Senate Approves Sweeping College Sports Bill
On Monday, senators approved the Protect College Sports Act in a 77-22 bipartisan vote, aiming to bring order to a sport that supporters describe as chaotic due to soaring payments to athletes and transfers that are barely regulated. Under the measure, the NCAA would gain fresh oversight of name, image and likeness deals and transfer policies, plus limited exemptions from antitrust law to apply them. Years of Senate talks produced the bill, which gained momentum once a 2025 court settlement cleared the way for colleges to compensate players directly.[S1]
Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas who crafted the measure alongside Democratic senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, argued that college sports cannot repair itself and that Congress alone holds the power to do so through federal statute. Following the late-night vote, Donald Trump endorsed the bill on social media, describing it as a major development that would rescue college sports and the institutions themselves. More than 70 senators from both parties back the plan, saying it seeks to reduce endless lawsuits and uncertainty for athletes, schools and fans while granting hundreds of thousands of athletes new health and labor safeguards.[S1]
Key Provisions and Financial Impact
The measure would write the 2025 court settlement into law, capping the revenue schools may share with players at $21.5m. For certain schools, the bill would allow more than twice that figure, with as much as an extra $27.5m payable through a retention fund. That provision helped secure backing from the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference, the nation's two largest leagues. To help schools generate additional money, the legislation would let schools and conferences combine their television media rights.[S1]
The bill also seeks to bring stability to the NCAA transfer portal by limiting players to a single free transfer across five years without a mandatory year off, subject to some exceptions, and by capping total eligibility at five years. The eligibility limit responds to criticism of schools that keep testing limits, such as LSU's since-abandoned plan to add players who had attended NFL training camps. The bill would further bar coaches from departing during a season, require schools changing conferences to compete as independents for three years, and stop conferences from exceeding 20 programs, a step against so-called superleagues.[S1]
Opposition and Uncertain Path Forward
Opponents contend the bill falls short on shielding athletes and on reining in the vast money going to coaches, colleges and conferences. Democratic senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who has partnered with labor and civil rights organizations to build resistance, described the legislation as essentially locking in an exploitative system and failing to address the deeper issues. He pointed out that while the students' share of revenue is capped, nothing limits coaches' pay or the size of donations to athletic departments.[S1]
The NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus and the AFL-CIO are among the groups opposing the bill, partly because it does not settle whether athletes should be treated as employees able to bargain collectively. All four Black Democrats in the Senate – Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks – came out against it. Booker, who was a scholarship football player at Stanford in the late 1980s, highlighted how much Black athletes contribute to college sports. He said the balance of power only began shifting once athletes started winning in court, and now the NCAA is asking the Senate for broad authority to sidestep antitrust law, adding that it is clear whose interests the bill serves.[S1]
What happens next to the bill remains uncertain. It may struggle in the House, which repeatedly failed over the past year to bring a separate version to the floor and will not return until after the November elections. Should the measure not clear both chambers before the year ends, lawmakers would need to begin the process anew in the next Congress.[S1]
