Proposal on student athlete pay falls apart, NAACP calls for boycott over redistricting

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The SCORE Act, regulating NCAA student-athlete compensation, was removed from voting in the House this week.
• Republican leaders are struggling for support amid the Congressional Black Caucus' opposition over redistricting.
• The NAACP has urged Black athletes to boycott universities in states limiting Black representation in response.

SALT LAKE CITY — A massive bill seeking to regulate how the NCAA compensates student-athletes and standardize rules on name, image and likeness contracts has been pulled from the voting schedule, marking the second time within the last year the proposal has hit a snag in the House.

The House was expected to consider the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements, or SCORE Act, this week, but the bill was quietly removed, according to a copy of the schedule obtained by the Deseret News. The removal comes as GOP leaders have struggled to scrounge up support — especially after the Congressional Black Caucus came out in opposition to protest recent redistricting changes in Southern states.

"For generations, Black athletes have helped build college athletics into one of the most powerful and profitable industries in American life. The success, visibility, and cultural influence of major athletic conferences and institutions are inseparable from the talent, labor, leadership, and cultural contributions of Black communities," the caucus said in a statement. "Yet at the very moment those same communities face coordinated attacks on their democratic representation, too many leaders across college athletics have chosen silence."

The proposed bill would codify rules that were decided in a multibillion-dollar settlement last year that broadened the scope of how student-athletes can be paid while clarifying certain provisions that supporters say are crucial to prevent loopholes.

Congress looks to provide national NIL standard

The SCORE Act would guarantee students' rights to sign name, image and likeness contracts, otherwise known as NIL agreements, without restrictions from their schools or athletic organizations. The bill would enact the law on a national level, effectively replacing individual state NIL laws so all conferences fall under the same standards.

The bill is backed by the NCAA and has received support from the White House and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

But with opposition from Democrats, Republicans will need near unanimity for it to pass — something GOP leaders have not yet secured.

NAACP asks Black athletes to withhold support from some public universities

The NAACP has also gotten involved, releasing a statement on Tuesday calling on Black athletes and fans to "withhold athletic and financial support from public universities in states that have moved to limit, weaken, or erase Black voting representation." The statement comes in response to a recent Supreme Court ruling that declares racial gerrymandering illegal, which the group says weakens Black representation and voting rights.

"The NAACP will not watch the same institutions that depend on Black athletic prowess to fill their stadiums and their bank accounts remain silent while their states strip Black communities of their voice," Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in the statement. "Out of Bounds is our answer: we are naming the contradiction, and we are calling on Black athletes, families, fans, and consumers to act on it. The same power that built these programs can be redirected. And it will be."

Opponents of the SCORE Act also worry that establishing national standards would give the NCAA outsized control rather than allowing individual states to handle questions on NIL contracts. Doing so could strip athletes of stronger protections, they argue.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

Related topics

Utah higher educationUtah congressional redistrictingPoliticsU.S.

Cami Mondeaux

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Cami Mondeaux is the congressional correspondent for the Deseret News covering both the House and Senate. She’s reported on Capitol Hill for over two years covering the latest developments on national news while also diving into the policy issues that directly impact her home state of Utah.