When it comes to the NCAA, it seems Congress is in a mood.
For years now, college coaches, athletes and administrators have skewered the NCAA for an infractions process they say is unfair, dawdling and lacking transparency.
Turns out, at least two U.S. senators feel the same.
This week, senators Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) and Cory Booker (D., N.J.) will introduce a bipartisan bill, the NCAA Accountability Act of 2021, that establishes strict requirements of the long-maligned NCAA infractions process, overhauling the operation by involving the Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney general.
Bipartisan! Nothing brings our politics together like the NCAA.
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.
Of course, there’s a likelihood this just encourages the NCAA to throw up its hands on the enforcement process entirely, but I’m not entirely sure that’s a bug.
I just wish somebody had enough of a sense of humor to name the bill after Jerry “The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky they’re going to give Cleveland State another year of probation” Tarkanian.