[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1011 Introduced in House (IH)]
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119th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 1011
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the structure
and governance of the Football Bowl Subdivision postseason should
prioritize broad-based athletic opportunity, financial sustainability
for college athletics, and competitive balance, and that innovative
proposals to expand broad based postseason participation--such as
proposals advanced by Coach Mike Leach--warrant serious consideration
to mitigate anticompetitive effects in top-division college football.
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IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 20, 2026
Mr. Baumgartner submitted the following resolution; which was referred
to the Committee on Education and Workforce
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RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the structure
and governance of the Football Bowl Subdivision postseason should
prioritize broad-based athletic opportunity, financial sustainability
for college athletics, and competitive balance, and that innovative
proposals to expand broad based postseason participation--such as
proposals advanced by Coach Mike Leach--warrant serious consideration
to mitigate anticompetitive effects in top-division college football.
Whereas Coach Mike Leach repeatedly advanced an innovative proposal to expand
top-division college football's postseason to a broad, bracketed
format--arguing that the sport could accommodate a 16-, 32-, or 64-team
bracket and determine a champion on the field, rather than relying on a
narrow, highly selective postseason gate;
Whereas Coach Leach specifically argued that an inclusive bracket could be
calendar-feasible if paired with responsible season design--including a
shorter regular season--and that the resulting structure would give more
teams a meaningful late-season path while preserving competitive
balance;
Whereas Coach Leach's proposal drew explicit parallels to other levels of
football that routinely use bracketed postseason formats to produce
champions and sustain broad-based competitive engagement;
Whereas multiple levels of NCAA football already operate broad-access postseason
tournaments as the standard method of determining championships,
including: (1) the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision
(FCS), which uses a bracket with automatic qualifiers and at-large bids;
(2) NCAA Division II, which has expanded to a 32-team championship
bracket; and (3) NCAA Division III, which has expanded to a 40-team
bracket, further demonstrating that larger playoff fields can be
administered in a student-athlete and academic environment when
structured around principles of equal opportunity, competitive balance,
and financial sustainability;
Whereas by contrast, the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS)--a national collective
of 136 programs--operates a comparatively narrow postseason championship
pathway through the College Football Playoff (CFP), which currently
selects a 12-team championship field (meaning fewer than one in ten FBS
programs can reach the championship bracket in a given year);
Whereas the CFP's own historical record reflects that championship access has
been concentrated among a limited set of institutions (only 27 teams
have appeared in the CFP era to date, and one program has appeared nine
times), reinforcing concerns that a narrow gate can entrench incumbent
competitive advantage;
Whereas public reporting indicates that postseason football revenues are
distributed in a manner that can reinforce conference-level
concentration, including reports that the SEC and Big Ten each receive
about 29 percent of CFP base distributions while the Group of Five
conferences collectively receive about 9 percent;
Whereas the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and affiliated
researchers have warned at a high level that the financial trajectory of
major college sports is increasingly concentrated and self-reinforcing,
projecting that by fiscal year 2032 total annual athletics revenue at
public FBS institutions will be approximately $20.9 billion, with $16.7
billion generated by 54 Autonomy-conference public institutions (roughly
four-fifths of that total);
Whereas NCAA financial reporting underscores the sustainability pressure facing
much of the FBS system, showing that (for 2022) the median FBS program
generated approximately $71 million in revenue against approximately
$85.7 million in total expenses, producing a median operating deficit of
approximately $19.3 million;
Whereas public-records-based research indicates that bowl participation
frequently produces net financial losses for participating programs--
reporting that around 70 percent of public FBS colleges incurred bowl-
game financial losses from 2015-2018--underscoring how the legacy
postseason model can impose costs on many institutions even as
championship access remains narrowly gated, all while reform advocates
argue that lawful pooling or national packaging approaches could unlock
$4-$7 billion in additional value--value that could be distributed more
broadly to strengthen opportunity and competitive balance;
Whereas Coach Leach's vision for a broad-access, bracketed postseason--paired
with a more unified approach to packaging and monetizing college
football media rights--could create a materially more valuable national
product and distribute benefits more widely,
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives
that--
(1) the governance and structure of the FBS postseason
should expand meaningful competitive opportunity for student-
athletes and institutions consistent with academic integrity
and student-athlete welfare;
(2) postseason design and revenue structures should be
evaluated and reformed where they produce anticompetitive
effects that entrench advantages for a select few schools and
erode competitive balance; and
(3) proposals like those advanced by Coach Mike Leach--
emphasizing broader, objective-access playoff participation
paired with responsible season-structure reforms--represent the
kind of innovative thinking necessary to protect opportunity,
sustainability, and fair competition in major college football.
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