After the Congressional Black Caucus announced united opposition, House Republicans pulled the SCORE Act from the agenda Monday night—leaving the NCAA’s proposed framework in limbo. Women’s basketball players and lawmakers argue the bill would expand NCAA and
The last-minute scramble felt unmistakably familiar to the athletes on the Zoom call: the same fight about power, delayed by politics, and waged without them at the table.
By Monday night. the SCORE Act—“Student Compensation And Opportunity Through Rights and Endorsements”—had been pulled from the agenda by House Republicans. marking the second time in less than a year an official vote was canceled. The move came after the Congressional Black Caucus announced united opposition against the bill.
Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts. a former Division I volleyball player at Georgetown. didn’t dress up her anger when she spoke Tuesday. “This is a partisan piece of legislation that bails out the NCAA and the (SEC and Big Ten) by silencing athletes and rolling back the rights that they fought so hard to win. ” Trahan said. “That’s a choice. It’s a choice to put the interests of the wealthiest organizations in college sports ahead of the athletes who create the value in this industry.”.
Trahan added that the decision “this week” to proceed with the bill—before it was canceled—showed lawmakers were choosing “multi-billion-dollar special interests” over “the American people. ” and she argued the SCORE Act was sold as a fix for college athletics even as it “hands the NCAA and conferences a sweeping antitrust exemption in perpetuity.”.
For critics, what’s at stake isn’t just compensation rules. They say the bill’s architecture would shift leverage in a way athletes can’t live with.
Leaders of autonomy conferences—including the SEC. Big Ten. Big 12 and ACC—plan to argue the legislation would add regulation and clarity amid the shakeup brought by name. image and likeness compensation. revenue sharing and the transfer portal. They say it would reshape oversight of college athletics and set new standards.
Opponents counter that the bill also gives the NCAA and its member institutions antitrust protections. They say it would allow the NCAA to write its own rules on eligibility and compensation, pre-empting state laws. And. perhaps most crucially. they argue it would prohibit college athletes from being considered employees—eliminating their rights to collectively bargain.
Charlisse Leger-Walker. a key member of UCLA’s national championship team this season who is now in her rookie year in the WNBA with the Connecticut Sun. framed the cancellation as overdue. “The SCORE Act does nothing to solve the problems of our current system and I am glad that it’s finally dead once and for all. ” Leger-Walker said. “It is clear that the NCAA agenda is to wield absolute power over all college athletes. They want to push women’s sports back into the past. … We cannot trust the NCAA to do the right thing and neither should Congress.”.
Before the agenda pull, Trahan had planned a press conference for Tuesday alongside women’s sports figures. On the call with reporters, the message sharpened around one recurring demand: when lawmakers write around college athletics, athletes need to be in the room.
Current Maryland women’s basketball player Oluchi Okananwa said the NCAA has repeatedly failed to show it can negotiate in good faith with players as equals. “The NCAA has not been taking care of us. In fact, they’ve been doing the complete opposite,” Okananwa said. “The public and Congress need to understand how harmful it is for the NCAA to be having these conversations without us athletes involved at all.”.
Okananwa, who served as the Terps’ leading scorer this past season with 17.8 points per game, argued that athletes aren’t looking for symbolic input. “We need a legally binding position on a level playing field with the NCAA to negotiate our rights and working conditions,” she said.
She also pushed back on a phrase that has followed the sport for years. “It’s obvious that we are not just student-athletes; that myth has surely been debunked,” Okananwa said. “We are professionals. The sheer amount of revenue college sports brings in alone — it’s ridiculous not to recognize us as the professionals that we are.”.
For her, the bill’s defeat isn’t the end of the work. “It’s great that the SCORE Act is dead,” Okananwa said, “but we do not trust the NCAA to have our best interests in mind while they’re carrying on secret negotiations in the Senate without us. We need to have our voices heard.”
She warned that the effects of this fight reach far beyond the athletes already in the system. “Conversations like these affect generations,” Okananwa said. “I think that there’s a lot of college athletes that are just not privy to most of this information. and if they were made aware. they would be fighting just as hard as we are.”.
Daniels. who is no longer in college after exhausting her eligibility. described lawmakers’ priorities as out of sync with the moment. “The NCAA tells us that they support us right to our faces. but then … turns around and spends tens of million (of) dollars lobbying Congress to limit our rights. trying to silence our voices. ” Brooke Daniels said. Daniels is a Michigan women’s basketball player who started 31 games this past season as the Wolverines made a run to the Elite Eight. She is also a political science major at Michigan and earned two-time All-Defense recognition in the Big Ten.
Daniels said she couldn’t understand why the federal government was focused so intently on this question while other crises remain unresolved. “Why is Congress spending time on this in the country right now?. The Voting Rights Act is being dismantled. war issues. working people are struggling with rising prices. gas issues. a broken healthcare system and more. Why does Congress need to be involved here?”.
The argument that athletes were kept out of negotiations wasn’t just general—it was tied to a specific refusal described by the players’ side. Ahead of the landmark House v. NCAA antitrust class-action settlement being formally approved last June. more than 100 Division I women’s college basketball players—including Leger-Walker and her Connecticut Sun teammate Raegan Beers—requested a meeting with leaders of the SEC and Big Ten.
Andrew Cooper, the Executive Director for the United College Athletes Association, said Tuesday that SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti refused to meet with the players.
Trahan pointed to that kind of unwillingness as the reason the SCORE Act couldn’t succeed. “The SCORE Act failed because it was drafted behind closed doors by lobbyists for the NCAA and the Power Two conferences. and not in good faith with athletes. with Democratic members. or with anyone who has actually immersed themselves in these issues. ” Trahan said. “I think any bill that can actually pass the Senate and be signed into law has to be built much differently. and from the ground up.”.
All of it adds up to a sharp claim from both lawmakers and players: the bill may have promised order and clarity, but the fight it tried to settle was about who gets power—and who gets heard.
SCORE Act NCAA college athletes NIL revenue sharing transfer portal antitrust exemption House v. NCAA Rep. Lori Trahan women’s basketball UCLA Connecticut Sun Maryland Oluchi Okananwa Brooke Daniels Greg Sankey Tony Petitti