UConn coach Dan Hurley backs Protect College Sports Act

STORRS — Dan Hurley is not a politician. He is a basketball coach.

He’s not a professional basketball coach, even if it might feel and look that way with the current NCAA landscape as a backdrop. He’s a college basketball coach, and he considers the merits of the Protect College Sports Act as such.

“I’m definitely in favor of that,” Hurley, preparing for his ninth season with the UConn men’s program, said Tuesday after a Huskies’ practice. “Our game, just college sports, there’s so many different layers to it. It’s obviously very complicated. I just kind of go back to two things. I just heard for so many years that players needed to get paid, players need an ability to transfer. … The bill allows for both of those things to happen. For me, that was the only thing that was ever, I guess, wrong with college sports — that players need a little bit more flexibility with the one-time transfer, and that players needed to be compensated. Which, both part of the bill.”

The bipartisan Protect College Sports Act of 2026 is still just that, a bill and not yet law, but moving through U.S. Senate procedures with momentum. Introduced by Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) — and opposed, vociferously, by Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy — the bill was designed to establish rules, and allow the NCAA the power to enforce those rules, in areas such as eligibility, revenue-sharing, student-athlete transfers and NIL (name, image and likeness).

The bill cleared procedural hurdles in the Senate earlier this month, with a 77-22 vote to official consider it. In order for it to pass, it would have to be officially voted on in the Senate and then the House of Representatives.

Proponents of the bill — President Donald Trump among them — argue that college athletics, which in the top revenue-generating sports have become almost unrecognizable in recent years, are in need of a set of national rules. Critics say the rules proposed would unfairly cap student-athletes’ earning potential and give the NCAA too much power.

People up and down the political and athletic spectrums are bent over sideways about it all. In March, with conversation about college sports chaos already in full swing, Trump gathered dozens of sports leaders at the White House for a roundtable discussion that was — probably depending on your political persuasion — either highly productive or completely hollow.

Two months later, Cruz and Cantwell introduced the bill. Cruz makes the talk-show rounds. Murphy, the most outspoken critic, does too. There’s no right or wrong answer to most of this, and there’s no perfect legislation to appropriately address the way money is moving and players are transferring and, of late, professional athletes are using state court systems to regain eligibility.

But, in Hurley’s mind, passage of the bill does set up a fair-enough framework that would reintroduced some sanity to his profession. It would codify the five-in-five rule, allowing each student-athlete the participate in five seasons in a five-year window, and a rule that allows all student-athletes to transfer to another institution without penalty.

“All the people with an opinion on it, ‘Well, this is pro sports,’” Hurley said. “Actually, college is … a really important developmental stage of 18-22 year-old’s lives. Once you get past the money thing — obviously, these guys are now getting paid and, with this bill, they still have the ability to make a transfer. But again, this is a critical point in an 18- to 20-year old’s life, to develop habits, behaviors, a mindset, character, work ethic, things that no one seems to consider as we are just all about player empowerment.

“And it’s very anti-coach. For a lot of 18-, 19-, 20-year olds, the most important person they’ll ever have in their life is a coach who holds them accountable on a daily basis, teaches them work ethic, just characteristics and qualities — sacrifice, teamwork, how to communicate, leadership, all these things. I don’t think there’s a more important person that a 19-yuear-old is going to have in their life. So, we’re all about player empowerment and I think the bill, we need. Our game is chaotic and I don’t think it’s, overall, healthy for the players for the long-term.”

Asked if he had spoken to Murphy about the bill, Hurley said no, not 1-on-1, anyway. He added, “We’ve had some conversations. I’ve been on some Zooms. We’ve tried to express from a UConn standpoint what it is actually like to be on kind of the front lines with this and deal with the athletes and deal with the families and to be a leader in this particular sports league.”

The best teams in America — basketball, football and beyond, particularly those on TV for national audiences — are built with a lot of money. There are millions of dollars spread out on those fields, those courts, up and down those rosters. No UConn player is making more money than Hurley, nor should any, but they’re all paid well and, elsewhere, there are probably teams with the top-paid player is actually making as much as the coach.

There has been some movement, however minimal, toward the unionization of college student-athletes, however chaotic that would be. College sports, once a four-year revolving door are now just a five-year revolving door, and you’d have to wonder how invested each member might be and how chaotically that entire framework would operate.

One could argue that coaches can bounce around from institution to institution without penalty. In football, Jim Mora left UConn before its bowl game last season to take the job at Colorado State. Lane Kiffin did the same at Ole Miss, departing for LSU. Hurley two years ago had the state in pins and needles by entertaining a massive offer to become coach of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Coaches do, however, have buyout clauses in their contracts, so there is some protection from uncomfortable upheaval.

Hurley asked a rhetorical question while offering thoughts on the bill and college sports on Tuesday, saying, “Do I know the ins and outs of the entire bill?” No, it seems. Nor do I. Nor to 99 percent of people who care about sports or work in sports. It’s important to look into all of it, which is what the Senate has done and will do. It does, to me, on the surface, seem like a rather responsible way to preserve college sports for what it should be while allowing for the common sense of a new era.

“A sports league needs rules,” said Hurley, who mentioned that, coincidentally, he and staff members were scheduled to meet Tuesday evening with representatives of the compliance department to discuss the bill. “I think we should all just follow the rules.”

Minutes later, he added, “Look at any sports league. The NBA has a cap. I don’t know how you could collectively bargain if you have 354 men’s basketball team that have 15 players. What does that collective bargaining look like? And how many football teams are there and how many players are there on a football team? I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know.

“I just want us to get to a point where we’re not doing things that are going to negatively affect players from developing these qualities that are really important to their development. With the bill passing, these kids are still getting paid. They’re getting paid handsomely for the fact that they’re still-developing, 18-, 19-year old players. In large part, these are not NBA-level, world-class level players. These are guys coming straight out of high school that need a lot of development, need a lot of coaching, need a lot of development off the court. They’re very young men that, if they’re not taught to stay somewhere, address their deficiencies, develop a work ethic, develop traits, toughness, it’s going to be very bad for them in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. Once this current — I don’t want to call it a racket — but there’s a reason why people are trying to sue their way back into college where, just a couple years ago, they couldn’t wait to get out of college.”