Why Should Delaware Care?
In recent years, colleges and universities have spent millions of dollars to retain and recruit student athletes. But some schools, including those in Delaware, struggle to compete for talent with larger athletic programs. Last month, a typically gridlocked U.S. Senate passed a bill aiming to address these concerns.
Despite its recent gridlock, the U.S. Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act with broad bipartisan support last month, even as the bill divided Delaware’s normally lockstep delegation.
U.S. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) is a sponsor and leading Democratic advocate for the bill that his co-sponsor said would “end the Wild West” of college sports.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware) voted against the bill, voicing concerns that it would limit student athletes’ pay and place the burden of enforcing labor rights onto them.
If implemented, the act would grant the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption to sell certain college sports media rights, such as TV and streaming contracts. It also would give colleges and universities the ability to limit athletes’ sponsorship deals, and allow them to mandate that athletes make reports about the deals that earn more than $600.
The bill comes in response to a dramatic change in college sports in which athletes are now able to secure a portion of the massive revenues generated by the industry. In recent years, it has meant that large universities with prominent football programs have spent as much as $50 million annually on name, image and likeness – or NIL – deals to attract and retain top players, according to a report by The Athletic.
The report also found that the teams with the best shot at a college football playoff berth are, by and large, the ones with the biggest budgets.
In a statement released last month, Blunt Rochester noted that the landscape of college sports is evolving, and concluded that Congress should act. But she expressed doubts about the Protect College Sports Act setting rules related to student athletes’ compensation and ability to transfer “at a time when questions about athletes’ labor rights remain unsettled.”
By contrast, Coons said in a statement to Spotlight Delaware that schools, such as the University of Delaware and Delaware State University are “bearing the brunt” of what he called the college sports arms race. He argued Delaware’s schools have less money than the top programs, making it difficult to retain their student athletes.
“It’s more difficult for them to keep the next school sports legend like Joe Flacco from being tempted by the deep pockets of larger schools,” Coons said.
Flacco, a Super Bowl-winning quarterback who currently plays for the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals, transferred to the University of Delaware in 2005 from the University of Pittsburgh. In his first year at UD, he posted respectable passing statistics, even as his team struggled at times. Had he played in the current college football environment, larger schools could have offered him significant financial packages to transfer away from Delaware.
Ultimately, in his second and final year, Flacco broke several UD passing records while leading the team to the national championship game, where it lost to Appalachian State.
Today, UD remains a smaller player in college football, even as it has advanced to the top level of competition, called FBS. In 2024, the university spent more than $400,000 on its men’s teams recruiting. But that was nearly $200,000 less than nearby Temple University, despite their similar enrollment numbers, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics Data Analysis portal
That same year, Delaware State University reportedly spent less than $130,000.
Both Delaware universities wrote letters to Coons and Blunt Rochester voicing support for the Protect College Sports Act.
In her June letter, University of Delaware President Laura Carlson said the bill would resolve “complex issues that have impacted the governance of collegiate athletics.”
Carlson also urged “express confirmation that student-athletes remain students first rather than employees.”
Delaware State University President Tony Allen expressed similar sentiments in an August letter, stating that “employee status [for student athletes] would force our institutions to choose between meeting football’s payroll and keeping women’s soccer on the field.”
Can Delaware schools compete for athletes?
Universities, the NCAA, and other proponents of the Protect College Sports Act have all claimed that smaller schools are unable to compete with universities with larger budgets for NIL costs.
But not everyone is convinced.
George Diemer, an associate professor at Temple University who studies sports economics, told Spotlight Delaware that he is among several economists skeptical of the competitive balance claims.
Diemer said that using compensation as a way to attract athletes is “probably a healthier, more explicit path to be able to allocate talent” than what universities were doing in the past.
Instead, Diemer sees the arguments for the Protect College Sports Act “as a way to try to control costs” in a landscape where money is flowing more toward student athletes than to coaches.
“They want to be able to get a handle on player compensation,” Diemer said.
The NAACP similarly argued in a recent press release that the intent of the legislation is to limit the pay to student athletes “whose labor powers the multibillion-dollar college sports economy.”
“We cannot continue to ask Black student-athletes to generate billions in revenue on the field and the court while they shoulder all the risk and receive none of the guaranteed security they deserve,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in the release.
The Congressional Black Caucus similarly condemned the Protect College Sports Act last month.
The statements come in contrast with the position of Delaware State University, which is Delaware’s only historically black college, or HBCU.
In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, Allen said his university wants a framework that “protects” student athletes, and reiterated the argument that the act would give his institution a “real chance” to compete.
While Blunt Rochester voted against the bill, she did not explicitly share sentiments expressed by the NAACP and Congressional Black Caucus.
Alexis Wrease, a spokesperson for Blunt Rochester, said the senator “believed more time was needed to fully consider the voices of student athletes, their families, advocates, and other key organizations.”
Before it could be signed into law, the Protect College Sports Act still must be considered by U.S. House of Representatives, which is on recess until after the November midterm elections.
