Senate advances bill to restore order in college sports

The Senate voted 74-24 on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026, to invoke cloture and advance the Protect College Sports Act. The tally cleared the 60-vote threshold and put the bipartisan measure on the path to a further procedural vote and a final Senate passage vote in the coming days.

The bill still must clear the House if it leaves the Senate. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the chamber. The current Senate session is expected to continue through Oct. 2, leaving a narrow window before the midterm elections.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., introduced the legislation in late May, with original co-sponsors Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. On Monday, Sept. 14, Cruz and Cantwell stood with athletes and coaches at a Washington press conference to press for passage. Cruz put the moment in football terms: “We’re on the 1-yard line. I think we have four downs in front of us to move into the end zone.” He said President Donald Trump is eager to sign it.

Cruz has described the status quo as “the chaos we have in college sports.” He warned that the current mix of court rulings and state rules “threatens the viability of many college athletic programs, it threatens the roster spots and scholarship positions of hundreds of thousands of student athletes. It threatens women’s sports. It threatens Olympic sports. If Congress does not act, all of that is in jeopardy of going away.” Cantwell called the measure “the last chance to save college sports.”

The bill would set a five-year eligibility framework for athletes and generally limit them to one transfer, with exceptions. It would create a federal name, image and likeness standard that preempts the patchwork of state laws, regulate agents and recruiting, and bar professional athletes from competing in college sports. It is neutral on whether athletes are classified as employees. Schools now operate under a revenue-sharing cap of $21.3 million per school; the bill would nearly double that figure to about $49 million per school, with the stated aim of shifting more money under a clear institutional limit rather than leaving spending to unregulated third-party deals.

The legislation also gives the NCAA and conferences a limited antitrust exemption, including authority to pool and sell some media rights, and shields schools from many future legal challenges over the new rules. Professional leagues such as the NFL and NBA already operate with antitrust exemptions, though their athletes bargain collectively over the terms. Supporters argue a single national standard restores the ability of schools to enforce common rules after years of litigation that dismantled long-standing eligibility, transfer and compensation limits.

For ordinary athletes outside the highest-paid football and basketball rosters, the stakes are concrete. Cruz’s case is that without federal guardrails, rising costs and endless lawsuits will shrink programs, cut roster spots and scholarships, and hit women’s sports and Olympic sports first. A national NIL rule replaces different state regimes with one set of terms. A higher but defined revenue-sharing cap gives schools a budget they can plan around instead of open-ended bidding wars. Eligibility and transfer limits are meant to keep teams intact long enough for athletes to finish degrees and for non-revenue sports to survive.

Gonzaga men’s basketball coach Mark Few backed the bill at the Monday event. “This bill might not be perfect, but it’s far, far away the best thing we got out there right now,” Few said. Arkansas coach John Calipari also appeared in support. The Big Ten and SEC initially opposed the measure but endorsed it after changes in late July. The NCAA has pressed Congress for years for a federal statute after state court decisions and temporary injunctions rewrote rules that had stood for decades. Tulane sports law professor Gabe Feldman wrote on X: “This is the closest we have ever come to passing comprehensive federal legislation for college sports.”

Cruz made the same case Saturday on ESPN’s “College GameDay,” speaking for nearly ten minutes while the University of Texas crowd booed behind him. Fox News framed the Senate action as a move “to rein in college sports ‘Wild West’ with sweeping new rules for players, schools.”

Critics state a different view. On Monday, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., joined athletes, unions and advocates on a virtual press conference hosted by the AFL-CIO. NAACP president Derrick Johnson also appeared. Murphy said: “This bill protects the billions of dollars that coaches and sports industry executives are making over the suppression of compensation for some of the most highly valued athletes in the world. What we’re being asked to do is to basically allow colleges and conferences and the NCAA to illegally collude.” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said ahead of the vote: “Look at their history, it is not about player protection. This is a money play, plain and simple.” The Congressional Black Caucus, led by Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., has declared its opposition. Labor groups have argued the bill does not go far enough on athlete bargaining rights. Some Republicans have said the bill should include additional language on transgender participation in women’s sports.

The record answers the core economic claim with the bill’s own numbers. The measure does not freeze athlete pay at the old scholarship-only model. It nearly doubles the per-school revenue-sharing cap to about $49 million and builds a national NIL framework rather than eliminating athlete compensation. It requires certain medical and post-eligibility scholarship benefits. It leaves employee classification undecided instead of locking athletes into or out of that status by statute. The limited antitrust shield is the mechanism supporters say is required if schools and conferences are to set and enforce any common rules at all after repeated court losses; without it, every eligibility, transfer and recruiting standard remains open to the next lawsuit.

Schmitt put the timing plainly just ahead of the vote: “We’re going to get one shot at this, and I don’t know if we ever will again soon. We’ve got a moment.” The bill, he said, could “define the trajectory of college athletics.”

The 74-24 cloture vote does not enact the law. Another procedural vote must still occur, then a final Senate passage vote, then House action. The chamber’s calendar runs only through early October. Whether the Protect College Sports Act reaches the president’s desk before that window closes is the next decision now before the Senate.