Maria Cantwell

WASHINGTON – More than two-thirds of the Senate voted late Monday night to pass legislation co-authored by Sen. Maria Cantwell aimed at restoring order to college sports, but the bill may face stiffer opposition in the House.

The Washington Democrat crafted the Protect College Sports Act along with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, her Republican counterpart on the Senate Commerce Committee. Before the pair unveiled their bill in May, federal lawmakers had struggled for years to find a bipartisan solution to the seismic changes that have reshaped the multibillion-dollar college sports industry following a 2021 Supreme Court decision that let student athletes start earning money for their labor.

In a speech on the Senate floor before the vote, Cantwell acknowledged the bill’s detractors, including some of her fellow Democrats who prefer to give athletes collective bargaining rights, but she argued it represents “a monumental step” to rein in an industry run amok. Despite some opposition in both parties, it passed by a vote of 77-22.

“There are several things in this bill that are really important to enshrine into federal law at this time,” she said. “But compensation on revenue sharing is probably the most important thing we could possibly enshrine in federal law today. This is saying, for the first time, that an athlete gets a percentage of the media rights, the ticket sales and the sponsorship.”

In addition to that compensation, the bill codifies the ability of college athletes to earn money for the use of their name, image and likeness while adding guardrails to the practice.

It also gives the NCAA a limited exemption from antitrust laws, shielding the governing body from legal challenges so it can regulate transfers, compensation, eligibility and other contentious issues.

The legislation limits that compensation to $50 million per year for each school, requiring at least $5 million to be reserved for Olympic and women’s sports. It would also require schools that earn more than $80 million a year to keep Olympic and women’s sports, which typically draw far less revenue than football and men’s basketball.

It would limit students to five years of eligibility and let them transfer between schools just once, with some exceptions, and set minimum standards for health and safety. And it attempts to stem the consolidation of schools into “power” conferences, limiting those conferences to 20 schools and requiring schools to go independent for three years if they change conferences.

Most of Cantwell’s fellow Northwest senators voted for the bill, including Washington Democrat Patty Murray, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden and Idaho Republicans Mike Crapo and Jim Risch. Those who voted no included Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., while Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, didn’t vote.

Mark Few, the men’s basketball coach at Gonzaga University, warned Cantwell’s committee in 2021 the future of college sports was in jeopardy if Congress didn’t act. The newly minted Hall of Famer returned to the Capitol on Sept. 14 to speak in favor of the bill, calling it imperfect but worth passing to restore order to a landscape where athletes routinely transfer between schools multiple times in a college career and major universities have left regional athletic conferences in favor of lucrative television deals.

In the past five years, members of Congress have introduced dozens of bills intended to “bring order to the chaos consuming the new era of college sports,” as Cruz said in speech on the Senate floor Sept. 22. In July 2025, Cantwell teamed up with Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, to block another bipartisan proposal endorsed by the NCAA, which the two Washington lawmakers argued would benefit the biggest schools in the so-called “power” conferences at the expense of smaller programs.

Baumgartner is the lead sponsor of the Protect College Sports Act in the House, and he wrote Monday on X that the bill “will have a better than 50% chance in the House.”

Even if the legislation has enough support to pass the lower chamber, its opponents may be able to run out the clock. The House has just five weeks of work scheduled before a new Congress begins in January, and additional changes made in the House would need to be reconciled with the Senate version before heading to the desk of President Donald Trump, who has said he would sign the bill into law.