Whoever said sports and politics don’t mix was wrong. Witness a sweeping bipartisan act aimed at revamping college sports that was passed by the U.S. Senate late Monday night, a combined effort to end “chaos” in an industry upended by runaway athlete payments and near-unrestricted transfers between schools.
AP reports the overwhelming 77-22 vote to pass the Protect College Sports Act, “is the strongest effort yet by Congress to set national regulations governing payments to college athletes for their name, image and likeness and how often they can transfer. It would give the NCAA new authority over those rules and limited antitrust protections to enforce them.”
The outlet then detailed some of the driving forces behind the legislative move co-authored by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and launched late May:
The bill is the product of years of Senate negotiations that intensified after a 2025 lawsuit settlement uprooted the college sports landscape by allowing colleges to pay their players.
The legislation, which would still have to pass the House, would codify the settlement into law but also establish new guardrails around the system in an attempt to rein in the runaway costs for colleges.
“It would be nice if college sports could somehow magically fix itself, but this is a matter of law, federal law, and only Congress can fix it,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Cruz.
President Donald Trump applauded the bill in a social media post after the late night passage. “This is a really big deal,” he said. “It will not only save college sports, it will save the colleges themselves.”
Monday night’s Senate vote moves the bill another step closer to becoming law. It still needs to pass the House and receive Trump’s signature.
The House is not expected to return to Washington, DC, until after the midterm elections in November although Cruz has said he hopes to get it signed before the Nov. 3 elections.
“This bill is about what makes college sports uniquely American,” Cruz said on the Senate floor Monday, later hailing it as a “monumental day for college athletics.”
High-profile supporters of the Act include billionaire Texas Tech alumnus Cody Campbell, former Alabama coach Nick Saban and current Colorado coach Deion Sanders, who was featured in commercials across the country as the football season began.
“The Protect College Sports Act ends the NIL chaos in college athletics by protecting our student athletes and teams and safeguarding women’s sports and Olympic programs,” Saban said in an ad backing the legislative intervention.