Knight Commission Co-Chairs’ Letter to Congress – September 12, 2025

Delivered via email and mailed September 12, 2025

Dear Chairmen and Ranking Members:

We write on behalf of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, an independent nonprofit leadership group with a legacy of impacting policies that prioritize college athletes’ education, health, safety, and success. Our past successful policy work targeted elements central to college sports maintaining its position as a public good — elements like athlete graduation rates, gender equity, and financial transparency.

We are reaching out to provide educational background about billions in annual national college sports revenue distributions and to outline an important change the Commission has proposed to the financial incentives in those distributions. If implemented, the Commission’s proposed zerocost solution would help achieve one of the stated objectives of the SCORE Act — “defending Olympic sports” — and boost the values of college athletics that many lawmakers support.

Since the SCORE Act aims to codify significant components of the college sports system, we believe it is important for Congress to consider sound values-based incentives in the annual revenue distribution systems and potential corrections to those systems that could better protect collegiate Olympic sports.

To be clear, this letter focuses on incentives in the system and not spending associated with college sports. We are aware of other proposed reforms that address how funding is allocated and spent. While that side of the equation is also important, we believe that addressing financial incentives must be part of any comprehensive package of reforms.

Read the full letter here: Knight Commission CoChairs Letter to Congress – September 12, 2025