Female Athletes Are Being Gaslit by the Protect College Sports Act
Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., a co-sponsor of the Protect College Sports Act, says the bill protects women. "This bipartisan bill is how we protect women's and Olympic sports," she said.
But the PCSA falls woefully short of protecting female athletes’ rights under Title IX. In fact, it cements the ongoing inequity women’s sports currently face.
Let’s start with what the bill actually says about female athletes. Three provisions of the bill relate to women’s sports, and not one of them mentions Title IX. The words "Title IX" don’t appear anywhere in the bill. Neither does "sex discrimination." Neither does "gender equity."
Section 109
The first provision that relates to women’s sports is Section 109, "Comparable standards for access to facilities, services, and events." It’s a single sentence:
"Intercollegiate athletic associations and conferences shall maintain comparable standards for medical care, lodging, meals, rest, transportation, and, if applicable, athletic facilities for championship events or tournaments, across similarly situated men's and women's athletic programs."
Section 109 is Title IX in a nutshell. Schools are already supposed to do what this provision mandates. Most of them don't. Writing the obligation into a federal statute changes nothing when the same obligation already exists and goes ignored.
Section 203
The second provision, Section 203, amends the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, and adds new subsection 5(e), "Protection of women's and Olympic sports." It requires a school to keep as many scholarships and roster spots for non-revenue sports as it offered in 2024–2025. It applies only to a school that takes money from the collective media deal. A school that stays out of the deal owes its female athletes nothing under this section.
Section 125
Section 125, "Protection of women's sports and Olympic sports," is now a full section (previously, it was a single sentence tucked away in another section), and it’s the strongest language in the bill for female athletes, but it’s still lacking. It bars associations and conferences from cutting the minimum number of teams a school must sponsor. It orders schools with more than $80 million in athletic revenue to keep at least as many scholarships and roster spots for non-revenue sports as they offered in 2024–2025. It extends a shorter version of that promise to schools between $50 and $80 million.
But when you read the section closely, the so-called protection female athletes receive vanishes.
Every promise made in Section 125 is tied to the 2024-2025 academic year. Schools have to hold the line at what they offered that year.
Hundreds of colleges and universities remained under active OCR investigation during the 2024–2025 school year. These open cases spanned athletic equity gaps, handling of sexual assault complaints, and discrimination. More than 90 percent of those schools were out of compliance with Title IX. The bill takes a year of widespread inequality and makes it the standard schools must maintain. The senators are using inequity as a standard while telling female athletes they’re being protected.
The section also uses the qualifying phrase, "consistent with applicable intercollegiate athletic association rules." That language ties the promise to the rules schools already have to abide by. The bill reaches no further than what schools are already required to do and already fail to do.
Then the protection expires. The one condition that applies (and you can really call it a "condition," more like a threshold)—the $80 million requirement—ends nine years after the bill becomes law. The mid-sized school requirement ends in four years. So the bill has a time limit on female athlete advancement.
And at no point does Section 125 require a school to be proportional, to close its Title IX gap, address the unaddressed sexual assault complaints, or to meet any equity standard at all. It only counts spots, and that count comes up short. A school can hold its 2024–2025 numbers, be completely out of compliance, and still fully satisfy the section.
The commission
The senators created a college sports oversight commission in Section 116 of the bill. That commission is supposed to address any outstanding issues. Changes in college sports are happening on a weekly, if not daily, basis. This commission reports back in five years. Five.
Not to mention, the bill as drafted already has obvious flaws. Some of those flaws are noted in Section 116. The commission is tasked with looking into those aspects of college sports (such as college athletes being employees, which also went unaddressed in the bill); Title IX is not on the list and women don’t have a mandated seat on the commission. Sound familiar? Read more about the commission and its shortcomings as to Title IX.
The gaslighting
Make no mistake: providing the NCAA and conferences with antitrust protection is the whole point of the PCSA. They want protection from lawsuits, and the bill readily hands over antitrust protection to the association that has been proven, repeatedly, to violate antitrust laws. Congress should have protected the athletes, not the monopolistic-seeking, antitrust-violating association.
Throughout the text, however, Congress attaches conditions to that protection.
The phrase "as a condition of the exemption under section 1(b)(1)" appears in the bill. Using that phrase, Congress made schools earn the antitrust exemption by meeting certain requirements. The drafters knew the NCAA would do almost anything to regain total control over college sports, so the senators put that condition on things they felt were important. Title IX was not one of those things. They chose not to make the antitrust protection contingent on schools complying with Title IX.
They could have written this: “As a condition of the exemption under section 1(b)(1), and prior to any school using revenue-share money to pay any athlete, the school's Senior Woman Administrator, Title IX compliance officer, and president must certify, under penalty of perjury, that athletic opportunities for female athletes are proportional to female enrollment, that every open Title IX investigation is being actively pursued (according to the alleged victim), and that the school meets the equal-treatment obligations Title IX already requires.”
That sentence would’ve forced schools to address decades of noncompliance and indifference immediately. Because the money is the leverage and the exemption is the coveted prize, everyone—from the head coach of the football team, to the school president, to every die-hard fan of the school—would’ve locked eyes onto Title IX and demanded compliance.
Instead, female athletes get a floor built on a year beset with inequality, that’s set to expire, tied to rules nobody enforces, and being overseen by a commission they weren’t invited to be a part of. And they’re told the bill protects them.
Senator Cantwell and every lawmaker negotiating this bill hold a historic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enforce compliance and actually protect women and women's sports. Unfortunately, they and their legislation fall predictably short.
Cedric Hopkins is an attorney and former Division I basketball player at the University of New Mexico. He's the author of The Fine Print, a book on the law and business of NIL and revenue sharing in college sports, and the founder of Hopkins Sports Law, where he delivers on-campus NIL, revenue-share, and agent-contract workshops, and helps athletes understand this complex new world of college sports. He's an educator, not an agent. Learn more at hopkinssportslaw.com.
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