Congressional Black Caucus fails to reach agreement on SCORE Act, delays vote in Congress

A key meeting Thursday morning among the Congressional Black Caucus could delay any further advancement of the SCORE Act ahead of next week’s scheduled vote in Congress, according to Yahoo! Sports insider Ross Dellenger. Per Dellenger, the Congressional Black Caucus wasn’t able to reach a necessary agreement to support the SCORE Act, effectively pausing the NCAA-favored bill before it could come to a vote in the House.

The SCORE Act — which stands for “Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act” — has made the most progress among multiple congressional efforts to address NCAA issues around NIL (name, image and likeness), the transfer portal and revenue-sharing that was approved with this summer’s landmark House v. NCAA Settlement.

If eventually signed into law, the SCORE Act would codify the NCAA-House settlement and revenue-share terms, including requiring student-athletes to submit third-party NIL agreements to the NIL Go clearinghouse set up by the College Sports Commission. It would also supersede various current state NIL laws; keep student-athletes from unionizing and being deemed employees of their universities; and grants the NCAA the authority to create and enforce policy around transfer rules, eligibility standards, playing rules and membership criteria without fear of further litigation. Effectively, the SCORE Act would grant the NCAA its long sought after anti-trust protection.

According to Dellenger’s Thursday morning Sports Business column for On3, the SCORE Act bill would also require schools to provide healthcare for student-ahtletes for three years after their collegiate eligibility expires and regulate sports agents by capping their fees at 5-percent.

Ross Dellenger: Why the SCORE Act has college athletics on edge

Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana told Dellenger that the Republican-authored SCORE Act still requires more bipartisan support from Democrats, many of which are heavily represented in the Congressional Black Caucus.

Of course, bipartisan support isn’t the only holdup to passage of this controversial legislation, which is heavily favored by the NCAA national office as well as the Power Four conference representatives.

Non-Power Four conference administrators and representatives have raised concerns the SCORE Act would only further the divide between the haves and have-nots in college athletics.

“Separately, several dozen athletic directors from the Group of 6 conferences – the American, MAC, Sun Belt, C-USA, Pac-12 and Mountain West – have held calls about asking Congress to limit the antitrust powers that the SCORE Act grants to the conferences,” Dellenger wrote Thursday.

Billionaire businessman Cody Campbell, a major Texas Tech booster, has also raised his opposition to the SCORE Act by suggesting it “will destroy women’s and Olympic sports” and permanently “relegate smaller schools to irrelevance” in a recent social media post.