U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz took a giant bipartisan swing final month when he unveiled a compromise bill with Democrats to regulate college sports, a play he believes is the one path to saving the multibillion greenback business from itself.
The Protect College Sports Act, which Cruz wrote with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, after months of negotiation, cleared a key hurdle Thursday when it handed the Senate Commerce Committee by a 19-9 vote. The bill is now eligible for a full vote on the Senate ground.
Cruz, who chairs the Commerce Committee, constructed a sturdy coalition of help behind the proposal, from a number of main NCAA conferences to legendary former University of Alabama Coach Nick Saban to President Donald Trump, who endorsed the bill earlier this month. And his determination to pursue reform in live performance with Cantwell and Democrats, moderately than take the GOP-driven method that has floundered in the House, provides the bill broad momentum because it strikes past the committee.
Passage would symbolize a key victory for Cruz, a large sports fan and potential 2028 presidential candidate, on a difficulty that resonates far past simply those that interact in politics. It additionally would reshape college soccer, a sport regarded with near-religious reverence in Texas.
But opposition from highly effective athletic conferences, plus disagreements with the House GOP and Congressional Black Caucus, may sluggish Cruz’s bold timeline for passage this 12 months.
Cruz equated passing the bill to a soccer crew going for it on fourth down as an alternative of punting.
“The greatest threat to college sports is inaction,” Cruz mentioned in the listening to, clarifying the stakes. “The laws enacted by past Congresses are the reason why the current system is growing more unstable. If Congress doesn’t fix these laws and pass this bill, the cost of our failure will be measured not only in dollars, or wins and losses. The cost of our failure will be measured in lost opportunities.”
Reform has eluded college sports for the reason that seismic 2021 ruling that allowed college athletes to revenue off of their identify, picture and likeness, and the huge 2024 settlement that emerged from a category motion lawsuit that compelled the NCAA and athletic conferences to share income with athletes. The NIL era has introduced tens of millions to athletes who have been beforehand barred from taking advantage of the sports they performed and reworked the economics of college sports, producing report excessive income.
But the brand new era of college athletics has additionally basically reshaped the system and created stark divides between prime conferences and the smaller ones, and the revenue-generating sports and people who don’t — sometimes girls’s sports and Olympic sports. The wild west system, because it has been referred to as, has drawn growing scrutiny from lawmakers and from the NCAA itself, which has requested Congress to step in and create a framework to exchange the patchwork of legal guidelines that exists right this moment.
Cruz and Cantwell have pitched their bill as the one answer that may fairly carry the events collectively in time.
“Anybody who thinks that there’s another opportunity forward is going to be mistaken,” Cantwell mentioned. “I think we have seen, from the NCAA and the conferences, that they cannot figure out how to get this structure right. They need our help.”
Trump desires to see a deal finished this summer time.
“This Law resolves many of the most urgent issues challenging our Universities and Student-Athletes, stops the chaos and, most importantly, it may be the last chance to save College Sports, and Colleges themselves, before it’s too late,” he wrote on Truth Social in early June.
The debate over the perfect method has been intense, sophisticated by the competing needs between top-earning conferences and smaller soccer applications, in addition to thorny questions of whether or not athletes needs to be categorised as staff and the way to steadiness the pursuits of gamers, coaches, followers and conferences.
The Protect College Sports Act doesn’t tackle the employment query, which has been a sticking level in debates. Supporters, together with some Democrats, argue that athletes needs to be categorised as staff to obtain labor protections, type unions and guarantee they’re correctly compensated. Opponents, together with some Republicans, need to ban scholar athletes from worker standing, saying doing so would destroy smaller applications and non-revenue sports, in addition to decouple sports from lecturers. By distinction, a House bill, which has little Democratic help, would ban student-athletes from being categorised as staff.
But Cruz and Cantwell’s method does defend college students’ potential to earn NIL compensation and creates extra transparency across the NIL course of, together with protections from misleading agent conduct and the creation of an NIL disclosure database that may checklist the worth of agreements.
Cruz sees a slender window to regulate college sports earlier than the NCAA is endlessly altered by the potential of a “super-league” — a potential merger between the Big Ten and the SEC that would carry untold riches to the 2 highly effective conferences however devastate dozens of colleges in different conferences and eradicate scores of non-revenue applications, fully altering the face of college athletics.
And the Texas senator sees the problem as existential for applications outdoors of the state’s greatest rivalry.
“If the system continues on the path it’s on, there are only two schools that I am certain would survive — University of Texas and Texas A&M,” Cruz mentioned in an episode of his podcast “Verdict.”
“They have a big enough donor base that no matter what happens, those two survive,” he mentioned. “But if we’re sitting here three, five years from now, and the other schools — University of Houston, Baylor, TCU, SMU, Texas Tech, Rice — if the other college programs in Texas go under, that’s terrible for Texas. It’s terrible for athletes. It’s terrible for the sport.”
