The Senate passed a sweeping bipartisan bill on Monday that would regulate college sports, an attempt to end “chaos” in an industry that has been upended by skyrocketing athlete payments and near-unrestricted transfers between schools. The overwhelming 77-22 vote to pass the Protect College Sports Act is the strongest effort yet by Congress to set national regulations governing payments to college athletes for their name, image and likeness and how often they can transfer. It would give the NCAA new authority over those rules and limited antitrust protections to enforce them.
The bill is the product of years of Senate negotiations that intensified after a lawsuit settlement uprooted the college sports landscape by allowing colleges to pay their players. The legislation, which would still have to pass the House, would codify the settlement into law but also establish new guardrails around the system in an attempt to rein in the runaway costs for colleges. Donald Trump praised the bill in a social media post after the late night passage.
It would also give hundreds of thousands of athletes new health and labor protections. But critics say the bill doesn’t do enough to protect athletes or curtail the enormous sums of money flowing to coaches, colleges and conferences. The bill’s future is still unclear.
It could face an uphill battle in the House, which failed repeatedly over the last year to get a different version to the floor and is in recess until after the November elections. Lawmakers will have to start over in the next Congress if the bill doesn’t pass both chambers by the end of the year. College sports have been reeling in the wake of the 2025 court settlement allowing colleges to directly pay players for their name, image and likeness.
The fallout has reshaped the industry and led to football roster payrolls that can exceed $40m. The bill would codify the court settlement, including a revenue cap that allows schools to share up to $21.5m in revenue with their players. The legislation would more than double that amount for some schools, allowing up to an additional $27.5m in payments through a retention fund – a change that helped win the support of the two largest conferences, the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference.
To help schools raise more revenue, the bill would give schools and conferences the option of pooling their TV media rights. The legislation also aims to stabilize the NCAA transfer portal that has led to players constantly switching teams. It would restrict player transfers to one “free” move over five years without sitting out a year, with some exceptions, and also would restrict players to five years of total eligibility.
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