Maria Cantwell, Ted Cruz strike deal to 'protect college sports' by regulating pay, transfers and more
May 27-Sen. Maria Cantwell on Wednesday unveiled a bipartisan bill she negotiated with Sen. Ted Cruz that proposes a sweeping set of regulations for college sports that address athlete pay, transfers between schools and more.
The Washington Democrat and Texas Republican, who lead their respective parties on the Senate committee with jurisdiction over collegiate athletics, plan to introduce the Protect College Sports Act when Congress returns to the Capitol next week. In an interview, Cantwell cited a recent move by Washington State University's governing board - which diverted $20 million to its athletics program in March to fill a projected budget shortfall - as a "prime example" of the impending "demise of college sports" her bill aims to reverse.
"I want to see true competition and preserve those roster slots that are being cut as people try to compete in this Wild West environment," she said. "It creates a more true, level competition, instead of an arms race where only two divisions and only maybe, like, eight schools in those divisions end up being the top teams."
The bill would give the NCAA a narrow antitrust exemption, a legal shield to let the organization set rules governing players' eligibility and transferring between schools without being challenged in court. It would create a nationwide standard for college athletes' compensation through so-called "NIL" deals that have proliferated since a 2021 Supreme Court ruling that gave student athletes the right to profit from their "name, image and likeness."
While the legislation lets the NCAA create and enforce transfer rules, it guarantees athletes one transfer, with certain exceptions. It would also bar coaches from moving between schools during the season, such as football coach Lane Kiffin's infamous move from Ole Miss to Louisiana State University in 2025.
The bill would impose a compensation cap for direct payments from schools to athletes, effectively codifying part of a 2025 legal settlement that established revenue sharing between schools for a decade. It includes a provision to block the potential creation of a "super league" by a merger of the SEC and Big Ten conferences. And it would let conferences pool media rights, a potential benefit for schools like WSU that have lost significant revenue as a result of conference realignment.
The Cantwell-Cruz bill was announced the week after another major college sports bill, the SCORE Act, stalled in the House of Representatives amid bipartisan opposition. Cantwell and Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Spokane Republican, have been among the loudest critics of the SCORE Act.
Baumgartner, who introduced his own bill in 2025 that would dissolve the NCAA, voiced support for Cantwell's new bill in a post on X.
"I applaud Sen. Cruz and Sen. Cantwell for their hard work putting this bill together," the Eastern Washington congressman wrote. "Many interesting provisions that attempt to move the ball in the right direction of protecting what is special about college sports."
In the interview, Cantwell said she and her staff have been working on college sports legislation since she became chair of the Senate Commerce Committee in 2021, and continuing when Republicans retook the Senate majority, elevating Cruz to the chair position. What she hoped would be a relatively easy legislative project before moving on to her top priority - safeguarding the privacy of Americans' personal data - turned into a yearslong process that culminated in several weeks of intense negotiations with Cruz before the bill was unveiled Wednesday, she said.
Gonzaga men's basketball coach Mark Few warned the Senate Commerce Committee in 2021 that "the future of college sports is in jeopardy." In 2023, Pat Chun, then WSU's athletic director, told a House panel led by then-Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, that federal legislation was necessary to protect student athletes from fraud in the nascent NIL industry.
"College sports are at a breaking point," Cruz said in a statement Wednesday. "Fans can see their favorite teams being hollowed out by transfer chaos, fake NIL bidding wars, eligibility lawsuits, and a system that allows the richest programs to keep pulling away. The Protect College Sports Act is a bipartisan plan to restore order."
The Cantwell-Cruz bill doesn't directly address the question of whether college athletes should be considered employees, which proved to be one of the most contentious parts of the SCORE Act. Instead, the new bill is explicitly "neutral" on that issue and would leave it up to a commission to decide in the future.
The legislation has the support of President Donald Trump's Council on College Sports, which sent a letter to Cantwell and Cruz on May 18, the same day it became clear that the SCORE Act would fail to pass the House. Cantwell said the Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing on the bill soon after senators return to the Capitol from their Memorial Day recess.
Orion Donovan Smith's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
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