Nearly all college sports fans (that includes us) know the state of affairs in the NCAA football and men’s basketball is in disarray.

The elite “student athletes” are no longer recruited, but auction off their talents to the highest bidder. Some of the eligibility rules openly discriminate against American kids to the advantage of older foreigners.

Now Congress is intent on making things worse. The Protect College Sports Act, which is now moving through the Senate, is 150 pages of byzantine rules governing media negotiations, revenue sharing, local broadcast access, conference transactions, and even the college football calendar. You wouldn’t believe some of the crazy provisions:

• It requires certain schools to play at least two traditional rivalry games every four years and at least one annual game against an out of conference opponent that ranks among the school’s top five historic football opponents.
• It dictates when college football games can be played, including a rewrite of the Sports Broadcasting Act which regulates the window by extending football TV broadcasts “from the second Friday in September through the second Saturday in December to the first Friday in September through the third Saturday in December.”
• It mandates what games can be shown on which TV networks at what time.  It restricts what schools can be added or deleted from certain conferences.
• It regulates expansion of the Big Ten and the SEC conferences.

Doesn’t Congress have higher priorities than micromanaging what time a University of Alabama football game can be on TV? Do we really want Bernie Sanders deciding who Ohio State should put on their football schedule?