Congress has held more than a dozen hearings about college sports since 2020. The NCAA and the former Power 5 conferences have combined to spend more than $15 million on lobbyists. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said last month he\u2019s been to Washington, D.C., 21 times in his three-plus years on the job.<\/p>\n
They came oh-so-close to getting an actual bill out of the Senate this week: the Protect College Sports Act. Senate Majority Leader John Thune tried his darndest to get his colleagues to hurry up and vote on it before beginning their five-week summer recess, but a predictable round of grandstanding and pork-barreling was too much to overcome. The ill-fated SCORE Act stalled out in a similar fashion in the House earlier this year.<\/p>\n
More than six years since this never-ending legislative push began, Congress still hasn\u2019t \u201csaved\u201d college sports. It\u2019s time for university administrators, conference commissioners and NCAA president Charlie Baker to finally start formulating a Plan B.<\/p>\n
If there is such a thing.<\/p>\n
PCSA was the brainchild of Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) \u2014 a 171-page Frankensteinian whopper that aimed to cure everything from name, image and likeness and the transfer portal to eligibility limits and conference realignment (the latest version sought to limit conferences to 19 members). They even tried to ward off the next Lane Kiffin by declaring coaches couldn\u2019t change jobs during the season. All of which was deemed essential to \u201csave\u201d an extremely popular multibillion-dollar enterprise from itself.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because College Sports Inc. managed to convince politicians of all stripes that their schools will all go bankrupt if something isn\u2019t done to rein in their escalating costs. As if some external party is forcing athletic directors to give football coaches guaranteed $90 million contracts, then give them blank checks to build a $50 million roster.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout this Bill, millions of young Athletes will be hurt, programs will be canceled, Women\u2019s and Olympic Sports will go away, the fans will be robbed, and Universities will go broke,\u201d President Donald Trump said this week while urging the Senate to pass it.<\/p>\n
It all came to a head a few weeks ago when the Big Ten and SEC initially held out their support. The conferences finally signed off late last week<\/a> when Cruz and Cantwell agreed to a revised \u201chard cap\u201d that would allow schools to directly pay their athletes around $48 million, a considerable jump from the current $21.3 million \u201csoft cap\u201d no one follows.<\/p>\n Once that issue was resolved, Cruz confidently predicted the bill would fly through from there, with co-sponsor Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) telling reporters it could get as many as 80 votes.<\/p>\n But nothing is ever that easy in politics. At the 11th hour, the AFL-CIO and the Congressional Black Caucus came out in opposition. Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) filed an amendment to make it easier for home-state schools Florida State and Miami to change conferences. And then the final blow: three conservative senators, most notably old friend Tommy Tuberville, claimed the bill would threaten \u201cstate laws that ban biological men in women\u2019s sports.\u201d (The sponsors tried to assure them it would not.)<\/p>\n Yes, a bill whose authors purported to be protecting women\u2019s sports got derailed by a different set of people claiming to be protecting women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n (Note to alarmists: The number of women\u2019s college athletes has increased by 50,000 in the last five years, according to the NCAA\u2019s 2024-25 participation data<\/a>, and the NCAA is planning to add a women\u2019s flag football championship in 2028.)<\/p>\n The PCSA is not dead yet. Cruz and Schmitt issued a statement Saturday claiming they\u2019ve \u201clocked in a guaranteed vote\u201d for when they return in mid-September. But Cruz has been making these sorts of rosy proclamations for at least three years. Congressional experts say the odds of a vote decrease considerably the closer things get to the midterms. And even if it does pass, the House then gets its hands on it.\u00a0 Representatives will have their own pet causes that will muck up that process.<\/p>\n In the meantime, the NCAA keeps getting sued into oblivion. Last winter, it kept losing injunction requests from geezer pro basketball players seeking waivers to return to college. It responded to that crisis by expediting a completely new eligibility process that eliminates waivers and redshirts entirely, instead giving a uniform five seasons of competition beginning no later than age 19. It passed in June to take effect in August.<\/p>\n