Senate passes Protect College Sports Act to regulate transfers, paying athletes

WASHINGTON — The Senate overwhelmingly passed a sweeping bill regulating college sports Monday, bringing Congress closer than ever before to enacting national standards around where — and for how much — intercollegiate athletes play.The bipartisan Protect College Sports Act, approved in a 77-22 vote, grants the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its member schools a limited antitrust exemption, allowing them to set and enforce rules around athlete eligibility and transfers without worrying about being taken to court.It also raises the limit on how much each school can directly pay athletes to around $49 million, more than double the $21.5 million cap put in place as part of a 2025 settlement reached by the NCAA to wrap up three separate federal antitrust lawsuits.Under the Senate bill, co-authored by Sens.Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), athletes will be allowed to transfer between schools once without sitting out a year and will be subject to the NCAA’s five-year eligibility rule, with the clock starting the academic year after they turn 19 or when they first enroll full-time in college, whichever comes first.“College sports is at a breaking point,” Cruz wrote in an X post last week, promising the bill would “restore order to a system being torn apart by too few rules and too much litigation.

It establishes national standards for transfers, eligibility, tampering, inducements, and revenue sharing while protecting athletes’ right to earn [name, image and likeness] compensation.“There are hundreds of thousands of college athletes competing today.We should be fighting to protect their scholarships, their roster spots, women’s and Olympic sports, and the institution of college athletics itself,” Cruz added.

“College sports is worth saving, for the athletes, for the schools, for the fans, and for America.”The bill must now pass the House, which is not due back in session until after the Nov.3 midterm election...