New bill being introduced today would overhaul college athletics.

The bill would shift the college sports landscape by:

►Providing broad and lengthy health-care coverage from a new medical trust fund that would be financed through annual payments from schools based on their athletics department revenue.

►Requiring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to set a wide range of health and safety guidelines for college athletics programs. Athletic trainers and team medical personnel would need to be “employed by the health office” of the school and “operate independently from the athletic department.”

►Mandating that anyone who receives an athletic scholarship for an academic year be provided with a scholarship at that school until they receive an undergraduate degree from the school.

►Requiring any academic advisor or tutoring services provided to athletes to be “independent from the athletic department.”

►Creating provisions designed to improve athletes’ academic choices and campus lives, including one provision that says a school “may not influence, or retaliate against a college athlete based on … selection of any course of academic major” and another that says a school cannot impose restrictions on athletes’ speech that are more stringent than those imposed on students who not athletes.

►Mandating that schools have financial literacy and life skills programs that would be eligible for academic credit “consistent with the credit allocation guidelines” of a school.

►Preventing a school from dropping a team “unless all other options for reducing the expenses of the athletic program, including reducing coach salaries and administrative and facility expenses, are not feasible."

►Allowing athletes to go through a pro draft but return to school as long they notify the school not later than seven days after the draft is completed and they didn’t get paid by a pro team.

Standing behind all of this, the bill would provide for the formation of a Commission on College Athletics that would have broad enforcement and oversight responsibilities.