No Elite Athletes Using X-pro status to ensure Prioritizing Recruitment Of Student-athletes (NEAUX PROS) Act

228. Recruitment or facilitation of ineligible professional athlete participation in intercollegiate athletics

(a) Offense. It shall be unlawful for a covered athletics official knowingly to recruit, offer to enroll, sign to a National Letter of Intent or substantially equivalent instrument, certify the eligibility of, or otherwise cause to compete in intercollegiate athletics competition, an individual whom the official knows to be a professional athlete, if—

(1) the recruitment, offer, signing, certification, or other act is in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce; or

(2) the covered institution by which the official is employed, or for which the official acts as an agent, receives, in the 1-year period before the offense, benefits in excess of $10,000 under a Federal program involving a grant, contract, subsidy, loan, guarantee, insurance, or other form of Federal assistance.

(b) Penalty. A person who violates subsection (a) shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

(c) Enhanced penalty. A person who violates subsection (a) shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both, if the violation was undertaken for financial gain or was part of a pattern of 2 or more violations of subsection (a).

(d) Affirmative defense. It is an affirmative defense to a prosecution under this section that the defendant reasonably relied on a written determination issued under section 4(b)(2) of the Collegiate Amateur Athletics Protection Act of 2026 that the individual was not a professional athlete, and that the determination had not been withdrawn or superseded at the time of the conduct at issue.

(e) No institutional liability. This section does not impose criminal liability on a covered institution as an organization. Liability under this section attaches only to an individual covered athletics official who violates subsection (a).

(f) Venue. A prosecution under this section may be brought in any judicial district in which the covered institution involved is located or in which any act in furtherance of the offense occurred.

(g) Definitions. In this section, the terms covered athletics official, covered institution, professional athlete, and intercollegiate athletics competition have the meanings given those terms in section 3 of the Collegiate Amateur Athletics Protection Act of 2026.

228. Recruitment or facilitation of ineligible professional athlete participation in intercollegiate athletics.