President Donald Trump is renewing his push for Congress to pass the Protect College Sports Act, attending Saturday’s No. 1 Texas-No. 14 Tennessee game in Knoxville days before the Senate is expected to pass the bill Monday — the furthest a collegiate sports bill has ever gotten in Congress.
The bill was introduced in May by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA), alongside Sens. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) and Chris Coons (D-DE).
Trump first threw his support behind the legislation in June, and formalized that backing in an Aug. 6 statement of administration policy.
“The President urges the Senate to pass the Protect College Sports Act, codifying meaningful solutions to the challenges currently threatening college athletics,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the Washington Examiner.
Trump has described the current state of college sports in dire terms, warning that inaction could bankrupt schools nationwide. “College sports are turning into pro sports, except with absolutely no rules, a result no one wants,” he said in a June post to Truth Social, adding that university presidents, conference commissioners, coaches, and athletic directors had all told him schools were “losing hundreds and millions of dollars a year” under the current system.
Trump has also tied the bill to U.S. Olympic success, telling a White House reception for Team USA’s Winter Olympians that college sports is “the engine of American Olympic dominance,” and noting it produced 88% of the team’s roster at the Milano Cortina Games. Trump has promised to sign the bill “immediately” upon arrival at his desk.
“We have to get that done,” he said. “If we don’t, we’re very foolish.”
A June poll commissioned by the advocacy group Saving College Sports found 72% support for the bill among 1,600 likely voters, a point of interest for the GOP ahead of the November midterm elections.
The Senate advanced the bill Thursday by a vote of 74-25 and adopted the Cruz-Cantwell substitute amendment 77-23. A final passage vote is scheduled for Monday. The House remains the larger obstacle: It is out of session until after the midterm elections, and any vote there would likely come during a lame-duck session, a period that has historically made it difficult to pass legislation.
The Senate had already delayed the bill once this year, postponing a planned vote in August amid a slipping vote count and a wave of amendments from within Cruz’s own party.
With Trump pressing for a win before voters head to the polls, and the Senate poised to deliver one as soon as Monday, here’s what’s actually in the bill — and what still stands between it and his desk.
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What’s in the Protect College Sports Act
The bill, which runs more than 170 pages, would raise the revenue-sharing cap from $21.3 million to $48.8 million per school, including a $22.5 million retention pool to help schools re-sign current athletes and a $5 million pool for non-revenue sports. It also caps revenue sharing at 22% of a Power Four school’s average athletic revenue and seeks to limit name, image, and likeness deals designed to get around the cap.
It would establish a one-time transfer policy with a five-year eligibility window, cap agent fees at 5%, require medical coverage for athletes while they compete, and guarantee 10 years of post-eligibility scholarship access.
The bill’s central provision is a limited antitrust exemption for the NCAA, similar to those held by professional sports leagues, intended to reduce years of litigation, along with new limits on conference realignment. The bill would also preempt state and local laws, including antitrust laws, that conflict with its NIL, transfer, or eligibility provisions — a response to a patchwork of state rules that has grown increasingly unworkable since the NCAA’s 2021 decision to allow NIL payments.
“The rules change from court to court, state to state, and season to season,” Cruz said on the Senate floor.
That preemption push has already run into resistance from within Cruz’s own party. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Jim Banks (R-IN), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) filed an amendment in August intended to preserve state laws barring men from competing in women’s sports, prompting a memo from White House counsel stating the bill “would not preempt state laws prohibiting men from participating in women’s sports.”
Trump wrote on Truth Social that the bill “CLEARLY protects the Laws in 27 States protecting Women’s Sports, and banning Men from Women’s Sports. Anyone who tells you differently is LYING!”
The Protect College Sports Act follows the SCORE Act, which failed in the House earlier this year after unanimous opposition from the Congressional Black Caucus. The SCORE Act would have gone further on one key point: It barred student-athletes from being classified as employees, while the current bill takes no position on that question at all — a gap that has become its own point of contention.
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Who supports and opposes the bill
The bill’s support base grew after the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten signed on in August, bringing its backing to 28 collegiate conferences and more than 370 colleges and universities nationwide. Outside supporters include Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell, former coach Nick Saban, and Colorado coach Deion Sanders. Interest groups have spent a combined $31 million lobbying Congress on the bill, according to a review of federal disclosures by OpenSecrets.
Opposition centers on the Congressional Black Caucus, whose objections predate this bill and trace back to its fight against the SCORE Act. The CBC argues both bills were negotiated by conferences, schools, and the NCAA without meaningful input from the athletes most affected — disproportionately black athletes in football and basketball, the sports that generate most of the revenue the bill would regulate. That objection extends to the employment-status question: By declining to take a position, critics argue, the bill still hands schools and conferences protections that professional leagues typically only get through collective bargaining, leaving athletes without leverage.
“This bill has nothing to do with protecting college sports,” NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson said, arguing that any legislation must guarantee athletes “a real voice, fair economic rights, long-term health and educational security.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) has been the most vocal Democratic critic in the Senate. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who has aligned with the CBC’s position, called the NCAA “a monopoly controlling $15 billion” with “a long record of ignoring the cries for justice from exploited college athletes.” The AFL-CIO has echoed that critique.
“This is a bill being made without athletes’ input, and it reads like that,” said Jason Stahl, executive director of the College Football Players Association.
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Will the Protect College Sports Act pass the House?
Even supporters acknowledge the bill is only likely to reach the House during a lame-duck session, if it reaches the House at all this year. House leaders, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), have publicly criticized the legislation, and Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) decision to send the House home early for recess delayed any hearing there.
For Democrats, opposition from the Congressional Black Caucus remains the central obstacle to passage; winning additional support would likely require language preserving a future path to collective bargaining. Cantwell has described the bill’s House prospects as only “cautiously optimistic.”
“I will not let the perfect be the enemy of the essential,” she said.
The bill’s political standing among Republican voters is difficult to assess independently, since the only available poll was commissioned by a group lobbying for its passage. The Hawley-Banks-Tuberville dispute suggests the bill carries some risk for Republicans on women’s sports heading into the midterm elections, an issue the party has otherwise made a signature political priority.