I understand why some in the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movement are celebrating the Senate’s passage of the Protect College Sports Act. They fought for provisions intended to protect sports, scholarships, and walk-on opportunities. Those are worth defending. The Senate passed the bill 77–22, and it now faces an uncertain path through the House.
I can find no reason to celebrate.
The problem is not protecting college roster spots. It is treating those protections as though they secure Team USA’s future, or as though they justify giving the institutions that govern college sports more legal protection without comparable power for athletes. The Olympic movement’s own history warns that a federally recognized governance structure does not, by itself, ensure athletes have the economic resources or influence they need. The Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act gives athletes formal representation in USOPC governance, but a seat in that structure is not the same as control over how the movement creates and shares value.
The athletes we will cheer at LA28 began developing more than a decade ago. The leadership in Colorado Springs will have every opportunity to stand beside them, celebrate their medals, and present those results as evidence that the current system works. But those athletes came through youth, club, college, and national-team pathways built more than a decade before today’s decisions about who gets access, who gets a roster spot, and who can afford to keep competing.
The old system was far from equal or perfect. It did, however, give many athletes room to develop through school and community sports, followed by college programs that offered coaching, facilities, competition, and time. Now families face rising costs at the grassroots level, while college teams and developmental roster spots face mounting pressure.
The USOPC knows how much it depends on college sports. In Paris, 75% of the U.S. Olympic team and 53% of the U.S. Paralympic team had competed collegiately. That makes non-revenue sports and developmental roster spots worth defending. It also makes the cuts happening now a warning, not a problem a Senate bill provision can solve.
The bill does not bring back the developmental rosters that existed before House v. NCAA. At qualifying schools, it temporarily protects an aggregate count of non-revenue-sport roster spots and athletic-aid opportunities based on 2024–25. Schools can still shift opportunities among sports, some can seek waivers, and the requirements eventually expire.
READ THAT ONE AGAIN! - the requirements eventually expire!
A floor under the total doesn't guarantee a spot for a particular team, walk-on, or late bloomer.
Nor does it restore programs schools have already cut. A report from Sen. Maria Cantwell’s office says colleges have eliminated more than 100 women’s and Olympic-sport programs since 2023. We should also be honest about the national picture: Division I teams and roster spots have increased over the past five years. Both facts can be true. A new roster spot at one school does not reopen a discontinued swimming program at another or replace the coaching and developmental route it offered athletes in its community.
That is why I resist calling the bill’s roster provisions a solution to the Team USA pipeline. They may prevent some future cuts at some schools. They do not rebuild lost programs, guarantee opportunities in every sport, or address whether a young athlete can afford to reach a college roster in the first place.
With the Los Angeles Games in 2028 and the Utah Winter Games in 2034, the USOPC has an extraordinary platform on American soil. Its leaders should use that platform to confront a weakening pathway from school and community sports through college and beyond. They should stop treating the nonprofit governance structure established under the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act as a reason not to rethink how the movement creates and shares value. Public-interest governance and a parallel commercial model that sends more resources to athletes and the organizations developing them can coexist.
Instead, they are celebrating narrow protections in a bill that would give college sports institutions more legal power, while leaving the USOPC’s own authority largely unquestioned, without confronting who will fund the next generation of Team USA.
A strong medal count in LA28 would show what an earlier generation of opportunities made possible. It would not vindicate the people currently governing the system, and it would say nothing about whether a child entering sport today can afford to become a future member of Team USA.
I made that distinction in The Broken Pipeline: college sports can keep producing visible success while the opportunities behind it contract. Teams and developmental roster spots matter not only to the athletes currently on them, but also to late bloomers who need time, coaching, and competition before anyone knows what they might become.
The pressure starts well before a college coach offers a roster spot. Rising costs shape who can enter and remain in youth sports. After college, too many Olympic and Paralympic athletes must piece together jobs, family support, and fundraising to continue competing. As I argued in Private Equity Didn’t Break Youth Sports, blaming the latest source of private capital misses the longer retreat from accessible, school-based opportunities.
College sports is essential to the Team USA pipeline, but it is not the whole pipeline. Congress cannot rebuild that pathway by declaring a few campus safeguards and calling the job done, nor should it be asked to do the work that sports institutions have failed to do themselves.
That work belongs to athletes, colleges, clubs, national governing bodies, sponsors, and investors. They should build a stronger commercial model that sends more of the value athletes create back to athletes and to the organizations doing the coaching and development. They do not need Congress to run that model, and they do not need the institutions already in control to own every part of it.
Congress does have a responsibility when sports institutions ask for special treatment under federal law. The Senate-passed bill would establish national rules and give the organizations enforcing them specified legal protections. Before granting those protections, the House should ask what athletes receive in return: fair treatment, a meaningful share of the value they create, the freedom to earn from their skills and public profiles, enforceable rights, a real voice in the rules that govern them, and accountability for promises made in their name.
I want lasting protections for Olympic and Paralympic sports. But I cannot celebrate provisions that give institutions greater control without giving athletes comparable opportunity, economic power, and a meaningful say in their future, or offering a credible plan to keep the pathway open for those coming next.
Are we protecting the opportunities and a route for the next generation, or protecting the institutions that have failed to build one?