Senators Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell have agreed on sweeping bipartisan legislation to impose federal order on college athletics, a system both lawmakers say has spiraled into financial recklessness, roster destruction, and legal gridlock since the arrival of NIL deals and an unregulated transfer portal.
The bill, called the Protect College Sports Act, will be introduced when the Senate returns to session. It arrives as President Donald Trump pushes the issue from the White House, having hosted a roundtable with sports figures and signed two executive orders aimed at finding a unified solution to what he called the "crazy things" plaguing college sports.
The legislation attempts what years of prior efforts could not accomplish: a durable federal framework that preserves athlete compensation while stopping the arms race that is draining athletic departments, eliminating smaller programs, and concentrating wealth in a handful of conferences. If it passes, it would reshape the governance of college athletics from the transfer portal to the coaching carousel, and it would do so with teeth.
The bill's provisions, first detailed by OutKick, are broad and specific. The Protect College Sports Act would shield the NCAA from antitrust litigation while codifying rules around the transfer portal, third-party NIL payments, and an option for conferences to voluntarily pool media rights. It sets strict standards prohibiting certain third-party NIL deals and grants legal protection to both the NCAA and a new College Sports Commission to enforce them.
Athletes would get one unrestricted transfer without sitting out a season. Additional transfers could carry consequences. A five-year calendar eligibility clock would govern all athletes, and professional players, including those from the NBA's G-League, would be barred from competing in college games.
One headline-grabbing provision has already earned its own nickname. The so-called "Lane Kiffin Rule" would forbid coaches from leaving their current team until the season concludes. Schools would likewise be prohibited from hiring coaches before seasons end, a direct response to the mid-season coaching chaos that has become routine in major college football.
The bill also addresses the financial spiral head-on. There is no salary cap, but schools would be required to stay within the House settlement guidelines, a $20.5 million figure that, in practice, many programs are already blowing past. Current spending in college football exceeds $40 million per roster this season, nearly double the supposed cap.
Other provisions require agents to register and cap NIL payouts to agents at five percent. Whistleblowers would be protected from retaliation. Post-eligibility medical coverage would be provided to athletes. And the bill explicitly protects women's and Olympic sport roster spots, a direct answer to the ongoing elimination of smaller programs.
One provision takes aim at the sport's power structure: the bill forbids the formation of a superleague between the SEC and Big Ten.
Cruz framed the legislation as a rescue operation for a system in freefall. In a statement accompanying the bill, the Texas Republican laid out the case in plain terms:
"College sports are at a breaking point. Fans can see their favorite teams being hollowed out by transfer chaos, fake NIL bidding wars, eligibility lawsuits, and a system that allows the richest programs to keep pulling away. The Protect College Sports Act is a bipartisan plan to restore order. Student athletes can profit from their name, image, and likeness, but college sports still needs real rules, competitive balance, rivalries, and a true connection to education. This bill protects athletes and fans and keeps college sports from becoming a two-conference minor league."
Cantwell, the Washington Democrat, pointed to the human cost already being paid across campuses nationwide.
"We're seeing thousands of men's and women's athletic roster slots and a hundred athletic programs being cut. Collegiate athletics is a hallmark for human development. Let's not ruin it with out-of-control chaos. This bill puts new tools and new rules on the table to rein in runaway costs while still preserving NIL, revenue sharing, and women and Olympic sports."
The numbers back up the alarm. Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko, speaking at the SEC's spring meetings at the Hilton SanDestin Resort in Miramar Beach, Florida, put the trajectory in stark terms:
"If we don't find a way to create some level of regulation in the market, a lot of people are going to go bankrupt pretty quick. We're two and a half years away from having an NIL budget that's greater than the TV revenue for our entire university."
That is not a hypothetical from a small program. That is the head coach at Texas A&M, one of the wealthiest athletic departments in the country.
One of the bill's most consequential provisions is the option for conferences to pool their media rights on a voluntary basis. The threshold is high: seventy-five percent of more than 135 FBS schools would have to agree. And the provision would not apply to the SEC or Big Ten unless both conferences consent.
That carve-out reflects reality. Both the SEC and Big Ten hold lucrative deals with FOX and ESPN that their members are unlikely to dilute. But the pooling option could be a lifeline for conferences like the Mountain West and Conference USA, whose media deals pale in comparison and whose programs face existential financial pressure.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, also at the Miramar Beach meetings, hinted that while he knew certain elements of the new legislation, he had not seen the actual bill text. The SEC and Big Ten are both expected to take time deciding whether to support the legislation, and both conferences have been holding internal conversations about implementing their own rules on compensation, eligibility, and enforcement.
The bill did not emerge in a vacuum. President Trump got involved in college athletics regulation last summer and has since signed two executive orders and created a Presidential Committee on college sports, chaired by New York Yankees President Randy Levine and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. That committee signed a letter last week urging Congress to agree on the Protect College Sports Act, and its ideas were incorporated into the legislation.
The Washington Examiner reported that the bill has backing from both the White House and the NCAA, and creates a student athlete ombudsman position alongside the broader regulatory framework. Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, added his support, stating the legislation "will protect student-athletes and ensure they receive the compensation, benefits, and safeguards they've earned on the field and in the courtroom."
That bipartisan coalition matters, because previous efforts failed. The SCORE Act, pushed by Republicans for years, never made it to the House floor. Last week, the National Black Caucus and NAACP came out against it, and congressional leaders in states within the SEC's footprint pushed back on the legislation in response. Cruz and Cantwell appear to have built their bill to avoid those same obstacles, incorporating athlete protections, preserving revenue sharing, and explicitly declining to prevent athletes from collectively bargaining or being classified as employees.
As Breitbart noted, Cruz himself characterized the effort differently from prior attempts, calling it "a stability bill, not just an NIL bill." Cantwell echoed that the college sports system "is in a bit of chaos", a diplomatic understatement given the scale of the dysfunction.
For all its breadth, the bill leaves significant questions unanswered. How will the $20.5 million cap be monitored and enforced at the federal level? What penalties exist for programs that exceed it? Will the SEC and Big Ten, the two conferences with the most financial leverage, ultimately support the legislation or work to weaken it?
The New York Post reported on the bill's creation of the "Lane Kiffin Rule" and its broader effort to tackle NIL chaos, while Newsmax covered the legislative push as an attempt to break a years-long congressional logjam on college sports. Both accounts confirmed the bipartisan nature of the effort and the scope of its provisions.
Arguments, hearings, and amendments lie ahead. The timing of the bill's introduction, coinciding with the SEC's spring meetings in Florida, is not accidental. Conference leaders, athletic directors, and coaches will be watching closely to see whether this legislation has the momentum that prior efforts lacked.
The bill does not prevent athletes from being deemed employees. It does not impose a salary cap. It does not strip NIL rights. What it does is draw lines, on transfers, on coaching movement, on agent fees, on competitive balance, that the market has proven incapable of drawing on its own.
College athletics spent years operating on the premise that deregulation and court-ordered freedom would sort themselves out. They did not. Programs are being cut. Budgets are exploding past every guideline. Coaches leave mid-season. Players move like free agents with no rules. And the institutions that were supposed to govern the system have been sued into paralysis.
Cruz and Cantwell have put a framework on paper. Whether Congress can actually pass it, and whether the most powerful conferences will accept federal oversight in exchange for legal protection, is the fight ahead.
What is not in dispute is the problem. When a Texas A&M head coach warns that his program's NIL spending will soon exceed its entire television revenue, the system is not evolving. It is consuming itself. Someone had to write the rules. The question now is whether Washington can finish the job before the next season of chaos writes them instead.
