Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) announced plans Wednesday for a bipartisan college sports bill, the latest development in a multi-year effort by college sports leaders to have Congress pass legislation attempting to stabilize the industry and curb the flood of legal challenges against the NCAA and power conferences.
The bill would allow the NCAA to limit transfers and eligibility, enforce a spending cap, give conferences the ability to pool their television rights and prevent coaches from leaving their teams before the end of the season. It also includes language to prevent a possible breakaway “super league” by the Big Ten and SEC.
Cruz and Cantwell, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, respectively, worked for months toward a comprehensive bill that could potentially garner enough bipartisan support to reach 60 votes in the Senate. The unveiling of a Senate bill, named the Protect College Sports Act, comes the week after a potential vote on the SCORE Act, a separate college sports bill that originated in the U.S. House of Representatives, was canceled again due to political standoffs and disagreement over the amount of power ceded to the NCAA and top conferences.
As the power conferences debate College Football Playoff expansion and roster budgets — and the Big Ten and SEC saber-rattle about self-governance — some stakeholders believe a Cruz-Cantwell bill out of the Senate is the most viable path to a college sports bill being ratified into law, at a time when the industry seems in desperate need of reform.
The bill includes a narrow antitrust exemption regarding athlete transfer and eligibility limits, which would shield the NCAA and conferences from legal challenges on rules established to regulate those areas. It permits athletes only one immediate transfer as undergraduates (maintaining freedom of movement for graduate students) and requires them to sit out a season of eligibility for multiple transfers, and it establishes a five-year eligibility window that prohibits professional athletes from competing at the college level. The NCAA was already expected to vote on an age-based eligibility model next month that would allow college players to compete for up to five seasons, starting the academic year after they turn 19 or graduate high school.
The bill also intends to impose an enforceable compensation cap regarding direct payments from schools to athletes, codifying aspects of the House v. NCAA settlement that was passed last summer. The College Sports Commission has struggled to implement restrictions to that effect over the past year, with programs actively circumventing the roughly $20 million revenue sharing cap, often via dubious third-party, over-the-cap name, image and likeness deals. Outside NIL agreements would still be allowed under the Cruz-Cantwell bill, but the legislation would provide more enforcement latitude to require legitimate NIL deals and close the pay-for-play loopholes used by multimedia rights partners and other associated entities.
The parties involved in the House settlement are also permitted to raise the cap.
The Protect College Sports Act steers clear of applying definitive non-employee status to college athletes, which was one of the most politically contentious aspects of the SCORE Act. This leaves open the possibility for college athletes to pursue collective bargaining at some point in the future.
The bill also offers the option for conferences to pool media rights in the future and sell them collectively as opposed to the current conference-by-conference approach, another antitrust exemption that’s similar to how professional sports leagues operate under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. Pooling media rights is a point of contention in the industry, but one that some view as a path to increased revenue that could lessen the financial burden of ballooning roster budgets and help fund Olympic and other non-revenue sports. At least 75 percent of FBS schools would have to agree to enact a pooling of rights.
The bill further prevents any conference declaring more than $1 billion in revenue on its 2025 tax returns from merging or consolidating with another conference — in other words, forming a “super league.” The Big Ten and SEC are the only two conferences that currently meet that revenue threshold.
Language within the bill prevents coaches from leaving to take a job with a different program during the season, which would be similar to NFL rules and noteworthy in light of Lane Kiffin leaving Ole Miss for LSU in advance of the Rebels’ College Football Playoff run last year.
The bill would also regulate athlete agents, including empowering the NCAA to sanction agents and cap endorsement fees at five percent, and allow for rules to limit tampering with players who are already committed and/or enrolled with a university.
Under the bill, schools are required to maintain the current level of scholarships for non-revenue sports and cannot revoke scholarships based on athletic performance, injury or roster management. Division I programs must provide a certain level of medical care, including post-eligibility injury coverage.
The Senate Commerce Committee is expected to announce a hearing in the near future, and committee members will effort to put the bill through the “mark-up” phase as soon as possible.
The Protect College Sports Act has the support of President Donald Trump and the White House. Members of the presidential committee on college sports, which was formed in the wake of the Saving College Sports presidential roundtable in March, recently released a letter expressing support for the bipartisan effort.
“It is time for all interested parties to set aside past differences and coalesce around this legislation in order to get it to the President’s desk without delay,” read the letter, which includes the names of many committee members. Three names notably missing were NCAA president Charlie Baker, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti.
“The Commissioners of the Big Ten and SEC have expressed their views directly to [Cruz and Cantwell],” the letter reads.
In April, Trump signed a second executive order aimed at fixing college sports. The order focused on many of the same topics as the Cruz-Cantwell bill, though it had little power to require implementation or withstand legal challenges, and sources who contributed to the order told The Athletic that its goal was to spur legislative action.
The Athletic also obtained a copy of a letter signed by commissioners from 26 of the 32 Division I conferences and sent to Sens. Cruz and Cantwell last week, expressing “enthusiastic support” for a bill they hope will “provide relief to and reform college athletics.” Signatures from Sankey and Petitti were absent from that letter as well.
Both commissioners declined to support the Cruz-Cantwell bill before reviewing the legislation, according to sources familiar with the decisions. The SEC and Big Ten have been against the concept of conferences pooling media rights and have pushed back on the idea that doing so would substantially increase revenue for all major college football leagues.
Others feel differently, including Cody Campbell, the Texas Tech board chair and megabooster who is also a senior member of the presidential committee on college sports and an advisor to the Trump administration. Campbell has championed pooled media rights as part of his Saving College Sports initiative. Cantwell has been an advocate as well. In March, following the presidential roundtable, she and Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) released a bipartisan discussion draft on the potential that pooled media rights could offer athletic departments that face a mounting financial crisis.
The pooling of media rights was not addressed in the SCORE Act, a bill that proved too stringent in other areas to garner necessary support. It faced continued opposition in the House of Representatives, in part over the non-employment designation for athletes and a belief among some that it ceded too much power to the NCAA and power conferences, especially the Big Ten and SEC, and didn’t do enough to protect non-revenue sports.
The bill’s ability to garner support from the Big Ten and SEC will be a key storyline moving forward, considering the two conferences hold outsized influence on college sports, competitively and financially. Thus far, the leagues have shown little motivation to overhaul certain aspects of a system that is tilted in their favor, particularly when it comes to governance and revenues.
It’s likely negotiations and compromises will have to be made, politically and among college sports leadership. Almost all legislation undergoes notable adjustments after being introduced.
The Protect College Sports Act may already have more political weight behind it, but overcoming that same Congressional gridlock remains a massive challenge. There’s still a long road to the bill being passed into law, and time is of the essence. Most industry sources and stakeholders agree that there needs to be considerable progress before the Congressional recess in August. With midterm elections this fall and the balance of power on Capitol Hill up for grabs, the next few months are a critical window for college sports to secure the Congressional lifeline it has long sought.
