The long-awaited and deeply debated Protect College Sports Act was hanging by a thread Thursday night. By Friday morning, it had a pulse, and by the end of the night, one of the senators heavily involved in the negotiations, Sen. Eric Schmitt, was celebrating with a cold Busch Light.
The Big Ten and SEC, the two conferences whose silence had threatened to sink the Protect College Sports Act before the August congressional recess, voted to support the sweeping bipartisan legislation Friday on separate calls with their presidents and chancellors.
“Glad to have their support, ” Sen. Ted Cruz, co-author of the bill, said late Friday night. “Now it’s time to get the bill through Congress and on to President Trump’s desk. Let’s save college sports.”
The support came after a day of grinding negotiations that produced the one thing the conferences had been waiting for: the right language to prevent schools from circumventing the revenue-sharing cap by routing money to athletes through corporate sponsors and multimedia rights partners.
Schmitt, a Missouri Republican who co-authored the bill alongside Cruz of Texas and Maria Cantwell of Washington, was in the middle of it all.
It started with the White House. The Trump administration sent an unmistakable signal Friday morning, urging passage of the bill and adding institutional pressure to a process that had stalled overnight, sources told CBS Sports. Congressional staff, conference leaders and lawmakers had been grinding through the associated entities provision for days, and the calendar was running out.
The central sticking point, as CBS Sports reported, was the associated entities language, the provision designed to prevent circumvention of the revenue-sharing cap through arrangements with school-affiliated corporate sponsors and multimedia companies.
“You wanted to sort of head off ways to circumvent that, this kind of redirection that’s happened where it’s a wink and a nod,” Schmitt told CBS Sports. “Don’t give us the money, give it to players X, Y, and Z, and it never really shows up. That’s how you end up with football rosters that are like double or triple potentially what the number is.”
The fix: an attestation requirement from outside entities, apparel companies and multimedia rights partners, certifying that deals with individual players are separate from any institutional arrangement and subject to the Collegiate Sports Commission’s review process.
The language went back and forth through the day. When it finally landed, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey brought Schmitt onto the call with SEC presidents and chancellors to help push it across the goal line.
The Big Ten and SEC each voted yes. Both conferences released a joint statement: “The Big Ten Conference and Southeastern Conference support the Protect College Sports Act as currently drafted, following detailed and productive negotiations with Senators Cruz, Cantwell and Schmitt and their respective staffs. We appreciate the substantial work that has gone into this effort.”
One of the provisions effectively increased the revenue-share cap: $21.3 million in revenue sharing from the House settlement, plus a $22.5 million retention pool exception and an additional $5 million for non-revenue sports NIL. In total, schools can pay players as much as $48.8 million annually.
Schmitt said the market essentially validated where negotiations landed. The Big Ten and SEC initially asked for $25 million. Earlier, Notre Dame’s Pete Bevacqua was asked if collectives were eliminated with a hard cap, what would the number be?
“The number was $50 million,” Schmitt said. “And as it turns out, that’s kind of where we ended up. That’s sort of where the market is. So if you’re SEC or Big Ten, you’re going to have schools that are above that. You’re going to have schools that are below that. That’s probably about the mean. It isn’t so far out of reach that ACC, Big 12 or even Group of Six is going to be a challenge.”
The bill reaches well beyond money.
On the field, it locks in protections for women’s and Olympic sports that conference leaders and university presidents have long demanded. The NCAA and Division I conferences would be prohibited from reducing the number of varsity teams, minimum roster participants or intercollegiate competitions schools must sponsor for FBS membership.
For athletes, the bill guarantees one transfer without losing eligibility and establishes specific exceptions for additional transfers.
The bill also takes direct aim at the coaching carousel. Football coaches and key staff would be prohibited from leaving mid-season to effectively take over another FBS program, whether through recruiting, roster management, NIL activity or game-planning.
On media, the bill creates a targeted antitrust exemption allowing schools and conferences to voluntarily pool and sell their media rights, mirroring the framework that exists for professional sports leagues, but only if 75% of current FBS schools agree – practically all membership outside the Big Ten and SEC.
The bill also effectively caps conference expansion among the most powerful conferences to 19 teams, which means the Big Ten can only add one more program.
A late addition this week, Title III, addresses Historically Black Colleges and Universities’ access to the growing college sports media landscape, though the specific text had not been made public as of Friday. The provision caught some conference leaders off guard earlier this week, sources said.
Reaction to the news Friday was swift across Washington, D.C. and the high-major conferences in college sports.
“Good. Now progress can be made in protecting women and Olympic athletes and moving this legislation closer to the President’s desk,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, one of the bill’s authors, said in a statement.
The Big 12 and ACC, the other two big conferences in the Power Four, supported the bill shortly after its introduction in June. Both reiterated their support in statements Friday night.
“We are encouraged to see the Big Ten and SEC join the Big 12, the ACC and so many others in support of the Protect College Sports Act,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said. “Broad alignment around a practical, sustainable framework that supports student-athletes, institutions, conferences and fans is an important step forward for college athletics.”
Schmitt was emphatic about the urgency that drove Friday’s breakthrough with the Big Ten and SEC. Members of Congress left the Capitol late Thursday and are not set to return until Sunday for the final session before summer recess begins next Friday. “Once you get past Monday, it’s over,” he said. “So this week and the rest of today, I suppose, was important.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is expected to file for cloture as early as Monday, with a floor vote potentially as soon as midweek, though the timeline could slip into the weekend beyond the recess date, Schmitt said. Schmitt acknowledged that educating colleagues who haven’t tracked the legislation closely would be part of the work ahead.
“A lot of people will say, hey, what’s going on with this thing? And they’re just not as intricately involved,” Schmitt said. “It’ll give an opportunity now to kind of give the full-fledged sales pitch at the lunches, colleague to colleague. So I think the momentum will grow.”
To Schmitt, the stakes justify every phone call.
“I just think culturally, this is such an everyday thing people care about,” he said. “A lot of things we do up there, people don’t give a shit. But they care about their teams and they care about college football. I just felt like this was important.”
Six weeks before the college football season kicks off, the sport’s most powerful stakeholders finally got to yes. Now the ball is in Congress’ hands.
Brandon Marcello
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