ecosystem rolls on.
