The Protect College Sports Act aims to solve many of the issues facing college sports as it transitions to a more professionalized era. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesDan MurphySep 23, 2026, 01:23 PM ETCloseDan Murphy is a reporter on ESPN’s investigative and enterprise team. Reach him at daniel.murphy@espn.com.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsThe U.S. Senate is planning to vote in the coming days on a bill that would significantly shape the future of college sports.The Protect College Sports Act addresses myriad topics that are contributing to an unstable and often messy period for the college sports industry as it transitions to a more professional model for its biggest schools and most popular sports. The bill is the result of more than a half-decade of steady lobbying from the NCAA, conferences, their schools and other advocacy groups.
It will be the first bill on this topic to make it to a full Senate vote, and if approved would move on to debate in the House of Representatives, where it could change.In the past two weeks, lawmakers and others have made a major push to try to draw attention to the bill. Supporters have made bold claims that the treasured American institution of college sports will be irreparably harmed if Congress doesn’t act. Opponents say the bill is an attempt to restore authority to a set of power brokers who have a long history of exploiting athletes. Both sides have dabbled in bad sports analogies, hyperbolic warnings and misleading statements.As a crucial vote approaches, let’s sort the truths from the myths in some of the public statements on the issue and add context to how the college sports system currently works and what the Protect College Sports Act would actually do to change it.”This is about reining in the bad practices that are happening in college sports today, the runaway costs… [and] the runaway arms race in sports spending.” — Sen.
Maria Cantwell (D), co-author of the PCSAThe PCSA increases the amount of money schools can spend on direct payments to their players by $27.5 million, more than doubling the current $21.5-million spending cap. The bill does not include any provision that would require or encourage athletic departments to spend less money.The bill does try to crack down on the common practice among wealthy teams of funneling “above-the-cap” money to their players by arranging endorsement deals that serve as de facto added payroll. Cantwell argues that a law that creates a hard cap on player payments will help stop the spending race.The college sports industry tried to install a hard cap last June through the House Settlement, a deal that ended a series of antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA and its power conferences and established new rules about how athletes are paid. The leagues built a new enforcement group called the College Sports Commission to make sure the name, image and likeness deals athletes sign with groups other than their schools are legitimate endorsements.So far the CSC has been unsuccessful because rich teams and boosters have not committed to following the rules they helped to negotiate in the House Settlement.
Despite a cap of $21.5 million this year, roughly 30 football teams have a payroll of $30 million or more, according to industry sources that help facilitate player payments. About half of those teams have payrolls that exceed $40 million.”There would have been a lot of criticism if that number would have been just at the House Settlement number,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told ESPN when asked about the large increase in the spending cap. “Are you going to see a lot of Group of 6 schools hit that number?
Maybe not right away. But you’ve got a chance now with a structured deal so this doesn’t continue to spiral.If the PCSA becomes law, the CSC would have more legal backing to be able to enforce those rules. Schools that circumvent the cap would risk violating federal law. However, it’s not clear if that increased power will be enough to stop the current methods for circumventing the cap, nor does it stop teams and their funders from potentially finding new loopholes to exploit.Even if a new law does successfully cap direct payments to players, college sports programs have a long history of devising creative ways to spend money on things like facility upgrades or increased support staff to get an advantage over their rivals in recruiting.
In a report published last week, Cantwell shared that from 2005 to 2023 (before schools began paying players directly) the college sports arms race caused increases of 322% in recruiting costs, 300% in sports equipment and “a whopping 370%” in coaching salaries.The PCSA makes no effort to tamp down those costs or dissuade schools from continuing to spend beyond their means in any of those expense categories. The bill does create a commission that is tasked with studying “whether any intercollegiate sport should be subject to spending or cost limitations.” Cantwell did not respond directly to questions about why the bill made no effort to cap any athletics spending other than money directly flowing to players.”If we don’t act, we will see 30 to 50 competitive football programs in this country and the remainder of the programs go under.” — Sen. Ted Cruz (R), co-author of the PCSAThe authors of the PCSA have said they set out to maintain the current “big tent” format of FBS-level football by slowing conference realignment and providing an opportunity for multiple conferences to negotiate future TV rights deals as a group, a change that would likely increase the money flowing to those schools.The bill prevents Power 4 conferences from growing beyond a total of 19 teams. The Big Ten currently has 18 teams.
The SEC has 16. It would also force any school wanting to jump from one Power 4 conference to another to spend three years as an independent before joining the new league — although that waiting period would no longer apply after 2031.These provisions were designed to keep the Big Ten and SEC — both of which have a sizable financial advantage over other conferences — from merging and creating a new “super league” that would create a permanent divide between them and the roughly 100 other FBS teams. After a June hearing on the bill, Cantwell said “we’re not going to let the most powerful and richest conferences dictate to the rest of America what’s going to happen to 500,000 athletes.”However, during the next two months, the Big Ten and SEC withheld their support until lawmakers doubled the salary cap, giving their schools a path to maintaining their significant financial advantage.The current cap limit ($21.5 million) was designed so that schools like West Virginia and Wake Forest could have a chance to build their roster with roughly the same spending power as Ohio State and Texas. So far, it has not been successful.
According to industry sources, the richest programs are spending tens of millions more than other Power 4 schools.That new cap more realistically meets the market for the couple dozen teams at the rich end of the spectrum who are already spending at least $30 million on just their football payroll. Other teams will likely struggle to find ways to keep pace in recruiting.Rather than leveling the playing field, which was what most college sports officials have repeatedly asked Congress to do, the new cap could end up cementing the gap between the haves and the have-mores with a federal law. Cruz declined multiple requests for an interview from ESPN for this story.The PCSA’s potential impact on future conference affiliations and TV rights deals has media companies — including ESPN, Fox Sports and their parent companies — heavily invested in the outcome.Disney, along with companies such as Paramount Skydance, parent of CBS, reported in financial documents that they paid for lobbying on college sports legislation.And both ESPN chairman James Pitaro and Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks w
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