Bruce Pearl calls for one-time transfer rule, annuity model for paying players in Washington Post piece

Bruce Pearl has taken on a litany of new roles since retiring from coaching a month before the 2025-26 season. After briefly flirting with politics, Pearl has successfully transitioned into the media world as a popular college basketball analyst for CBS Sports and TNT.

And while the former Auburn head coach ultimately punted on a potential Alabama senatorial run, it hasn’t stopped Pearl from regularly sounding off on national and world affairs. That includes weighing in on the great debate raging about the current state of college athletics, and whether Congress should ultimately intervene and save the NCAA from itself.

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On Tuesday, Pearl published an op-ed column in the Washington Post entitled “Trump can’t save college sports, but Congress can.” It called on the passing of the controversial “Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act” that would provide unprecedented antitrust protections for the NCAA while placing strict reforms on how student-athletes monetize their NIL opportunities, as well as severely restricting player movement in the transfer portal.

“[…] College athletics do need reform. The National Collegiate Athletic Association lacks the authority to address what ails it — a consequence of NCAA v. Alston (2021), in which the Supreme Court ruled that the association’s restrictions on education-related benefits for student-athletes violated federal antitrust laws,” Pearl wrote in the Washington Post op-ed. “The decision established that the NCAA is on precarious legal standing, so much so that it’s unclear if the association can even enforce its own rules without violating antitrust laws.

“While Alston in effect rightly allowed men and women to cash in on their talents, it also opened the door to a Wild West in which student-athletes are perennial free agents, eligible to play into their mid-20s. Legal challenges have since…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/bruce-pearl-calls-one-time-165907933.html

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Publish date : 2026-04-14 16:59:00

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