Congressman Michael Baumgartner (WA-05) has introduced H.R. 5812, known as the COACH Act, which aims to address rising compensation and buyout costs for college coaches. The bill proposes to limit how much athletics department employees can be paid by tying their total compensation to a multiple of undergraduate tuition and fees.
“Schools that publish contract data for their head coaches have amassed $1.7 billion in potential buyout liabilities,” said Congressman Baumgartner. “This season alone, colleges are on pace to pay over $169 million for coaches not to coach. This amount equals a full year of operating revenue at a top-tier Division I program—enough to rank as a top-13 athletics department by revenue. My bill puts an end to that. College sports are highly subsidized public goods, not a professional enterprise.”
Baumgartner noted that professional sports already have cost controls such as salary caps recognized by Congress and the courts. “Even in professional sports, cost controls exist: salary caps operate within narrow antitrust frameworks recognized by Congress and the courts,” he said. “The COACH Act is a simple guardrail to bring sanity back to the financial management of college sports—it creates a narrow, lawful path for schools to set reasonable limits on coaches’ pay. It’s time for Congress to step in to restore sanity to college sports.”
The proposed legislation would amend Title IV of the Higher Education Act and provide an antitrust exemption allowing schools to collectively set compensation ceilings for athletic department staff. Under this measure, any employee’s total compensation could not exceed ten times the institution’s tuition and required fees for first-time, full-time undergraduates from the most recent year.
To prevent circumvention of these limits, “total compensation” is defined broadly in the bill—including all forms of payment or support from universities or affiliated organizations.
Baumgartner cited past efforts by the NCAA in the 1990s that were struck down by courts but said unchecked spending has continued since then, with college coaches often being among the highest-paid public employees in many states.
He argued that redirecting resources away from excessive coaching contracts could help control costs and preserve scholarships and Olympic sports programs.
Recent data shows that head-coach buyouts at reporting schools now total $1.7 billion nationwide—a figure tracked by USA Today—and current season payouts approach what some leading athletic departments generate annually.