{"id":22174,"date":"2026-06-07T15:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T15:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/07\/press-box-government-looks-to-help-college-sports-clean-up-its-house-jefferson-city-news-tribune\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T15:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T15:46:14","slug":"press-box-government-looks-to-help-college-sports-clean-up-its-house-jefferson-city-news-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/07\/press-box-government-looks-to-help-college-sports-clean-up-its-house-jefferson-city-news-tribune\/","title":{"rendered":"Press Box: Government looks to help college sports clean up its house – Jefferson City News Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Nick Saban is widely recognized as one of the handful of best coaches in the history of college football.
Now retired, college football needs him to lead the way to save the sport from itself.
Saban, the former head coach at Alabama, testified in front of Congress last week to ask for legislation to college sports in the name, image and likeness (NIL) and transfer portal era.
NIL and the transfer portal have brought upheaval to college sports in recent years. Athletic programs now have the opportunity to pay \u2014 above the table \u2014 players to come to their school. It\u2019s evened things out in college football. Indiana, national champion? Never would have thought it.
The cynic might bring up the fact Saban has found his breaking point because other schools have caught up with his former school when it comes to getting the elite players and funding high-level facilities for their football programs.
I wouldn\u2019t call those cynics wrong. But that doesn\u2019t make him wrong.
Saban \u2014 speaking to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee \u2014 is in favor of the proposed Protect College Sports Act.
I\u2019m not quite sure what the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee has to do with college athletics. Commerce, there is money. Science? Transportation? Nope and nope. But it\u2019s Congress, they know better than we do. Just ask them.
The act would give the NCAA an antitrust exemption to enforce rules that have been challenged in court and won by athletes.
\u2022 It would limit athletes to only transfer one time without penalty.
\u2022 It would limit athletes to a maximum of five years of eligibility.
\u2022 It would prohibit former professional athletes from playing in college.
The proposal has some good points. Five years of eligibility is enough and former professional athletes have no business getting back into college sports. It\u2019s happening in men\u2019s basketball. Those players have had their chance in college, just because you washed out in the pros, you shouldn\u2019t get a second bite at the apple. You made your decision, live with it.
Another part of the act would be to set a limit on what schools can spend on NILs. A salary cap of sorts, because colleges can\u2019t seem to force themselves to stop spending, they need somebody to lay down a budget on paper.
That spending has had consequences. In the face of what universities are saying are rising costs in the \u201cmajor\u201d sports, they are cutting others.
In the past few weeks, several decided to cut men\u2019s and women\u2019s tennis programs in an attempt to balance the books.
Arkansas was one of those schools. According to ESPN, the university spent a combined $2.35 million on the men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams in the 2025 fiscal year. In sports such as football or men\u2019s basketball, that $2.35 million would cover perhaps a player or two when it comes to NIL money for a season.
The operating expense per Arkansas tennis player in 2025? For the men, it was $41,772, the women was $41,582.
The revenue brought back? $3,202 total for the men, $82 for the women according to the university. Boy, those are not great.
There was a bit of an outcry at Arkansas about cutting the programs and the university has gotten short-term funding to keep the men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams alive for now.
But that decision came with the proviso alumni and other program supporters need to find a way to fund a \u201csignificant endowment\u201d to keep the teams going in the future.
I\u2019m afraid that\u2019s going to turn into the norm with a lot of the Olympic sports at the collegiate level \u2014 find your own funding or the program is done. On Friday, Missouri Western announced it was \u201cpausing\u201d its women\u2019s tennis program.
I\u2019m not a fan of inviting the government into your house to make rules because your family couldn\u2019t come up with a solution. But if it settles down the recent ruckus for a little while, it\u2019s not a bad thing.
[email protected]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Tom Rackers is the sports editor at the Jefferson City News Tribune. Follow him on Twitter at @tjrackers.
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Nick Saban is widely recognized as one of the handful of best coaches in the history of college football.Now retired, college football needs him to lead the way to save the sport from itself.Saban, the former head coach at Alabama, testified in front of Congress last week to ask for legislation to college sports in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}