{"id":695,"date":"2026-05-28T11:09:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T11:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homebuyerrelocation.com\/?p=695"},"modified":"2026-05-28T11:09:50","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T11:09:50","slug":"cruz-cantwell-look-to-break-college-sports-logjam-in-congress-with-a-bipartisan-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homebuyerrelocation.com\/?p=695","title":{"rendered":"Cruz, Cantwell look to break college sports logjam in Congress with a bipartisan bill"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two key senators involved in a long-simmering debate over fixing college sports will introduce a bipartisan bill designed to break a congressional logjam that would regulate payments to players, limit them to one \u201cfree\u201d transfer over their careers and create a \u201cLane Kiffin Rule\u201d to restrict coach movement during the season.<\/p>\n

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Sens. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, and Maria Cantwell, Washington Democrat, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees college sports, briefed The Associated Press on details of the bill they crafted in hopes it can get the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a stability bill, not just an NIL bill,\u201d Mr. Cruz said, referencing the name, image and likeness payments that have led to football rosters with $30 million payrolls and reshaped the industry.<\/p>\n

Ms. Cantwell said she and Mr. Cruz teamed up on the legislation \u201cbecause he and I really do believe the college sports system is in a bit of chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill looks very much like the \u201cbest of\u201d from a pair of legislative proposals \u2014 one called SCORE, another called SAFE \u2014 that have gone nowhere over the past several months. It contains two elements the NCAA has supported: a limited antitrust exemption and a clause that would preempt much of the patchwork of state laws currently regulating NIL.<\/p>\n

Meredith Page, the chair of the NCAA Division I Student Athlete Advocacy Committee and a former volleyball player at Radford, called the bill \u201ca phenomenal step,\u201d especially after the latest setback for the SCORE Act, which the SAAC also supported.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this has lots of great protections and gives the ability for us to stabilize the field that is so, so unstable right now,\u201d Ms. Page said.<\/p>\n

NCAA President Charlie Baker said the association was reviewing the bill and looked forward to \u201cfurther productive dialogue with members of Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antitrust help<\/strong><\/p>\n

College sports has been looking to Washington for help as it grapples with rising costs of paying players and an out-of-control transfer portal that have threatened smaller sports, many involving women, that make up the backbone of the U.S. Olympic pipeline.<\/p>\n

This bill, called the Protect College Sports Act, would offer what Mr. Cruz and Ms. Cantwell said was targeted antitrust protection for the likes of the NCAA and the College Sports Commission, which was part of the largely Republican-backed SCORE Act that many Democrats opposed. That would be in exchange for what Cruz said would be \u201cpublic-facing protections\u201d for athletes in several areas, including guarantees for health insurance and scholarships, more stringent regulations for NIL deals from third parties and agents who broker their deals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s better predictability,\u201d Ms. Cantwell said. \u201cWhy did we do it? Because when you\u2019ve got thousands of athletes being cut, hundreds of programs being cut, the risk to the whole infrastructure was too high to not try to get better predictability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rules for players and coaches<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bill would limit players to one unrestricted transfer over the course of their college careers \u2014 a widely supported idea across the country \u2014 and would adopt something close to the five-year eligibility period that the NCAA appears ready to enact next month.<\/p>\n

The bill also tries to regulate coaching movement. Kiffin\u2019s sudden move to LSU from rival Mississippi while the Rebels were preparing for the College Football Playoff last season put a fine point on an issue that has only gotten worse in an era where teams spend millions to fill out rapidly shifting football rosters: Schools have less patience (and more money) to devote to hiring coaches for a quick fix.<\/p>\n

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Under terms of the bill, midseason coaching changes would be prohibited.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not fair or right to poach a coach in the middle of the season while the team is still competing,\u201d Mr. Cruz said. \u201cThere\u2019s a reason the NFL has a rule that you can\u2019t do that. Obviously, NFL teams hire coaches away from each other but they don\u2019t do so in the middle of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Media rights money<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bill would rework the Sports Broadcasting Act to allow conferences to pool their TV rights \u2014 a move proponents have said could add billions of dollars to the ecosystem in a conclusion the Southeastern and Big Ten Conferences believe is inaccurate.<\/p>\n

The senators said leagues wouldn\u2019t be required to join the media pooling but those that do would have to use a percentage of any increase from that to support women\u2019s and Olympic sports. That alone could be a dealbreaker for the SEC, which has reportedly been discussing topics including breaking away from the NCAA and allowing collective bargaining for athletes at its league meetings in Florida this week.<\/p>\n

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, along with Jim Phillips of the Atlantic Coast and Brett Yormark of the Big 12 all said they were reviewing the bill, with Sankey saying \u201cbipartisan engagement in Washington on these issues is critical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can the measure pass?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The SCORE Act, which garnered little support from Democrats, was on the House schedule last week but was abruptly pulled off when the Congressional Black Caucus and NAACP came out against it. Even if it had squeaked by in the razor-tight House, it had virtually no chance of passing as written in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to break a possible filibuster.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Congressional Black Caucus and I have the same objective: stop the \u2018SEC SCORE Act,\u2019\u201d said Ms. Cantwell, referencing the SEC as one of dozens of conferences who have supported that bill.<\/p>\n

Some Democrats were reluctant to support a bill, like SCORE, that prohibited college athletes from being classified as employees of their schools. The new bill takes what Ms. Cantwell said was a neutral stance on the issue of employment.<\/p>\n

But it does not resolve all of Democrats\u2019 complaints, as Sen. Chris Murphy, Connecticut Democrat, explained in a news release shortly after news of the bill hit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives the NCAA an antitrust exemption that no other industry gets just so they can keep underpaying the athletes,\u201d he said. \u201cSure, there are some good things for players in this bill, but this seems like a great deal for the NCAA and the rich guys who run college sports, and a bad deal for athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mit Winter, a Missouri attorney who specializes in sports law, said the proposal was so sprawling he was skeptical it will pass as is.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you start getting into the stuff about giving the CSC and NCAA antitrust exemptions and liability protection from enforcing rules on athlete denial of compensation, I think that\u2019s where things get a little more dicey,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Two key senators involved in a long-simmering debate over fixing college sports will introduce a bipartisan bill designed to break a congressional logjam that would regulate payments to players, limit them to one “free” transfer over their careers and create a “Lane Kiffin Rule” to restrict coach movement during the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[552,554,553],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-maria-cantwell","tag-protect-college-sports-act","tag-ted-cruz"],"yoast_head":"\nCruz, Cantwell look to break college sports logjam in Congress with a bipartisan bill - Home Buyer Relocation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/homebuyerrelocation.com\/?p=695\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cruz, Cantwell look to break college sports logjam in Congress with a bipartisan bill - 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