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Dan Murphy
Multiple Authors
A group of U.S. senators introduced new and wide-sweeping legislation Wednesday that aims to address many current issues in college sports, including an effort to restore some rule-making power to the NCAA and open the possibility for conferences to sell their lucrative television rights as one large group.
The Protect College Sports Act, written after months of negotiation between Republican Ted Cruz and Democrat Maria Cantwell, would provide the NCAA with an antitrust exemption to enforce several rules that have been challenged in court in recent years. Those rules would include:
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Limiting athletes to transferring schools only one time without penalty
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Limiting athlete eligibility to a maximum of five years
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Prohibiting former professional athletes from playing in college
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Prohibiting schools from poaching a coach from another school during their sport’s season
The bill, which is also sponsored by Sens. Eric Schmitt (R) and Chris Coons (D), would give the NCAA and the College Sports Commission legal cover to enforce a spending cap for how much each school can pay its athletes.
The NCAA and its schools have been lobbying Congress for a new federal law since a Supreme Court ruling in 2021 made clear that the multibillion-dollar industry is not exempt from antitrust laws, which prevent competitors from colluding to keep down costs. Since that time, the association has struggled to enforce any rules to regulate the skyrocketing new market for paying players.
“Timing is key in every political issue. We will find out whether this is the right time,” Cantwell told ESPN. “I think my colleagues are hungry for bipartisan legislation. I think America is hungry for bipartisan legislation.”
Congress has proposed several bills and hosted more than a dozen public hearings to discuss college sports in the past several years while making little headway in creating change. While the route to a new law remains an uphill battle, the Cruz and Cantwell effort might have the best chance of passing of any effort to date. They are the highest-ranking members of their respective parties on the Senate Commerce Committee, a crucial group in pushing a bill through the Senate.
The NCAA and its major conferences agreed last year to abide by a spending cap (slightly more than $20 million per school each year) as part of the terms of a sweeping legal settlement. However, many of the nation’s richest teams are attempting to circumvent the cap by using business partners to supplement their payrolls with name, image and likeness contracts, driving the cost of a top-tier roster in football closer to $40 million, according to multiple industry sources. The new bill would provide legal protection for the newly formed College Sports Commission to more effectively close the loopholes that schools have used to pay players above the cap, which has the potential to significantly reduce the amount of money current flowing to athletes.
“If the parties want to come back to the table and say let’s raise the cap to 50% of revenue, the bill allows them to do that,” Cantwell told ESPN. “We’re not curtailing the opportunity for more revenue sharing. … It’s important not to let this be a runaway arms race.”
“This is a stability bill, not just an NIL bill,” Cruz told The Associated Press.
Many athletic directors and coaches say the growing payrolls in football and basketball make it nearly impossible for schools outside the NCAA’s two richest leagues — the Big Ten and SEC — to compete. The Big Ten and SEC each reported more than $1 billion in revenue during the 2025 fiscal year, several hundred million dollars more than their peers in the ACC and Big 12. Most of that gap is due to the money the leagues generate through the broadcast deals.
The Protect College Sports Act tries to resolve some of that disparity by giving the conferences an option to negotiate future TV deals as one large group and share the money more evenly as long as 75% of FBS schools agree to join together. The Big Ten and SEC would not be required to join that group. Cantwell introduced this plan in a previous bill by arguing that one large TV deal would benefit all schools, but it’s not clear if leaders in the Big Ten and SEC would be interested in giving up any of the sizable financial advantage they’ve built.
If the gap between conferences continues to grow, many leaders in college sports worry that the richest schools might eventually split into their own entity. This week at their annual offseason meetings, SEC leaders such as Georgia president Jere Morehead have suggested it’s time for the conference to consider making its own rules. The new bill would prohibit the SEC and Big Ten from further expanding their list of schools through conference realignment.
Cantwell said the bill also includes several provisions designed to prevent schools from eliminating roster spots and scholarship opportunities for women and Olympic sport athletes.
“We are trying to rein in the chaos and give more predictably while doing everything we can to still protect the entire ecosystem for women and Olympic athletes,” she said.
The bill notably does not address whether college athletes should be considered employees of their school. The NCAA has asked Congress to prohibit athletes from being employees, a classification that would make it possible for the athletes to form a union and bargain for additional rights. Cruz previously told ESPN that banning employee status was “absolutely critical” to building a sustainable future for college sports.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
