Protect College Sports Act: 5 questions college golf should be asking
Updated: 1 hour ago
by Shon Crewe
October 5, 2026
About the author: Shon Crewe is a principal at Golf NIL, focusing on athlete marketability, commercial opportunity, and NIL in amateur golf. A pioneer in elevating golf’s position within the NIL landscape, she is the author of the Golf NIL™ Report: Why College Golf Is Worth More Than Anyone Is Counting—Four Years of Insights from the Golf and NIL Lens.
The Protect College Sports Act is headed to the House with the potential to reshape the rules of college sports.
For golfers, the bill includes provisions that could help protect NIL access, establish player protections, and preserve parts of the college-sports system that support non-revenue programs. It also leaves questions worth considering before Congress decides whether to move it forward.
These questions are intended to help golfers, families, programs, and partners understand what the proposal directly requires, what it allows, and what may depend on future decisions by schools and college-sports governing bodies.
Five questions for college golf
What does the bill protect?
The Senate-passed bill would continue to protect college athletes’ ability to earn money through NIL deals without automatically losing eligibility or scholarship support.
It would also safeguard an athlete’s ability to work directly with brands and other third parties, or with an agent or attorney, while requiring agents to register, capping their fees at 5% of an NIL deal and prohibiting them from misleading athletes about NIL opportunities.
Beyond NIL, the bill would strengthen scholarship protections, require Division I schools to cover certain out-of-pocket costs from athletics-related injuries, and set national standards for transfers and eligibility.
Could the bill create more room to support golf?
Potentially. The bill would allow schools to spend up to $22.5 million more than the revenue-share cap through a retention fund. That amount could grow by up to another $5 million if a school compensates athletes in non-revenue-generating sports, including golf—a reach that extends to women’s and Olympic sports as well.
The downside is that money isn’t guaranteed for golf, or for any sport covered by the additional $5 million allowance. The bill provides an option. It’s not a mandate for schools to use the additional capacity or direct a specific amount to these programs. If schools are at spending capacity and want more room, this can be a useful option. But if schools don’t see a need to spend money on these players, it may not change their approach at all.
Roster protections are structured differently, but like the spending allowance, there are no guarantees.
The roster-and-scholarship rule protects roster spots and scholarships across women’s, Olympic and other non-revenue sports. It doesn’t lock each program into its own 2024–25 roster or scholarship number. That means a school could cut a roster spot or scholarship from golf and add it to another covered sport while still complying with the bill.
The requirement also doesn’t reach all schools. Athletic departments with average annual athletics-related revenue of more than $50 million would have to meet it. The chart below shows how long that protection would apply at each revenue level—information that matters because it determines how long schools have to keep the same overall number of roster spots and scholarships.
Additional questions golfers should consider: whether their school meets the revenue threshold that triggers the baseline requirement and, if so, whether the requirement applies for four or nine years. They should also ask how the school plans to allocate roster spots and scholarships across these sports, and what it will take for golf to remain a priority if the school uses the additional spending capacity.
The rule protects a school’s combined 2024–25 roster and scholarship total across covered non-revenue sports, not the total for each individual sport
Could the bill create new obstacles for NIL opportunities in college golf?
This may be one area where the bill could create unintended roadblocks. The bill responds to issues that have dominated national college-sports debate: NIL compensation, recruiting, transfers, eligibility, revenue sharing, and legal uncertainty. Many of those pressures have emerged most visibly in a select few sports, but the resulting rules would apply across college sports.
Furthermore, questions about the NIL potential of a small number of golf’s high-profile players should not distract from what the bill raises for college golf more broadly. The bill appears to reinforce an opportunity athletes in every state have had since 2021: the ability to build commercial partnerships through their name, image, and likeness. The larger question is what all golfers gain, retain, or can access.
Congress is considering national rules largely in response to pressure points that have emerged in a select few sports. Additional questions golfers should consider: whether those policies account for the realities of college golf, or impose limits designed to address problems that golf has not demonstrated.
How could the bill change the way athletes challenge college sports rules?
It could make it harder to use antitrust law to challenge certain rules. The Senate-passed bill would give schools, conferences, and college-sports governing bodies limited antitrust protection when they make and enforce certain rules involving NIL, eligibility, transfers, and athlete compensation. That could leave sports like golf, with less political, commercial, and governance influence, with fewer ways to correct a rule that wasn’t designed with their circumstances in mind.
The real concern isn’t simply whether a golfer can appeal a decision made under one of those rules. It’s whether a rule that affects only a handful of players in a sport like golf may be easier to overlook and less likely to draw the resources needed to challenge it.
An additional question golfers should consider is whether rules written to address problems in certain sports are necessary across all of college sports, especially if those rules may be more difficult to challenge later.
Should athletes have a say in the bill before Congress makes it law?
The Senate bill would give athletes a say in how college sports is governed after it becomes law. Players would have a voice when college-sports leaders make rules, along with a place to turn for private guidance when problems arise.
These provisions recognize players should have a role in the rules that affect them.
This leads to a question any reasonable person should be asking: if Congress believes athletes deserve a seat at the table after the bill passes, shouldn’t athletes have the same opportunity to weigh in while the federal policy itself is being written?
As athletes who will have to live with these rules, golfers should also be asking whether they deserve a say in how those rules could affect them before Congress makes them law.
What happens next?
While the bill has passed the Senate, the House still needs to approve the Senate version or work with the Senate to resolve any differences before it reaches the president’s desk.
For golfers, this is the time to raise questions about how the Senate bill could affect their program or college career, and to make sure golf’s perspective is part of the conversation as the House considers the legislation.
