Senate lawmakers passed the Protect College Sports Act 77-22 to impose national NIL and transfer rules, a move President Trump backs and left-wing critics still attack as stifling athlete power.
The U.S. Senate voted 77-22 on Monday night to pass the Protect College Sports Act, a bipartisan bill that would set national standards for name, image and likeness deals, athlete compensation, recruiting, eligibility and transfers.
Fox News reported the measure, led by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, now moves to the House. That chamber is in recess until after the midterm elections, delaying any final vote.
President Donald Trump has pressed Congress to finish the work and send him the bill. He has said he will sign it.
College athletics slid into open chaos after the NCAA’s 2021 decision letting athletes profit from their name, image and likeness. What followed was a patchwork of state rules, lawsuits and constant roster churn. The NCAA later asked lawmakers for help.
Cruz made the case plain at a news conference Monday. He rejected the idea that Congress had no business intervening.
Sen. Ted 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 pinned the breakdown on repeated antitrust lawsuits that stripped away nearly every binding rule.
Cruz added:
"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 struck the same note ahead of the 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," "It needs to be addressed."
If signed into law, the Protect College Sports Act would give the main collegiate governing body stronger antitrust protections. It would create one national framework covering NIL compensation, the transfer portal, recruiting contact windows and eligibility.
The New York Post reported the package would raise the direct pay limit schools can share with athletes to roughly $49 million, up from the earlier $21.5 million settlement cap. It would standardize one free transfer, set a five-year eligibility window that starts after age 19 or full-time enrollment, cap agent fees at 5 percent, and put limits on mid-season coach departures.
Recruiting and tampering guardrails would set clear windows when schools or agents may contact athletes. A federal NIL standard and a revenue-sharing cap would replace the current free-for-all.
The goal is simple: stop the endless litigation and the roster poaching that leaves mid-major programs and Olympic sports hanging by a thread.
In August, Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Jim Banks of Indiana and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama filed an amendment. It aimed to keep the federal bill from wiping out state laws that bar biological men from competing in women’s sports.
Hawley later said the concern had been fixed and voted to advance the legislation. The final package therefore preserves those state protections rather than steamrolling them.
That detail matters. Without it, a national sports bill could have become a backdoor vehicle for erasing sex-based categories that female athletes rely on.
Not every senator welcomed the cleanup. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut opposed the bill and cast the entire debate in racial terms earlier this month on X.
Murphy wrote:
"The ‘chaos’ is that (mostly Black) athletes now have bargaining power and White coaches and sports industry execs hate it,"
Supporters see runaway litigation, endless transfers and no uniform rules. Murphy sees a power struggle he wants to keep open-ended. The 77-22 margin shows most of the Senate rejected that framing.
Trump has been blunt about the stakes. Hosting Team USA athletes, he urged both chambers to act.
The president said:
"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"
He went further:
"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. We’re not going to let that be happening. We’re not going to let that happen to these great people and others."
The Senate did its part. The bill still needs House passage and a presidential signature. Because the House is out until after the midterms, the next vote will not come soon.
In the meantime the same incentives remain: agents shopping players mid-season, boosters writing open-ended NIL checks, and smaller programs watching talent walk out the door with no national rulebook to stop it.
Cruz and Cantwell held a Commerce Committee roundtable on the bill in the Russell Building on June 10, 2026. The vote months later shows the bipartisan coalition held.
College sports thrived for decades under clear eligibility rules and a shared understanding that the games belonged to students first. Antitrust lawsuits and the NIL free-for-all blew that up. A lopsided Senate vote just put a national framework back on the table. The House should finish the job instead of leaving athletes, coaches and fans stuck in the same chaos.
