| NEWS Bipartisan Bill in Congress Seeks Overhaul of NCAA Infractions Process

The NCAA Accountability Act of 2021 touches on an oft-criticized process: the NCAA’s enforcement of violations through sometimes years-long investigations. The bill creates a set of deadlines to facilitate quicker investigations, shortens the statute of limitations on violations and establishes a new appeals process:

• The bill requires NCAA inquiries to be completed within eight months of a school receiving a notice that an investigation has opened.

• The NCAA, the bill says, cannot investigate violations that were alleged to have happened more than two years before the notice of investigation was sent to a school. The current statute of limitations is four years.

• The bill would prohibit the NCAA from using “confidential sources” as evidence for a decision.

• And a school can appeal punishments by using a three-arbiter panel, different from the NCAA’s current appeals committee.

The proposal also requires the NCAA to submit an annual report of investigations to the U.S. attorney general and each state’s attorney general while also charging the Department of Justice to ensure the governing body of college sports follows the bill’s statutes. Violations will be dealt with severely. The bill authorizes the Department of Justice to fine the NCAA as much as $15 million and to order the removal of any member of the NCAA’s highest governing body, its Board of Governors.

The bill’s introduction comes at a revolutionary time in college athletics. An athletes’ rights movement has generated sweeping changes to decades-old NCAA policies governing athlete compensation (NIL) and transfer movement. Certain entities, in both the courts and with the National Labor Relations Board, are fighting for college athletes to be deemed employees, something that many experts say should be considered a serious possibility.

 
While I am no fan of the NCAA, and this would make things somewhat better for the member institutions.

Doesn't Congress need to be worried about other things? Such as the demented old fart in office that craps himself and has a hyena for a VP that is about as competent as an autistic chimp.

The NCAA is slowly but surely losing it's teeth and is headed to the phase of starving to death, on it's own. As the rich get richer (SEC), I feel as though we will see something new form in the future with the 4-5 major conferences and they will make their own set of rules and go from there.

If the government gets involved and goes to meddling. The conference realignment and pulling out into their own organization will be expedited, IMO.
 
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