Protect College Sports Act Clears Key Hurdle, Heads to Full Senate Vote
The Senate Commerce Committee voted 19-9 to advance the Protect College Sports Act to the full Senate for a floor vote expected to be held in July.
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Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Maria Cantwell’s bipartisan legislation glided through a friendly committee hearing on Thursday that featured support from Democratic and Republican senators. “I think that speaks to the hard work behind this bill. I think it speaks to the legislative details that we worked so hard on,” said Cantwell.
The landmark act codifies student-athlete Name-Image-Likeness (NIL) rights, regulates how student athletes are paid, and introduces measures to prevent the high turnover of both student-athletes and coaches.
The act limits student-athletes to one consequence-free transfer during their five years of eligibility, and it cracks down on any compensation strategy by boosters or NIL collectives that would allow for circumventing the revenue sharing cap established by the House v. NCAA settlement. It also codifies the revenue cap beyond its expiration date to disincentivize schools from diverting money away from less lucrative women’s or Olympic sports teams, and permits athletic conferences to pool their media rights which would also help fund these teams. And by granting the NCAA an antitrust exemption, the act gives the governing body the broad authority to enforce these regulations.
The bill has received backing from hundreds of college coaches, professional sports leagues, and a student-athlete advocacy group that represents 500,000 student athletes. It has also faced criticism from the two wealthiest NCAA conferences, the SEC and BIG10, and some conservative Republicans in the House, which the bill has to pass through in order to make it to the President’s desk.
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Senator Cruz acknowledges that any legislation will have to be designed with both political parties in mind. “I agree with virtually every concern raised by House conservatives,” he said. But I don’t have the ability to make Democrats agree. So there is a reality of math that if you want a bill to pass, you have to have both sides’ support. And that’s what we’ve endeavored to craft here.”
Bipartisan cooperation has been the dominating narrative of the act, irking some Republican congressmen.
Republican representative Greg Steube (R-Fla.) and senator Tommy Tuberville (R., Ala.) introduced a competing piece of legislation, the Student Athlete Act, after Tuberville slammed the Protect College Sports Act as a “federal takeover of college sports.” But the partisan nature of Tuberville’s bill makes it unlikely to advance.
“Obviously, Senator Tuberville has his bill, and we had an exchange on the floor,” said Cruz. “I understand his bill, I would be supportive of his bill, but again, no Democrat would support it, so it does not have a path to pass it.”
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