After months of withholding support and weeks of back and forth with lawmakers, the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference on Friday publicly backed a bipartisan Senate bill designed to stabilize college athlete compensation and provide antitrust protections to the NCAA and its most powerful conferences.
The final major sticking point for the conferences with the Protect College Sports Act was language in a provision regarding name, image and likeness deals athletes can strike with companies that work directly with schools. The conferences wanted more well-defined restrictions on deals between athletes and so-called associated entities to cut off the workarounds some schools have been using to blow past the current annual revenue-sharing limit of $20.5 million they can direct to athletes.
Prospects for getting changes made to satisfy the Big Ten and SEC seemed bleak as late as Thursday night, but negotiations resumed Friday, and each league’s presidents separately agreed to accept the revisions Friday night.
“We appreciate the substantial work that has gone into this effort,” the conferences said in a joint statement.
Joint statement from the Big Ten & SEC Presidents and Chancellors on the Protect College Sports Act: pic.twitter.com/zxJmsOz9lN
— Southeastern Conference (@SEC) August 1, 2026
With the Big Ten and SEC now on board, the bill has a chance of getting to the Senate floor next week for a vote. Still, there is no guarantee Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) will be able to squeeze it in before Aug. 7, when the Senate breaks for a five-week recess.
The bill needs 60 votes to pass, and where that count stands in the Senate is unclear. Lawmakers are hoping for robust support that easily passes the threshold, believing that gives the bill a better chance of then passing a House vote in the fall. Reforming college sports has been a priority for President Donald Trump, and the White House has also pushed for Congress to act.
“Now it’s time to get the bill through Congress and on to President Trump’s desk,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a statement posted on X. “Let’s save college sports.”
Revisions to the bill were still being finalized and expected by Monday.
The bipartisan bill was introduced in May by Cruz and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). It addresses a wide range of issues in college sports, including antitrust exemptions that would allow the NCAA and member conferences to make rules about athlete eligibility, transfers and NIL compensation, while shielding them from legal challenges.
The bill would dial back unlimited, unrestricted transfers to previous NCAA standards, which allowed each athlete to be immediately eligible one time after transferring. It would also enshrine the NCAA’s recently passed age-based eligibility rule, which gives athletes a five-year window to compete and eliminates most exceptions.
Good. Now progress can be made in protecting women and Olympic athletes and moving this legislation closer to the President’s desk. https://t.co/RWytYnzVya
— Sen. Maria Cantwell (@SenatorCantwell) August 1, 2026
Many in college sports were quick to get behind the bill in the spring, especially after a similar House bill, the SCORE Act, died earlier in the year.
The Big Ten and SEC took the most cautious approach and demanded an array of revisions. Without the Big Ten and SEC’s support, lawmakers from some states in those conference footprints would refrain from backing the bill.
Lawmakers and the conferences haggled over details for weeks. With the midterm elections looming in November, getting something done when Congress returns to work in September would be difficult — though not impossible.
But everyone involved concedes that getting the Protect College Sports Act through the Senate before the recess would be a boon to its supporters.
“College sports are in complete chaos due to unlimited transfers, a lack of eligibility rules, and an unsustainable arms race that will mean fewer teams, scholarships, and opportunities for athletes. Over the past several months, and throughout this Congress, we’ve worked extensively with athletes, coaches, and conferences to draft legislation that will protect college sports for future generations,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said in a statement.
“… I encourage my Senate colleagues to pass this bill immediately to ensure college sports can thrive for generations to come.”
The SEC and Big Ten had a long list of issues, starting with provisions in the bill that exclusively limited their ability to add members in the future. Changes were made to broaden the scope of protections against conferences or other outside entities trying to form a college football super league in the near future. The bill caps power conference membership at 19 schools and creates a path for schools and conferences to pool media rights in the future. The Big Ten and SEC oppose the pooling of rights, and revisions were made to the bill to emphasize that conferences could not be forced to do so.
While lawmakers, especially Cantwell, talked about containing the Big Ten and SEC through the bill and not letting the superpowers bully the rest of college sports, in the end the two conferences got a lot of what they wanted changed.
“In the David and Goliath fight, Sen. Cantwell fought to make sure athletes were not an afterthought while others were more focused on super leagues,” Cantwell spokeswoman Ansley Lacitis said.
The conferences wanted to tighten protections against legal challenges to transfer, eligibility and athlete compensation rules and allow schools more flexibility around the requirements in the bill for preserving Olympic and women’s sports programs.
The last impasse came down to money. The Big Ten and SEC pushed for the bill to raise the amount of money schools can pay directly to athletes through the revenue-sharing system implemented last year via a landmark antitrust lawsuit settlement.
Lawmakers agreed to include an extra $22.5 million for schools to use for athlete retention and another $5 million specifically for women and nonrevenue sport athletes, raising the revenue-share limit to well over $40 million.
The conferences also wanted lawmakers to harden the revenue-share cap by strengthening protections against workaround NIL deals. Some schools have been using companies that manage their multimedia rights, such as Learfield and Playfly, to provide NIL deals to athletes on top of revenue-sharing payments. That has helped top football programs spend more than $40 million on their rosters this season. The top men’s basketball programs are spending upwards of $15 million.
Conferences want those companies to be defined as associated entities — similar to boosters — and for those deals to count against the raised revenue-share cap.
Over the last week, the conferences and lawmakers quibbled over that provision, and multiple self-imposed deadlines were missed, decreasing the chances of the bill getting to the floor next week, but a compromise was finally reached that provides a glimmer of hope for a vote before the Senate’s summer recess.
