SoCalPatrick
Member
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.
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• 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.

NCAA infractions process taken aim at by congressional bill - Sports Illustrated
It creates a set of deadlines to facilitate quicker investigations, among other things.
