WASHINGTON (TNND) — As college football kicks off another weekend of action on the field, supporters of the Protect College Sports Act are hoping Congress can score a win of its own, with final Senate passage of the bill expected as soon as next week.
Backers of the legislation, which aims to establish national standards for how schools and athletes operate on campuses across the country, brought in advocates including college coaches to Capitol Hill this week to build momentum.
"I think what we're talking about is putting some type of guardrails around... when you have players who are transferring five times and they're not going to get a meaningful degree," said Craig Bohl, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association.
The bill, authored by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has drawn strong bipartisan support in preliminary votes, clearing a recent procedural hurdle with 77 votes in favor on Thursday.
Still, opposition has grown louder as the bill inches closer to final passage. Critics argue the legislation would strip money and rights away from student athletes who have only recently gained more control over their earning power.
"Now that players have rights, they're saying it's unstable. There's nothing unstable with students being able to collectively bargain. There's nothing unstable with students not being exploited on the field," NCAA President Derrick Johnson said in comments to ESPN's "SportsCenter" earlier this week.
Even if the bill clears the Senate, it still faces a difficult path in the House, which is currently out of session until after the November midterms. It remains unclear whether House leadership would bring members back specifically to vote on the legislation.
The National Desk
Complicating matters further is a provision dealing with conference realignment. The bill originally required schools to remain independent for five years after leaving a conference before joining another — a rule later softened to three years. Even that compromise has left some lawmakers uneasy, particularly those from Florida, where schools like Florida State and Miami have signaled they could eventually look to leave the ACC for a different conference.
"I think the bill that's in the Senate as written right now is a hot mess. I feel like the problems are that the NCAA, their inability to control this genie they've released out of this bottle," said Rep. Jimmy Patronis, R-Fla, said Wednesday.
Florida Republican Senators Rick Scott and Ashley Moody also voted "no" on the most recent procedural vote in the Senate. The University of Miami thanked them for their advocacy on the school's X account.
President Trump has publicly praised the bill and has reportedly been in touch with House members in an effort to push the legislation toward passage sometime in October, though whether that timeline holds may depend on how quickly the Senate can finish its work and how House leadership decides to handle a bill that still has pockets of resistance within the Republican conference itself.
