● A bipartisan bill announced Wednesday would create an antitrust exemption that allows schools and athletic conferences to “sell their lucrative television rights as one large group,” ESPN reports. The bill — being sponsored by U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington State — is titled the Protect College Sports Act of 2026.
● The antitrust exemption would grant the NCAA the ability to enforce a series of rules that have drawn legal challenges, including: Limiting athletes to just one transfer without penalty; restricting athlete eligibility to five years; and preventing coaches from leaving one program midseason to take over a competing program at another school, according to ESPN.
● The bill would further establish salary caps for student-athletes and restrict their agents from charging fees that exceed 5% of the value of any endorsement contracts they secure, according to text of the bill and ESPN.
The bigger picture:
The proposed legislation comes at a time when college sports is undergoing ongoing and radical shifts due to the 2025 House v. NCAA settlement that has enabled student athletes to profit from endorsement deals known as name, image and likeness deals, or NIL deals.
The deals have set off a wave of concerns about whether they are helping or hurting college sports. For instance, while the deals enable students to sell their personal brand, some observers worry that the deals are becoming too much of a distraction. They also worry about institutions finding ways to bypass regulations by using third party “collectives” to use NIL deals as what The Athletic described as a “recruiting tool” and a “de facto pay-for-play device.”
Sponsors of the bill are touting it as one that would “end the chaos” and bring more stability to transfers, eligibility, recruiting, tampering, and NIL rights. They also say it will “make TV money work for college sports” and “restore competitive balance to ensure all schools, not just the blue bloods, can compete.”
CBS Sports says the bill “carries the prize college sports leaders have chased for the better part of a decade.” That prize, CBS says, is a “limited antitrust exemption” that would serve as a “legal shield that would let the industry write its own rules and enforce them without being challenged in the court system by players seeking additional years on the playing fields and courts.”
