Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) are expected to announce plans Wednesday for a bipartisan college sports bill, the latest development in a multi-year effort by college sports leaders to have Congress pass legislation attempting to stabilize the industry and curb the flood of legal challenges against the NCAA and power conferences.
The bill would allow the NCAA to limit transfers and eligibility, enforce a spending cap, give conferences the ability to pool their television rights and prevent coaches from leaving their teams before the end of the season. It also includes language to prevent a possible breakaway “super league” by the Big Ten and SEC.
Cruz and Cantwell, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, respectively, have been working for months toward a comprehensive bill that could potentially garner enough bipartisan support to reach 60 votes in the Senate. Their efforts intensified recently.
The unveiling of a Senate bill, named the Protect College Sports Act, comes the week after a potential vote on the SCORE Act, a separate college sports bill that originated in the U.S. House of Representatives, was canceled again due to political standoffs and disagreement over the amount of power ceded to the NCAA and top conferences.
As the power conferences debate College Football Playoff expansion and roster budgets — and the Big Ten and SEC saber-rattle about self-governance — some stakeholders believe a Cruz-Cantwell bill out of the Senate is the most viable path to a college sports bill being ratified into law, at a time when the industry seems in desperate need of reform.
Details of the bill were still being finalized Wednesday, but it is expected to include a narrow antitrust exemption regarding athlete transfer and eligibility limits, which would shield the NCAA and conferences from legal challenges on rules established to regulate those areas. It permits athletes only one immediate transfer and requires them to sit out a season of eligibility for multiple transfers, and it establishes a five-year eligibility window that prohibits professional athletes from competing at the college level. The NCAA was already expected to vote on an age-based eligibility model next month that would allow college players to compete for up to five seasons, starting the academic year after they turn 19 or graduate high school.
The bill also intends to impose an enforceable compensation cap regarding direct payments from schools to athletes, codifying aspects of the House v. NCAA settlement that was passed last summer. The College Sports Commission has struggled to implement restrictions to that effect over the past year, with programs actively circumventing the roughly $20 million revenue sharing cap, often via dubious third-party, over-the-cap name, image and likeness deals. Outside NIL agreements would still be allowed under the Cruz/Cantwell bill, but the legislation would provide more enforcement latitude to require legitimate NIL deals and close the pay-for-play loopholes used by multimedia rights partners and other associated entities.
This story will be updated.