005 Loeb & Loeb’s Brian Socolow on private equity and the college sports bill

This spring the Big 12 Conference offered each of its schools up to $30m of credit from private investors, at a double-digit interest rate. The lenders would get no say in how the league is run. Within a week, more than half the schools were turning it down. In September the Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act. It would write a ceiling on what schools pay athletes into federal law. If the House doesn’t finish it by the third of January, it dies.

Brian Socolow is co-chair of the sports practice at the law firm Loeb & Loeb. He has negotiated athletes’ endorsement deals since 2021, and in 2025 co-wrote an article arguing that private equity would soon be in college sports. He explains why certainty about costs matters more to investors than the bill’s limits on superleagues, and why employee status is the one cost nobody can price yet. He also covers how the University of Utah’s deal with Otro Capital splits the business side from the players, why private equity and public universities make “a very difficult marriage”, and what insurers now cover.