House members from Florida and Pennsylvania have rolled out a new plan that would let college athletes stash endorsement earnings in special, tax-advantaged investment accounts that grow until after graduation. The Helping Undergraduate Students Thrive with Long-Term Earnings (HUSTLE) Act is pitched as a way to turn short-lived name, image and likeness (NIL) paydays into long-term savings while tightening the leash on sports agents. It plugs directly into the national fight over how to handle the sudden surge of college-sports money and how to keep young athletes from getting taken for a ride.
Reps. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) and Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) filed the House companion to a Senate measure led by Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Maria Cantwell. The Tampa Free Press report says the proposal would let student-athletes channel cash from endorsements, appearances and social-media deals into NIL investment accounts and exclude those contributions from taxable income up to the annual gift-tax limit. Rep. Steube told the outlet the bill "gives student-athletes a real pathway to invest those earnings" and build financial stability that lasts beyond their playing days.
What the bill would do
The Senate text of S.3378 spells out the mechanics: eligible athletes could place qualifying NIL income into a trust-style NIL investment account, elect to exclude those contributed amounts from gross income, and skip self-employment tax on the contributions for the year they are made, according to Congress.gov. In many cases, distributions taken after a designated beneficiary has a certified graduation on record would receive favorable tax treatment, and the bill authorizes a lifetime rollover cap of $35,000 into traditional or Roth IRAs once an athlete has been out of collegiate sports for at least one year. The legislation also instructs the Treasury Department to craft rules to track contributions and prevent fraud. These changes would apply to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025.
Who is backing it
The proposal has drawn support from both national and campus-level power players, including the NCAA, the SEC and several Florida athletic departments. In a Senate release, sponsors framed HUSTLE as a bipartisan guardrail that matches new savings tools with tougher limits on unscrupulous agents, and the NCAA said it "fully supports providing athletes with more resources" for long-term success, according to Sen. Cantwell's office. Florida college leaders have also weighed in: the Tampa Free Press notes Florida State AD Michael Alford and the University of Florida Athletic Association as endorsing the bill's focus on education and transparency around NIL money.
Practical questions and pushback
Policy experts say the concept sounds appealing but could prove messy in the real world. The Tax Policy Center writes that creating an athlete-specific tax vehicle on top of existing retirement and savings accounts could generate complicated reporting, equity and compliance problems. The analysis notes that preferential treatment, contribution caps and special rollover rules may blunt the benefits or create odd incentives unless regulators get the details exactly right. That puts a lot of weight on Treasury's forthcoming guidance and on trustees' educational duties to determine whether these accounts truly help athletes or simply add another layer of financial red tape.
Legal implications
The HUSTLE Act would also tighten the screws on athlete agents by amending the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act to require state registration, cap endorsement-related fees and outlaw certain deceptive contract practices, according to Congress.gov. Those changes could shift more enforcement power to state regulators and athletic associations, while trustees and universities pick up new compliance duties. Observers say combining a tax shelter for NIL income with stricter agent rules raises fresh questions about how these provisions will be enforced, what kinds of disputes might land in court and whether Congress should instead be tackling broader structural issues in the college-sports system.
What happens next
Senate sponsors introduced S.3378 in December and have tucked it into a wider congressional push on college-sports reform. A matching House filing from Reps. Steube and Boyle signals an effort to move the idea in both chambers, according to Sen. Cantwell's office. If either chamber advances the bill, the next steps would include Treasury rulemaking and committee markups, and legal analysts say the fine print in those regulations will decide whether the NIL accounts become real protections for a broad range of athletes or a niche tax play for a relative few. In Florida, simply filing the measure has already folded a federal savings option into a fast-moving local conversation about where college sports are headed next.
