The Senate passed the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act 77-22 Monday night, setting national NIL and transfer rules after years of courtroom chaos left college athletics adrift.
Lawmakers finally moved. By a decisive 77-22 margin, the U.S. Senate approved the Protect College Sports Act, a bipartisan measure led by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., to put national guardrails back on college athletics.
Fox News reported the bill would set federal standards for Name, Image and Likeness deals, athlete compensation, recruiting, eligibility, and transfers, while giving the collegiate governing body limited antitrust legal protections after years of litigation stripped away the old rulebook.
President Donald Trump pressed Congress to finish the job and said he would sign the bill if it reaches his desk. The measure now heads to the House, which remains in recess until after the midterm elections.
Cruz did not hold back about how the system got here. At a news conference tied to the vote, he argued federal antitrust lawsuits dismantled the old order and left campuses in free-for-all territory.
Cruz said, “Some have asked why should Congress get in the middle of this? The answer is simple: because Congress screwed it up in the first place.”
He added that repeated antitrust litigation “had the effect of tearing down essentially all the rules,” leaving college sports as “the Wild West.” That diagnosis tracks with years of portal chaos, bidding wars, and uneven state rules that followed the NCAA’s 2021 decision allowing athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., put it in plain terms ahead of the vote. “I think most people acknowledge that the current landscape of college sports is a mess,” Thune said. “It needs to be addressed.”
Cruz has spent months pushing the issue in public, including when he faced a wall of boos on College GameDay while arguing for NIL legislation. The Senate result shows the pitch finally found a bipartisan lane.
Supporters describe a uniform federal floor after a patchwork of court rulings and state experiments. The legislation would restrict the transfer portal, create a five-year eligibility framework, set recruiting and tampering contact windows, establish a national NIL standard, and include a revenue-sharing cap if signed into law.
The New York Post reported the package raises the direct athlete pay limit to about $49 million, more than double the prior $21.5 million settlement cap, while capping agent fees at 5 percent. Under the framework described, athletes could transfer once as undergraduates without sitting out, with a five-year eligibility clock that starts after a player turns 19 or enrolls full time. Mid-season coach departures would also face new limits.
The bill builds on the 2025 House v. NCAA settlement that opened the door to revenue sharing. The Washington Examiner noted it adds a federal NIL framework, caps on direct university payments to athletes, and limited NCAA protection from antitrust suits over eligibility and transfer rules. Transfer language also contemplates a graduate move beyond the single undergraduate transfer without penalty.
Major conferences signaled buy-in after talks with Cruz, Cantwell, and Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo. The Big Ten and Southeastern Conference issued a joint statement backing the bill “as currently drafted” following “detailed and productive negotiations.”
Cruz framed the stakes on the Senate floor as protecting programs that still give underdogs a shot. “It’s about protecting the underdog and ensuring that each and every team has the opportunity to develop and compete, and maybe even make it to the Final Four next season, but those stories only happen if those teams still exist,” he said ahead of the vote.
That argument sits alongside Cruz’s broader fight to keep bipartisan deals alive when progressive pressure tries to kill them, a theme he has raised while warning about a progressive surge blocking compromise in other fights.
Trump treated the measure as unfinished business that Congress cannot kick down the road. Hosting Team USA Winter Olympic and Paralympic athletes, he urged both chambers to finish the work.
“I’m urging the House and the Senate to come together, bipartisan if possible and it looks like they have done, to send the bill to my desk and I will sign it,” Trump said. He added, “I think we have no choice. We have to get that done. If we don’t, we’re very foolish. Nobody knows what will happen. We’re in Never-Never Land.”
Breitbart reported Trump went further on the stakes: “This is a really big deal. It will not only save college sports, it will save the colleges themselves.” Cruz made a parallel point that only Congress can repair what federal law and lawsuits broke. “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,” the Commerce Committee chairman said.
Clay Travis, appearing in coverage of the vote, put the condition of the sport in blunt terms: college sports is “broken” right now. That assessment matches the bipartisan talk of a system that drifted after the NCAA asked lawmakers for help once its own cleanup efforts fell short.
Not every fight was about money and the portal. Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Jim Banks, R-Ind., and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., filed an amendment in August aimed at stopping the bill from overriding state laws that bar biological men from competing in women’s sports. Hawley later said the concern had been addressed to his satisfaction and that he voted to advance the legislation.
Opposition still surfaced. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., rejected the “chaos” framing and cast the debate as a power struggle over athlete leverage. On X earlier in the month, Murphy wrote: “The ‘chaos’ is that (mostly Black) athletes now have bargaining power and White coaches and sports industry execs hate it.”
Murphy also argued on the floor that the crisis narrative does not match reality. “The legislation that we are going to be voting on tonight is predicated on a simple idea: The idea that college sports is in crisis... The facts don’t back up that characterization of college sports,” he said. Cruz answered that claim with a different diagnosis, saying college sports is “at a breaking point” and that the bill would “restore order to a system being torn apart by too few rules and too much litigation.”
The vote tally undercut any claim of a narrow partisan project. Seventy-seven senators backed the bill. Twenty-two opposed it. For Cruz, who has kept national ambitions in view while leaving the door open on 2028, the result was a concrete bipartisan win on a file most fans can feel every transfer cycle.
Passage in the Senate does not finish the job. The House is out until after the midterms, so any floor vote, and any path to Trump’s desk, waits on that calendar. Athlete employee status also remains unresolved under the package as described, leaving one of the sharpest long-term labor questions for another day.
Still, the core trade is clear. Schools and conferences get a uniform rulebook and limited antitrust breathing room. Athletes keep NIL and revenue-sharing upside inside federal caps and transfer limits. State experiments and courtroom free-for-alls give way, at least on paper, to one national standard.
That is the bargain Cruz and Cantwell sold, the one Trump says he will sign, and the one the Senate just locked in by a margin that should be hard for the House to ignore once members return.
College sports did not break overnight, and lawsuits will not rebuild it. Voters sent a Congress that can draft rules; Monday night it finally started doing the job.