The Protect College Sports Act successfully eliminates the flexibility for the Big Ten and SEC to merge by banning large-revenue conferences from consolidating or rising by acquisition. Based on suggestions, the senators tweaked the bill late Wednesday to set a $700 million income ground to set off the anti-expansion provision, which might additionally influence the ACC and certain Big 12.
It permits groups a path to pool tv rights — the biggest income driver — if 75 % of the colleges in the Football Bowl Subdivision agree, triggering an antitrust exemption. For skilled leagues just like the NFL, the whole league negotiates to promote its media rights, with broadcast income shared as an alternative of every crew going it alone.
If groups agree to pool media rights, they’d have to agree to defend girls’s and Olympic sports roster spots, and present rivalries between faculties. But the Big Ten and SEC, which have large media rights offers, may squash the pool if all groups in these conferences, plus unaffiliated Notre Dame, band collectively.
Cruz’s bill has drawn help from 23 conferences, together with the commissioner of the Big 12 — which incorporates Baylor, Houston, TCU and Texas Tech — and the presidents of Texas universities together with Baylor, Rice, SMU, Texas Southern University, TCU, University of Texas, El Paso and University of Texas, San Antonio. Professional leagues, together with the NFL, NBA and MLB, in addition to the gamers’ unions for the NFL and NBA, and the NCAA commissioner, have come onboard as effectively.
The bill is opposed by the commissioners of the Big Ten and the SEC, which have probably the most to acquire from consolidation, with the SEC casting a big shadow throughout Texas. In a joint assertion launched Thursday morning, the leagues mentioned they’ll proceed to suggest revisions they need to see carried out.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey mentioned earlier in June that whereas he helps the bill’s goals, he desires to see vital adjustments as a result of the laws as written “imposes a higher standard on the SEC and Big Ten.”
Other components of Cruz and Cantwell’s bill embrace medical safety for student-athletes, giving athletes a non-public proper of motion to sue faculties, a provision stopping soccer coaches from switching groups midseason (a la LSU’s Lane Kiffin), a continuation of the revenue-sharing cap that the NCAA has carried out and a mandate that faculties present males’s and girls’s sports groups with comparable amenities and companies.
It additionally addresses the switch portal and participant eligibility, which has introduced a stage of chaos to soccer and basketball as a result of athletes can switch faculties a vast variety of occasions. Cruz’s bill units a five-year eligibility cap, with some exceptions for army service or being pregnant, and permits athletes one switch, with extra transfers permitted for particular circumstances resembling a coach leaving or sexual harassment.
Beyond the opposition of the Big Ten and SEC — influential gamers in the Midwest and South, respectively — Cruz’s coalition will want to cope with opponents on the left and proper.
On the left, the Congressional Black Caucus has urged Cruz and Cantwell to pause consideration of the bill over their objections to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and subsequent strikes by Republican-led Southern states to redraw congressional maps and eradicate Black Democrats’ seats.
The CBC’s posture is a part of a stress marketing campaign to urge college athletic establishments to interact on voting rights. The group doesn’t need Congress to confer any advantages on them till they accomplish that.
“For generations, Black athletes have helped build college athletics into one of the most powerful and profitable industries in American life,” CBC Chair Yvette Clarke, D-New York, wrote in a letter to Cruz and Cantwell. “The success, visibility, and cultural influence of major athletic conferences and institutions are inseparable from the talent, labor, leadership, and cultural contributions of Black communities. The Congressional Black Caucus believes institutions that profit from Black talent and Black communities have a responsibility to stand with those communities when their fundamental rights are under attack.”
Cantwell mentioned she deliberate to talk with CBC members additional concerning the bill.
On the precise, some Republicans don’t need to help a bill that doesn’t eradicate any potential for athletes to be categorised as staff. Others, like Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, say they gained’t help any sports laws that doesn’t ban trans athletes from competing.
In Thursday’s committee vote, the bill drew help from six Democrats and 13 Republicans, a uncommon occasion of bipartisanship in Washington. Two Republicans and 7 Democrats voted no.
The subsequent check will probably be a vote on the Senate ground, with a number of senators expressing curiosity in making extra adjustments earlier than it will get there.
In an interview with Punchbowl News in early June, Cruz mentioned he desires the bill to go the complete Senate with a giant, bipartisan margin, and that Senate Majority Leader John Thune had agreed to put it up for a vote if it could actually go.
“If we’ve got a bill that can move, he’ll put it on the floor,” Cruz mentioned. “If we vote it out of the Senate with a big bipartisan vote, I think it goes to the House with momentum, and I think the President is more than happy to lean in behind it.”
Disclosure: University of Houston, University of Texas at El Paso and University of Texas at San Antonio have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded in half by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no position in the Tribune’s journalism. Find an entire checklist of them right here.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.