The dysfunctional body made an exception for one of the few cultural institutions that Americans of all political stripes still care about.
Like many of its recent predecessors, the 119th Congress doesn’t have many legislative accomplishments to its name. Instances of legislators rolling up their sleeves to debate and negotiate before coming to a consensus to pass a bipartisan bill are becoming vanishingly rare in Washington, D.C.
The Senate did manage to defy that trend this week — and it was college football that brought the increasingly divided body together.
Late Monday night, the Senate passed by a vote of 77–22 the Protect College Sports Act (PCSA), which is meant to bring stability to college athletics and protect athletes in sports that do not necessarily bring in big money for their schools. Lawmakers were spurred to action by a public that’s become uncomfortable with the pace of change in college athletics. Rule changes that made it easier for athletes to transfer between schools and to profit off their name, image, and likeness (NIL) stripped college sports of the old-fashioned ethic of amateurism, alienating Americans of all political stripes.
Despite dysfunction in Congress in an era of hyperpartisanship and political polarization, Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, put their differences aside to create a bill touching an issue with broad appeal among Americans.
“College sports is a unique institution in America, and I think it is an incredibly valuable institution,” Cruz told National Review. “At a time when we are so divided, when so many Americans are screaming at each other and unable to find common ground, sports is one of the few things that brings us together.”
Cantwell attributed the bill’s passage to a bipartisan concern that non-revenue-generating sports — at most schools, sports other than football and men’s basketball — would go by the wayside in the scramble to compete for the top football and basketball players.
“I think it’s the awareness of the cost that is driving cuts to women’s and Olympic sports, and most people really saw that happening,” she told NR. “And I think that wasn’t a Republican or Democrat issue.”
The PCSA is one of the few examples of lawmakers in the 119th Congress doing the hard work required to produce enduring and consequential legislation. Last year, Congress sent to President Donald Trump’s desk the GENIUS Act, a piece of landmark crypto legislation. The legislature followed that bill up with the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act earlier this year, which was the product of a bicameral and bipartisan back-and-forth attempting to lower the cost of housing.
Like with this Congress’s other legislative accomplishments, the path toward the Senate’s passing the PCSA was messy. Cruz and Cantwell released their initial draft of the bill in June, the product of years of negotiations between members of the two parties. The bill set a regulatory framework for college sports that limited athletes to a maximum of five years of eligibility with one transfer. It also enshrined into law the right of athletes to receive NIL compensation and a share of revenue from their schools, while disincentivizing schools from cutting women’s and Olympic sports. Crucial to the bipartisan agreement was its being explicitly neutral on whether athletes are employees of their schools and thus entitled to collective bargaining and other benefits.
Major conferences were split. NCAA President Charlie Baker supported the legislation in part but called for modifications, while Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark supported it as is. Meanwhile, the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference issued a joint statement opposing the bill.
The bill “does not meaningfully preempt the patchwork of state laws [regulating college sports] or provide the protections needed to make and enforce consistent rules, both essential to long-term stability in college athletics,” the statement said. The two conferences also argued that putting Congress in charge of college sports rulemaking limited “the ability to adapt quickly as the landscape evolves.”
Lawmakers then began negotiating with the two major conferences. As a result, they made changes to the bill that did not remedy the public concerns of the Big Ten and SEC but did sweeten the pot for them and eventually win their support. Cruz and Cantwell made a number of changes to appeal to the conferences after they announced their opposition, but one that really helped get them on board was closing loopholes that allowed schools to circumvent the cap on how much money they can pay players, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.
The SEC declined to comment, and the Big Ten directed NR to its public statements from the summer.
With the conferences on board, the bill then gained momentum with the start of college football season, and, after further amendments on the Senate floor Monday, the bill passed.
“I want to thank all my colleagues for participating in a debate,” Cantwell said in a floor speech before the vote. “That is what this institution is supposed to be about. It is supposed to be about an amendment process, and it’s supposed to be about a product that comes out of committee.”
As proponents and opponents made their closing arguments on Monday night, supporters were up-front about the fact that the bill had its flaws.
“This bill isn’t perfect. No bill ever is,” Cruz said in a speech. “What this bill reflects is a compromise, tough conversations, and Republicans and Democrats sitting across the table from one another, working through disagreements, and producing legislation that can actually get across the finish line.”
In that regard, the PCSA is similar to the housing bill that Congress approved earlier this year. The consensus among many housing policy wonks and advocates in Washington, D.C., is that the bill is a mixed bag in terms of policy — but at least Congress did something bipartisan that addresses the issue.
The PCSA might end up being remembered in a similar way. Critics are skeptical that it will preserve college sports in the way that its proponents argue, in large part because it does not address the question of whether student athletes are employees.
“They appear to be trying to create and codify something from the governmental level that has all of the appearance of being an employer-employee relationship, without involving the employees in the negotiations or acknowledging publicly that these are actually employees,” Galen Clavio, a professor of sports media at Indiana University, told NR
As they tried to move the bill across the finish line in the Senate, Cruz and Cantwell touted the support of several student athletes and councils that represent them to their respective conferences. Such bodies for the SEC, Big Ten, and smaller conferences urged senators to vote for the bill.
Trump has also offered his support for the legislation, but the bill could have some trouble passing the House of Representatives. Lawmakers there have been working on their own bill, the SCORE Act, which has had some bipartisan support, but many Democrats oppose it because they believe the antitrust exemption it would give to the NCAA is too broad. It has yet to pass the House, and, while the PCSA could have majority support in the House, it may have trouble clearing a procedural vote in the chamber.
Additionally, the Congressional Black Caucus, a large bicameral body that includes House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, has voiced its opposition to both the SCORE Act and the PCSA. Its members have some criticisms of the PCSA itself, but their main issue is political. They have threatened to oppose both bills unless schools and conferences stridently push back against the efforts by red states to carve up majority-black districts in the wake of the Louisiana v. Callais decision from the Supreme Court.
“Months ago, we urged the Senate to pause consideration of this legislation until our substantive issues were addressed and until college athletics leaders engaged with us about the attacks on Black political representation,” the caucus said in a statement this week condemning the Senate’s passage of the PCSA. “To date, there has been no meaningful engagement with the CBC from the Senate on this legislation, nor have college athletics leaders meaningfully engaged with us on the critical issues of civic engagement and Black political representation.”
While the PCSA’s path through the House is a bit murky, the 119th Congress’s other legislative accomplishments also had a bumpy road to becoming law. The GENIUS Act was originally delayed because Republican hard-liners unexpectedly voted with Democrats to tank a procedural vote. Then the two chambers seemed to be at a stalemate over the housing bill due to a specific provision in the Senate’s version that the House balked at — until they negotiated further and came to an agreement. The House is unlikely to return before Election Day to pass the PCSA, but proponents are hopeful that the bill will eventually make it to Trump’s desk.
“Politics is the art of the possible,” Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri, a co-sponsor of the bill, told reporters. “It happened to be something where we could work together, I think, to save a very uniquely American institution, which is college sports, which is relevant to a lot of people.”