The Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act 77-22 on Monday night, setting national rules for NIL pay and transfers after years of chaos critics say Congress itself unleashed.
Senators voted 77-22 to send the bipartisan bill to the House, creating a federal framework for Name, Image and Likeness deals, athlete compensation, recruiting, eligibility, and transfers in college athletics.
The measure, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., aims to replace the post-2021 free-for-all with clear national standards after court rulings and antitrust suits shredded the old NCAA rulebook.
Fox News Digital reported the Monday night passage and the bill’s core design: greater antitrust legal protections for a collegiate governing body, a uniform NIL standard, transfer-portal limits, a five-year eligibility framework, recruiting and tampering guardrails, and a revenue-sharing cap if signed into law.
President Donald Trump pressed lawmakers to finish the job and said he would sign the bill if it reaches his desk. He framed delay as reckless.
Trump said he was urging the House and 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.” He added that without action, college sports stays in “Never-Never Land.”
Cruz has argued for months that federal antitrust litigation, not coaches or boosters alone, tore down the old guardrails. At a news conference the day of the vote, he put the blame squarely on prior law and court outcomes.
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.”
"It has been the federal antitrust laws applied in litigation after litigation after litigation that have had the effect of tearing down essentially all the rules. So right now it is the Wild West."
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., backed the push ahead of the floor vote. He said most people already see the problem.
Thune stated, “I think most people acknowledge that the current landscape of college sports is a mess,” and added, “It needs to be addressed.”
Just the News noted additional hard caps in the package, including agent fees limited to 5 percent and school spending on athletes capped at $50 million a year, alongside broader antitrust shielding for NCAA rule enforcement.
Thune also tied the bill to smaller programs. He said he was proud the Senate passed legislation that “will restore stability in college athletics and ensure South Dakota’s colleges and universities can continue to provide pivotal student-athlete experiences on our campuses.”
Cruz drove the same point on the floor: only Congress can repair what federal law 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,” he said.
The NCAA’s 2021 decision opened the door for athletes to earn money while still playing college sports. The association later sought help from lawmakers after the early years produced uneven state rules, aggressive recruiting, and constant portal churn.
That history set up a rare bipartisan run at a national fix. Earlier Senate action on the same bill already showed members were ready to move past endless litigation and patchwork state regimes.
The Washington Examiner reported the measure builds on the House v. NCAA settlement track, sets a federal NIL framework, caps direct university payments to athletes, and spells out transfer rules: one undergraduate transfer without penalty plus one for graduate school, along with limited NCAA antitrust protection.
Major conferences eventually lined up behind the text. The Big Ten and Southeastern Conference issued a joint statement supporting the Protect College Sports Act “as currently drafted, following detailed and productive negotiations with Senators Cruz, Cantwell and Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) and their respective staffs.”
Cruz cast the bill as protection for programs that still need room to climb. Ahead of the vote he said the legislation is “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.”
Cruz has sold the same overhaul in public settings outside the Capitol, including a College GameDay appearance pushing the college sports bill that drew a loud crowd reaction.
In August, Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Jim Banks, R-Ind., and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., filed an amendment aimed at stopping the bill from overriding state laws that bar biological men from competing in women’s sports. Hawley later said the concern was addressed to his satisfaction and voted to advance the package.
That fight sits inside a larger eligibility debate. Courts and lawmakers keep returning to the same fairness question for female athletes, including when the Supreme Court upheld state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Parents, female competitors, and state officials have pressed the same point for years: categories exist so girls and women can compete on a level field. A national college sports bill that leaves those state protections intact keeps that principle in place while Congress revise NIL and transfer rules.
Not every Democrat joined the majority. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., opposed the bill and argued it would strip bargaining power from athletes while handing schools antitrust exemptions.
Earlier this month Murphy posted on X: “The ‘chaos’ is that (mostly Black) athletes now have bargaining power and White coaches and sports industry execs hate it.”
That framing treats basic roster rules, transfer limits, and spending caps as racial hostility. It also ignores the bipartisan vote tally and the conference support that followed negotiations. Civil-rights attacks on the same legislation have already drawn pushback, including when Craig Robinson answered civil-rights claims against the college sports bill.
Order is not oppression. A five-year eligibility clock, clear contact windows, and a spending ceiling are the kind of common-sense boundaries every other major enterprise uses. College sports lost those boundaries after the courts and antitrust suits cleared the field.
National Review reported the Senate cleared the bill Monday evening and that the package creates national rules on five years of eligibility, transfers, revenue sharing, and NIL rights, plus a targeted antitrust exemption for the NCAA, with Trump’s support already on record.
Cruz told colleagues the moment for delay is over. “We must act, and we must act now. We must pass the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act. This bill puts an end to the chaos plaguing college athletics.”
Cantwell struck a more measured note while still backing the product. “It doesn’t mean that we have solved every problem, but it means that we are on our way to solving the problems that exist and preserving the opportunities for the future,” she said.
The House is in recess until after the midterm elections, so any floor vote waits. Trump has already said he will sign the bill if Congress finishes the work. The remaining question is whether the House treats college sports as a governing priority or lets the “Wild West” run another season.
Taxpayers fund many of these campuses. Fans buy the tickets. Female athletes deserve fair categories. A 77-22 Senate vote shows both parties can still draft rules when the product on the field is falling apart. The House should finish the job instead of protecting the chaos.
