"Restricts" Is Doing a Lot of Heavy Lifting Here

Let's sit with that word: "restricts." Not prohibits. Not eliminates. Restricts institutional interference in athlete compensation. That is a deliberate word choice, and it matters enormously. Every athletic director, every compliance officer, every school counsel reading this bill sees the same gap you should see: restriction implies a permissible floor. There's still a line schools can cross up to. The question this language refuses to answer is where exactly that line sits — and who draws it. We've watched institutions spend 30 years mastering the art of operating right at the edge of whatever boundary exists. "Restricts" gives them a boundary to find the edge of. "Prohibits" takes the edge away. The rest of the bill is genuinely promising — NIL privacy protections, representation rights, blocking NCAA punishment. That's real. But if institutional interference in compensation is merely restricted rather than structurally removed, schools will route around it. They've done it before. They'll do it faster now, with more lawyers and more money. So here's the direct question: before this advances, will the drafters define the specific conduct that remains permissible — and publish it — or are athletes expected to litigate that boundary one case at a time?