Two things can be simultaneously true: College athletes deserve to be paid as the games they play earn their universities millions of dollars. And the college sports system is currently an absolute mess.

“I’m not sure how to fix things,” writes economist Stephen Moore, “but I do know who won’t: Congress.” Nevertheless, in an age when almost literally everything becomes a federal issue, Congress aims to do exactly that via the Protect College Sports Act.

Introduced by Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Moore says the legislation is “filled with federal rules, regulations and edicts, some of which make sense, while others are intrusive, unworkable and potentially ruinous to the games.” Heck, it even mandates exactly how “traditional rivalries” should continue, effectively telling schools which other schools they ought to play and how often. On top of that, it sets rules for TV scheduling, network airings, and conference makeup. Is it really up to Congress to decide what 19-year-olds throw a football against which other 19-year-olds, and when they do it?

Maybe we should quit paying members of Congress for the games they play.

The background for the debate over whether and how to pay college athletes goes back many years. In 2017, our Brian Mark Weber relayed a story about corruption involving schools and students finding ways around the prohibition on paying players directly. He rightly argued then that “top-tier athletes [should] be free to take any legitimate, free-market offers they deserve.”

Then came a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in 2021, which, as our Thomas Gallatin explained at the time, “effectively opened the door for student athletes to eventually win the right to enjoy financial compensation for their play.” Indeed, NIL (name, image, and likeness) payments soon became the norm.

By 2024, a trio of legal settlements changed the balance of funding, and here we are in 2026 with things getting out of hand. The “portal” for transferring schools allows, for example, a quarterback to play for four different schools over his four years. Players and coaches alike are changing schools like they change jerseys, and it’s undermining the primary charm of college sports — loyalty to a university and its team that transcends a paycheck.

There are some intriguing things about the new setup. For example, longtime loser Indiana University won the NCAA football championship in January. Moore notes that this was “partly by going into the portal and cherry-picking underrated and underpaid players.” As universities figure out how to use the new system, things may eventually reach some sort of equilibrium, and we may also be pleasantly surprised by the results.

In any case, it is up to the NCAA and the major conferences to fix the problems. It is not up to members of Congress. To only slightly paraphrase James Madison, the author of the Constitution, in a 1794 speech in the House of Representatives, “Football is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

Nevertheless, the Protect College Sports Act has some big-name proponents.

In Senate testimony in favor of the bill last week, former Alabama coach Nick Saban said, “I have seen players come into a program needing structure, discipline, coaching, academic support, and accountability. I have seen them leave with a degree, a career, a family, and a better chance to be successful in life. That is what college athletics is supposed to be about. It is not just about who wins on Saturday. For me and many of my colleagues, it was about developing young people.” He believes that’s pretty hard to do when you have to effectively recruit a new team every season.

“If we do nothing,” he added, “the current trajectory will concentrate more power in fewer hands and widen the gap between the richest programs and everyone else.”

As a decades-long Auburn fan, I’ll withhold some of my personal feelings about Saban and Alabama, other than to note that it’s awfully easy for him to say “it’s not about who wins” or to feign concern over the “richest programs” when he has seven national championships under his belt. Harumph.

Oh well. We’ll always have the Kick Six. War Eagle!

President Donald Trump also backs the bill. In his usual stark language, he painted a contrast between a bleak future of “unending lawsuits and crazed rulings” that would lead to “bankrupt” schools with no sports versus a much happier future created by a “Bipartisan solution to fix the problem” that would “save a long and embarrassing ROAD THROUGH HELL.” As virtually all national politicians do, he argues that it’s up to Washington: “WE HAVE TO SAVE COLLEGE SPORTS!”

Trump sure knows how to draw a contrast, but he’s dead wrong. We (meaning Congress and the president) need to stay on the sidelines — or better yet, in the stands. I’m not denying there’s a problem with college sports. I am, however, arguing that the Washington swamp is not the place to solve what happens on the football field.

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