Black lawmakers tank SCORE Act with calls for boycotts

The SCORE Act, a controversial piece of legislation that aimed to curb the big business of college sports, has been torpedoed by a coalition of Black lawmakers who argued it would harm minority athletes and benefit only top-level universities, coaches and programs.  

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), some of whom had previously voiced support for the proposal, in an unexpected reversal last week announced none of its members would vote for the act, forcing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to pull it from the floor.  

The CBC said it was unwilling to support any legislation that “benefits major athletic institutions that continue to remain silent while Black voting rights and Black political power are being systematically dismantled across the South.” 

“For generations, Black athletes have helped build college athletics into one of the most powerful and profitable industries in American life,” the caucus said. “Yet at the very moment those same communities face coordinated attacks on their democratic representation, too many leaders across college athletics have chosen silence.” 

The decision was a major blow to the NCAA, which for months has been lobbying lawmakers on Capitol Hill to craft legislation addressing the mounting challenges it faces in the modern collegiate athletics landscape.  

Fans, coaches and critics of the NCAA have in recent years lamented the intensifying corporatization of college football and basketball programs specifically, punctuated by a trend of top recruits and coaches jumping from one school to another, in many cases to chase more endorsement money or playing time.

The result has been a college sports ecosystem where smaller schools with tighter budgets are losing an arms race for top talent, and funding across athletics departments is increasingly being siphoned to football and basketball programs at the expense of women’s and Olympic sport programs.  

The SCORE Act — officially titled the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act — would have granted the NCAA limited antitrust protection, a key provision shielding it from litigation on issues regarding name, image and likeness endorsement money, transfer portal limitations and athlete eligibility requirements.  

That exemption was a crucial sticking point in an earlier version of the SCORE Act, which also failed to get to the House floor last fall after several conservative GOP members voiced opposition, arguing it handed the NCAA too much leverage to set rules over student-athletes.  

“College sports power brokers spent tens of millions of dollars trying to buy themselves a bailout in........

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