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College sports just hit a wall in Washington. The Senate wrapped up its August session without voting on the Protect College Sports Act, and now the bill’s fate is up in the air heading into September.
It’s a tough break for college sports administrators who’ve spent millions of dollars and countless hours trying to get Congress to step in on issues like player compensation. Conference commissioners have been especially vocal about needing federal help, and for a while, this bill looked like the best shot they’ve had in seven years of lobbying.
Remember the SCORE Act? That was the House version everyone was excited about earlier this year. It never even got a floor vote.
Cruz Says the Fight Isn’t Over
Senator Ted Cruz, one of the bill’s co-authors, isn’t ready to call it dead. “Our work is not over,” Cruz said in a statement provided to CBS Sports. “The good news is that when the Senate returns in September, the Protect College Sports Act will be one of our first orders of business, having locked in a vote. We will get the bill to President Trump’s desk and deliver results for hundreds of thousands of student athletes and bring stability to college athletics.”
So what’s actually in this bill? The big one is money. The PCSA would jack up the revenue-sharing cap from $21.3 million to $48.8 million, with $22.5 million of that specifically set aside to help schools retain their current athletes.
That’s a massive jump. But it comes with strings attached, including a harder salary cap and rules meant to crack down on schools using fake NIL (name, image and likeness) deals to get around revenue-sharing limits under the House settlement.
The bill also includes a limited antitrust exemption, which would let the NCAA and conferences standardize eligibility rules and bring back the one-time transfer policy. On top of that, agent fees would be capped at 5%, and there’s language specifically written to stop conferences from ballooning beyond 19 schools, essentially blocking any future superconference land grab.
Big Ten and SEC Support Wasn’t Enough
Just last Friday, the Big Ten and SEC publicly threw their support behind the bill after months of back-and-forth negotiations. That felt like a turning point.
Senator Eric Schmitt, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told CBS Sports on Monday he thought that support could translate into as many as 80 votes in the Senate. Cruz was optimistic too, pointing to a coalition that included 27 athletic conferences, the NCAA, the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic committees, and the players unions for both the NFL and NBA.
“This bill is going to pass,” Cruz told CBS Sports, “and it’s going to pass this week out of the Senate.”
That confidence didn’t hold up.
Republican senators Tommy Tuberville and John Kennedy, both from southern states, pushed back against the bill. By Friday, 10 separate objections had been filed by Republican senators, according to reports. The Congressional Black Caucus also came out against the PCSA that same week, which didn’t help matters at a moment when the bill needed all the momentum it could get.
President Trump even weighed in, posting on Truth Social that lawmakers should “stop grandstanding, and get this done.” It didn’t matter. The Senate left for recess early Saturday morning without ever bringing the bill to a floor vote.
What Happens in September?
The Senate is back in session on Sept. 14, which sets up a potential vote then. But the path forward looks rockier than it did a week ago.
Here’s the problem: the closer Congress gets to the November midterms, the less likely anything controversial gets passed. That’s just how Washington works. And even if the Senate somehow pushes this through, it still has to clear the House.
Schmitt was blunt about the timing issue earlier in the week. “You get into September and we’re going to have all kinds of partisan funding fights, and then you’re at the midterms,” he told CBS Sports. “This really was the operative week, and I think the conferences understood this.”
Senator Maria Cantwell, another co-sponsor, struck a more hopeful tone in her statement to CBS Sports. “Time may have run out to protect college sports in August but there is plenty of time in September,” she said. “I’m glad Senator Thune set a date certain in September to bring it up because the challenges facing student athletes and universities aren’t going away.”
For now, though, college sports enters another football season without the federal protection administrators have been chasing for years. The lawsuits keep coming, the pressure keeps building, and the wait for Washington to actually do something continues.
