American Football Coaches Association Taps Federal Lobbyists

The American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) has hired two different federal lobbying organizations to work with the group in 2025, according to federal lobbying disclosures reviewed by Front Office Sports. 

The AFCA, which has 11,000 members, including both high school and college coaches, has enlisted the support of the lobbying firms Chet Culver Group and Capitol Counsel. Lobbying disclosures were submitted Jan. 17, and no other disclosures are listed for the AFCA, suggesting this is the first time the group has hired lobbyists in at least two decades. (The news that the AFCA hired Capitol Counsel was first reported by Politico Influence.) 

Federal lobbying disclosures typically don’t go into specifics about the issues organizations are advocating for—but the forms noted that lobbyists would be working in Congress on the AFCA’s behalf for “improving the NIL [name, image, and likeness] program.” The disclosures did not say how much the group was paying these two organizations. 

Former Iowa governor Chet Culver’s namesake firm bills itself as a “renewable energy and infrastructure consultancy” and is based in Des Moines. Culver himself played football at Virginia Tech, and coached high school football and basketball before being elected governor in 2007. The two lobbying firms are working together, as Culver’s lobbying registration says his client is “Capitol Counsel, LLC on behalf of the AFCA.” Capitol Counsel has more than a dozen lobbyists on its payroll, and it works on a variety of issues, including appropriations, health care, and energy. It counts heavy hitters in the sports arena, including Nike and NFL, as its clients.

The decision to invest in lobbying comes amid a major push for Congress to pass a law to regulate college athlete compensation rules. 

Since 2019, the NCAA and Power 5 conferences have been engaged in a multimillion-dollar campaign to preserve amateurism, including regulating the NIL landscape and ensuring that athletes are not classified as employees. The NCAA is currently asking lawmakers to codify a settlement proposal that would allow college athletes to share revenue with their athletic departments. 

While the NCAA and power conferences were the only major college sports groups lobbying on these issues for several years, the space has become much more crowded as of late. Last fall, a group of Olympic sports coaches’ organizations hired FCS Global to help them preserve the future of Olympic college sports. The Collective Association, which represents the interests of NIL collectives, also works with a lobbying firm. 

FOS has reached out to the AFCA, as well as representatives from the two lobbying firms, for further comment.