Trump's college sports committee tackles laundry list of issues and calls on Congress to act quickly

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The presidential committee asked to find solutions for spiraling costs in college sports recommended creating a task force to look at pooling media rights, limiting coaches salaries, and rewriting eligibility and transfer-portal rules, along with at least a dozen other ideas.

A draft document of the committee's proposals, obtained by Yahoo Sports, wants Congress to quickly pass legislation that would create the task force, which would receive the antitrust exemption and the right to override individual state laws that the NCAA and other collegiate sports leaders are seeking.

The committee is the product of a White House summit called by President Donald Trump in March; Trump warned the “whole educational system” was in peril if the issues dogging sports cannot be resolved.

The document unveils a laundry list of items, all of which have been discussed in the revenue-sharing era, as schools struggle to pay players and maintain full athletic programs.

Among the more divisive ideas is pooling the media rights of the conferences — a move the Southeastern and Big Ten Conferences oppose but that a group led by Texas Tech regent Cody Campbell has argued could add some $7 billion in value.

“Important to note that there are currently long-term contracts in place that expire over the next 5-7 years (e.g., ACC expires in 2036), so change will likely be an evolution to a new model,” the paper said in outlining one of the issues that would make that change so difficult.

The paper also called on the task force to create rules for “elimination of salary-cap circumvention,” — in what appears to be a reference to schools' practice of inking third-party NIL deals, often through associated multimedia rights companies, that help schools blow past the current $20.5 million limit they're allowed to pay out directly.

That issue could soon be resolved through an aribtration case brought by Nebraska football players whose NIL deals were rejected by the College Sports Commission, which was placed in charge of analyzing third-party contracts.

The draft paper calls on Congress to implement legislation before its summer break, which traditionally starts in August. Congress has been stalled for more than a year on legislation that would codify elements of the House settlement that put revenue-sharing into place.

Among the biggest hang-ups are the call for the antitrust exemption for the NCAA, which, under this proposal, would instead belong to a task force and then a permanent governing body that would take its place.

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AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football