DESTIN, Fla. — At SEC Spring meetings this week, coaches and administrators have exuded a palpable air of frustration. Coaches and athletic directors across the board lamented the slow and uneven enforcement of rules, the system of unrestricted free agency, and the lack of clarity over simple rules like eligibility.
Enter Congress, which, against all odds, may have provided its most viable solution yet.
On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash), the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, will be introducing a broad college sports bill called the “Protect College Sports Act,” a Senate Commerce Committee aide said Wednesday. The bill will address multiple issues including providing antitrust protections, nationwide NIL standards, a revenue-sharing cap, a five-year eligibility rule, agent regulations, and paves the way for the concept of pooling television rights. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.), who released a bipartisan bill with Cantwell specifically addressing the question of pooling media rights revenue, was a co-sponsor.
“The Act does not go back to the old model,” the aide said. But it provides a “national rulebook that restores order to the system.”
The bill is years in the making, as Cruz, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, has been leading bipartisan negotiations on sweeping college sports legislation since at least 2023. Discussions have progressed significantly over the past several weeks, with Cantwell leading the charge for Democrats.
The bill comes just one week after the House of Representatives canceled yet another floor vote on the SCORE Act, which was supported by the NCAA and power conferences. But this bill arguably has a much better chance of passing given its bipartisan nature in the Senate. There is a time limit, though: the bill will need to be fast-tracked to make it through both houses of Congress before the Senate’s August recess, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said Tuesday.
Now, the biggest question is: Can Congress—and this bill in particular—fix the ailments facing college sports?
More than a dozen college sports bills have been introduced over the past several years on a variety of issues—none of which have reached one floor of Congress for a vote, let alone the president’s desk for a signature. Could this be different?
The bill has a better chance of passing than the SCORE Act given its bipartisan nature (The SCORE Act technically had Democrat co-sponsors at the start, they weren’t representative of the main Democratic voting block. They recently took their names off the bill.)
One big question, however: Whether college sports administrators would support it, as the NCAA, Big Ten, and SEC refused to endorse the bill last week, saying that they hadn’t seen it.
If this bill—or one of the others—doesn’t pass, schools will have to formally consider other options.
Sankey said in March at the White House that conferences would likely take rule-making into their own hands—comments he echoed Tuesday. Last week, Georgia president Jere Morehead said he was prepared to vote on conference-specific governance rules. On Tuesday, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart backed Morehead, saying, “I’m not afraid to break away.”
But not everyone is on board with that idea. Tennessee AD Danny White said conference-specific rules could create competitive disadvantages between schools in different leagues. White has been talking about collective bargaining as a way to create rules that would be legally enforceable, especially around player movement, eligibility, and compensation.
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