SCORE Act aims to change NCAA sports, how college coaches are hired and fired

The SCORE Act is set to again be on the United States House of Representatives agenda Monday, May 18, and the latest, amended version of the proposal to “represent the interests of student athletes, institutions, and conferences” includes language geared at dramatically altering the timeline of hiring coaches during the season.

The language in the SCORE Act’s latest version, made available Monday, May 11, on the rules portion of the House of Representatives website, seeks to establish “parameters for the manner in which an institution (or any person on behalf of an institution) may engage in public or private communication with respect to the employment of, or solicit, recruit, or enter into an employment contract or other arrangement with, any coach employed by another institution with respect to a varsity sports team, if such rules prohibit an institution (or any person on behalf of an institution) from engaging in any such communication, solicitation, recruitment, contract, or other arrangement with any such coach during a season of competition of the varsity sports team of such coach.”

It also seeks to dictate the funds an institution utilizes to pay off the buyouts of a fired coach.

While this element of college athletics is perhaps fresher in the minds of the public after Lane Kiffin’s weeks-long dalliance with LSU while still coaching Ole Miss late in the 2025 season, the debate on the timing of coaching departures in college football with seasons still in the balance traces to at least the 2021 cycle.

Brian Kelly left Notre Dame for the LSU job two days after the Irish concluded their regular season and Lincoln Riley left Oklahoma for Southern California on Sunday, Nov. 29, 2021, less than 12 hours after losing to rival Oklahoma State, costing the Sooners a spot in the College Football Playoff.

Kelly, who was replaced by Kiffin at LSU on Nov. 30, 2025, addressed the exit-status of coaches in the USA TODAY Sports college football podcast May 6, 2026 and advocated for a change to the hiring cycle.

“The timing stinks, ok?" Kelly said. "If we could all just say, 'Hey, (athletics directors), you can't make any decisions on coaches until after this time.' It'd be easy on our lives.

"Trust me, you don't like walking in on your team after they've already been told you're leaving. That's not fun."

There are other key, modified or new elements in the SCORE Act, which is in its third formal attempt in seeking to be passed through the House of Representatives and then addressed by the U.S. Senate.

Among those are an attempt to redefine "associated entity/entities," define compensation and define name, image and likeness (NIL), require arbitration to settle disputes and prohibit state attorneys general from suing on behalf of athletes, since arbitration is the act's goal, regulate agent-compensation from NIL deals with a 5 percent cap and five years' eligibility for student-athletes with proposed modifications to the NCAA's transfer rules for student-athletes.

The proposal wants a “pool limit” that is a dollar amount “calculated and published by an interstate intercollegiate athletic association” that “serves as the annual maximum amount that a (member) institution may provide, in total, to student athletes, including in the form of name, image and likeness or direct payment.”

The "Associated Entity” or "Associated Individual" element is among the more pressing topics in the ongoing House Settlement revenue-share and NIL era as more schools seek to utilize their multimedia rights partners as third-party conduits for athlete recruitment and retention.

The proposal outlines an individual as associated if it is someone “who is or has been a member, employee, director, officer, owner or other representative” who is “known or should be known” to an athletics department and its employees because the individual helps “promote or support varsity sports teams or student athletes” or creates NIL agreements or proposals “solely for the student athletes of such institution.”

This is one element of the House Settlement currently being contested on multiple fronts regarding third-party, multimedia rightsholders such as Playfly Sports, Learfield and JMI Sports. Plaintiff lawyers contend overreach from the College Sports Commission in its handling of these deals and the ongoing arbitration process. The CSC cites language in the House Settlement that specifies an arbitrator – not a judge – is the pathway for assessing the validity of NIL proposals that might come from a school’s MMR, such as Nebraska’s partnership with PlayFly.

Late afternoon Monday, May 11, a third-party arbitrator sided with the CSC against Nebraska when it was ruled in a "binding decision" that PlayFly is an "associated entity" of Cornhuskers athletics and also that the proposed NIL deals had violated the rule "against warehousing NIL rights." The arbitrator deemed that there were no material services or products that accompanied the proposed deals for Nebraska athletes that were reportedly worth millions of dollars.

In a May 7, 2026, op-ed published by The Hill, NCAA President Charlie Baker urged the advancement of the SCORE Act in this next legislative session. Outlining that the NCAA has data that reflect student-athletes do not wish to become full-time employees of their respective institutions and also that additional oversight is needed before more opportunities and sports are sacrificed, Baker wrote that NIL should be an element upon which athletes can earn payment but that current spending levels in college athletics are not sustainable.

“Less than 1 percent of college sports programs nationwide generate meaningful revenue,” Baker wrote, “so the additional cost of an employment mandate would create enormous financial pressure, likely resulting in widespread program cuts — with women’s sports, Olympic sports, historically Black college and university programs, and Division II and III bearing the brunt. Beyond that, coaches would become bosses, and scholarships could be taxed. I speak with student-athletes daily, and this is not an outcome they desire.”

Baker further added, “This includes codifying student-athletes’ right to capitalize on their name, image, and likeness and mandating the health and wellness benefits they deserve, while finally establishing the guardrails necessary to protect young people from predatory agents and “bad actors” currently operating in an unregulated NIL market. Because of this balanced, holistic approach, the SCORE Act has earned the support of student-athlete leaders and nearly every conference — including all four HBCU conferences — across all three divisions.”

The SCORE Act also aims to tackle age-based eligibility issues in the NCAA, advocating against the return of professional players to the collegiate game, and it also pushes for student-athletes to be in residence at a school for a minimum of one year before transferring. It urges institutions to keep academics and progress toward a degree as critical components.

The proposal also tasks leaders with examining the length of collegiate sports seasons, capping the maximum number of competitions within respective sports and also examining the travel now required of many institutions in the aftermath of the latest batch of conference expansions and realignment.

With the university now a member of the ACC, Stanford’s women’s basketball team during the 2025-26 season had conference games at North Carolina, North Carolina State, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Miami and Boston College.

Southern California football, now in the Big Ten Conference, had 2025 contests at Purdue, at Illinois and at Notre Dame in a five-game stretch.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: SCORE Act governing NCAA sports seeks change to coaches firing, hiring