Randy Levine says UCLA alone has lost more than $100 million in the past year running its athletic department, and he calls the wider situation "completely out of control."
The rule for professional athletes' agents is a hard cap: 5% of the contract. Levine's complaint about college sports is that no such rule exists there at all — agents working name, image and likeness deals, he says, are charging student athletes four or five times that.
"There has to be a set of rules where kids come first, can't have a situation where agents who are in the pros can only charge 5%, charge these kids 20, 25%."
Levine was New York City's labor commissioner under Mayor Giuliani, then Major League Baseball's chief labor negotiator, and has run the Yankees as team president since before the September 11 attacks.
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Here are the 5 arguments that matter.
👤 Guest: Randy Levine, President of the New York Yankees, Chairman of the YES Network and a member of AC Milan's board of directors
🎙️ Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec, Bloomberg journalists interviewing at the Power Players Summit in New York
📰 Published: 10 September 2026 on YouTube (Bloomberg Podcasts)
🔴 YouTube | 🟣 Apple Podcasts | ⏱️ 11 min
Key Takeaways
A salary-cap fight could produce baseball's first work stoppage in decades
Levine will not say whether the Yankees are preparing for a lockout, only that "labor peace" is what both sides say they want
Competitive balance is the issue he calls the core one, and it has been unresolved since he negotiated labor deals in the 1990s
UCLA has lost more than $100 million on athletics in the past year, and Levine says Maryland, Rutgers and North Carolina State are following the same path
Pro agents are capped by rule at 5% of a contract. College athletes' NIL agents are charging 20 to 25%, with no rule stopping it
The Protect College Sports Act he is pushing for would cap NIL agent fees at 5% too
A transfer portal with no real rules is leaving 40% of the athletes who enter it without a scholarship or a team
1. A Possible MLB Lockout
Levine, on-site at Bloomberg's Power Players Summit, was asked directly whether a lockout is coming when the current collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of the season.
"I sure hope not." He said MLB and the players' union are negotiating now, and that the commissioner has repeatedly said he wants a deal after what Levine called a long stretch of labor peace
He declined to describe where the two sides differ, citing the need for confidentiality in the room, and named the Yankees' own role in the talks: owner Hal Steinbrenner sits on MLB's labor committee, and deputy commissioner Dan Halem is leading the negotiations
Asked to name the most serious issue, Levine named competitive balance — a problem, he said, that has existed since he was baseball's chief labor negotiator in the mid-1990s, without offering specifics beyond that
Pressed twice on whether the Yankees are preparing for a possible lockout, he declined to comment both times
On disparity between well- and poorly-funded teams, he pointed to an existing system already meant to address it: a luxury tax that transfers money between teams, a "robust" revenue-sharing program, and an equally distributed central fund — while acknowledging disparity issues persist anyway
2. Yankees' World Series Odds
Asked to handicap the Yankees' championship chances with Aaron Judge returning from injury, Levine framed the outcome as more about health than talent.
"I like our team." He said the team that gets hot for three or four weeks entering the playoffs tends to win, and that he trusts the pitching to "match up with anyone"
He said the return of the player he referred to as "Big 99" should let the rest of the lineup relax
The real risk, in his telling, is injuries rather than opponents. "We have to stay injury-free. And that's the big issue for a lot of teams"
Asked whether injuries are more of a problem now than in the past, Levine said no — he argued that older eras simply lacked the technology to diagnose injuries players were quietly playing through
3. What 9/11 Still Means to Him
With the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks the next day, Levine was asked how he thinks about it now.
He said he thinks about it constantly, not only on the anniversary, and named friends who did not survive
He was New York City's deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani and had already left for the Yankees presidency before the attacks. He described calling the mayor to offer the team's help, with owner George Steinbrenner sitting beside him
He recalled Yankees players and staff — Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Paul O'Neill and manager Joe Torre among them — visiting the armory where people searched for missing loved ones, and hospitals treating first responders and survivors, while crews arrived at the Javits Center from around the world to help
The Yankees lost the 2001 World Series in the ninth inning of Game 7, and Levine still calls the run that season a source of pride. "I think it was a great distraction. It kept New York, the world, the United States... a little bit of distraction and pleasure in a very tough time"
4. College Sports Nears Chaos
Asked to make the case for the national framework he has been pushing the Trump administration to support, Levine described a system he says is failing in real time.
"If this isn't fixed now and this bill isn't passed, there's not going to be a college sports." He cited UCLA's more than $100 million in athletics losses over the past year, along with Maryland, Rutgers and North Carolina State
Schools are covering the gap by draining endowments and raising student fees, which he said cannot continue
Everyone agrees athletes should be paid for name, image and likeness — the problem, in his account, is that there are no uniform rules. Judges in different states and towns are setting conflicting ones, which he calls chaos
The wall between professional and college sports is coming down, and not in a good way, in his view. Players are staying in college seven or eight years because the money is better than the pros, or signing a pro contract, getting cut, and returning to college
A transfer portal with essentially no rules is producing one-year free agency, and he said only 40% of athletes who enter the portal come out with a scholarship or a roster spot — the other 60% lose their place with nothing to show for it
5. One Transfer, 5 Years
Levine laid out what the Protect College Sports Act — a bipartisan bill backed, he said, by 360 universities, every conference and the NCAA — would actually do.
It sets uniform national rules: one transfer allowed, five years of eligibility. He argued it closes loopholes used by "collectives" and affiliated companies to funnel money around existing limits
The bill would cap NIL agent fees at 5%, matching the cap already imposed on agents in professional sports — versus the 20-25% he says are being charged today
It sets a compensation cap more than double the one in the House settlement, which Levine argues will actually work because it rewards staying put: an athlete can make more money by not transferring
He cited the University of Michigan winning the NCAA basketball championship with five transfers, and said one of the sport's respected coaches, Dusty May, left for the NBA specifically because he would rather deal with professional free agents than the current college transfer system
He was direct about NIL itself: "Yes, they're entitled to it. They should get it." His objection is the absence of enforcement, which he says lets cheating go unpunished and leaves signed NIL contracts unpaid — "you're at a university, you're a student athlete, not a professional"
He expects a Senate vote any time from 15 September, and said, "I'm optimistic. Not overconfident, but I'm optimistic we'll get it through"
Bonus Insights
Levine opened the interview with a light beat before the CBA fight. Asked if he likes sports, he answered, "I do. I do. I've been doing it a long time"
He is not only the Yankees' president: he chairs the YES Network and sits on the board of AC Milan, giving him a stake across baseball, regional sports broadcasting and European soccer
Levine's throughline across both labor topics — baseball and college sports — is the same: he thinks a system without agreed rules produces chaos, and a system with them, even ones that cost owners and schools money, produces stability.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
New York Yankees (Levine has been team president since before 2001, and calls this year's roster a real championship contender if it stays healthy)
YES Network (The Yankees' regional broadcaster, which Levine chairs)
AC Milan (The Italian soccer club where Levine sits on the board of directors)
Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association (The two sides negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement before the current one expires at season's end)
Protect College Sports Act (Senate bill Levine is pushing for: uniform NIL rules, a 5% cap on agent fees, one free transfer, five years of eligibility)
NCAA (One of the organizations Levine says supports the bill, alongside 360 universities and every conference)
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