College Sports Legislation
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) stood together on the Capitol lawn to make the case for the Protect College Sports Act, a bill both senators say is the product of roughly three years of negotiation and is now closer than ever to becoming law.
- “We are, I believe, on the cusp of passing historic legislation, bipartisan legislation to protect, to save and preserve college sports,” Cruz told the crowd of coaches, athletes and reporters gathered behind him.
UWF’s Liam “Lumpy” DeWeese was among the college athletes and coaches from across the country who turned out for the event, part of a coalition organizers say now includes more than a hundred coaches and 24 college conferences that have endorsed the bill.
Cruz described the current transfer and eligibility system as “the Wild West,” a mess he traced back to years of antitrust litigation that has stripped away the rules governing college athletics.
“It threatens the roster slots 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.”
— Sen. Ted Cruz
A Rare Show of Bipartisanship
Bold lead-in: The senators leaned hard into the bill’s bipartisan credentials. Cruz said the bill cleared the Commerce Committee on a 19 to 9 vote, with four Republican and four Democratic sponsors, and has been endorsed by the NBA, the NFL, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, the NBA and NFL players’ associations and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
- “Our objective from day one was not to eke by with just 60 votes to barely get it out of the Senate,” Cruz said. “Our objective is to get a big bipartisan vote on the floor of the Senate.”
500,000+ collegiate athletes nationwide
24 conferences have endorsed the bill
19–9 committee vote to advance it
415 non-revenue teams cut in recent years, per Sen. John Hickenlooper
300% rise in recruitment costs cited by Sen. Maria Cantwell
Cantwell said the bill would mark the first federal statute recognizing college athletes’ right to earn NIL and revenue-sharing income, paired with a federal preemption clause meant to stop what she called “duplicitous practices” by agents looking to profit off athletes’ short-term decisions.
Coaches and Athletes Made the Personal Case
Five student-athletes, representing programs from Farleigh Dickinson to Clemson, described watching teammates lose roster spots and, in several cases, watching entire programs get cut. Sophia Stylianos, a rower at the University of Michigan, said 85 percent of student-athletes compete in non-revenue and Olympic sports. Sydney Wilson, a tennis player at St. Mary’s College, said more than a dozen Division I tennis and swim programs were cut this past year alone due to funding shifts.
- A lineup of coaches, including Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari, Gonzaga’s Mark Few and Houston’s Kelvin Sampson, backed the bill from the podium. Calipari credited the current chaos to programs recruiting older transfer and international players over 17- and 18-year-olds still in high school. He said, “None of it fair.”
What’s Next
Cruz said the Senate is expected to vote on the bill within the next 10 days, once a separate cryptocurrency bill, the Clarity Act, clears the floor. If that bill is filibustered, the Protect College Sports Act could come up for a vote as soon as the next day. Cruz said he has spoken with House leadership and expects the bill to pass there as well, with President Trump expected to sign it.
- Asked whether the bill would override state laws barring transgender athletes from women’s sports, Cruz said lawmakers deliberately revised the bill’s language to leave that issue to the states. “This bill does absolutely nothing to undermine the laws states have passed protecting women’s sports.”