The Senate is considering legislation that would impose sweeping new standards across collegiate sports and limit the ability of top college athletes to jump from school to school, wading into a politically charged issue with billions of dollars at stake.
In a strong bipartisan vote, senators agreed on Tuesday to open debate on the Protect College Sports Act, which would establish rules on payments to athletes, provide limited antitrust protection to the N.C.A.A. and set a five-year eligibility window for those playing college sports.
Its backers say it is needed to restore stability to a chaotic environment in which universities engage in bidding wars in what is known as the transfer portal, where top athletes exercise their leverage in pursuit of more compensation, winning records and different coaches.
“Right now, it is the Wild West,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and a chief author of the measure with Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington. He said the legislation would ensure that college sports “remain strong and vibrant for decades to come.”
The bill has also drawn opposition from members of both parties, and faces deep resistance from organized labor and civil rights groups. Opponents contend that the measure would limit the ability of athletes to be financially rewarded for their skills and allow schools and coaches to continue cashing in.
“What this bill does at its core is to protect a system of exploitation,” said Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and a chief opponent of the legislation. He said the “chaos” being alleged by the bill’s backers is mainly an issue with coaches who have to work harder to retain athletes and recruit new ones, at a time when college sports are more popular and lucrative than ever.
“This bill protects the billions of dollars that coaches and sports industry executives are making over the suppression of compensation for some of the most highly valued athletes in the world,” Mr. Murphy said.
Civil rights groups have also registered strong objections, saying that Black and other minority athletes deserve to be treated fairly and share in the financial benefits reaped by schools from the sports programs that rely on their participation. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus oppose the legislation, and all five Black members of the Senate voted against putting it on the floor.
“Sharecropping is over,” Derrick Johnson, the president and chief executive of the N.A.A.C.P., said this week on a media call organized by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “We should not ask athletes, particularly Black athletes, to generate revenue on the football field or basketball court and they share in none of the revenue.”
The furor over collegiate sports grew out of a series of court rulings, including by the Supreme Court, that resulted in college athletes being able to earn compensation for their “name, image and likeness,” or N.I.L. The N.C.A.A. had barred such compensation until it was forced under pressure to change its rules to allow athletes to accept paid endorsement deals. Then, in 2024, the N.C.A.A. changed a rule that had tightly restricted how and when college athletes could move between schools, leading to substantial annual turnover on the rosters of major teams.
Even some lawmakers who back the legislation questioned whether Congress should focus on college athletics weeks before a midterm election in which economic issues have been a primary concern. But Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, had promised the bill’s backers a vote on whether to bring the legislation to the floor after an August recess.
The 74-to-24 vote to proceed was an unusual one in the polarized Senate, dividing both parties. Forty-nine Republicans, 24 Democrats and one independent backed moving forward with the bill. Nineteen Democrats, one independent and four Republicans opposed it.
The legislation takes aim at complex issues that have been litigated and relitigated in courts around the country. It has broad support from major athletic conferences, professional sports leagues, Olympians and prominent coaches, as well as strong backing from President Trump.
Ms. Cantwell, who said the legislation kept the door open to future collective bargaining rights for athletes, added that the current system was threatening the fiscal stability of many institutions struggling to keep up with the financial demands.
“The statistics show that the majority of college athletic departments right now can’t make ends meet,” Ms. Cantwell said, citing a “runaway arms race” in sports spending.
The legislation would guarantee the right to N.I.L. compensation. It would allow one college transfer and require that athletes sit out a year with a second move, though there would be exceptions, such as if a player’s coach were to quit, or if a sport were to be eliminated. The bill also limits midseason coaching moves.
Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who helped negotiate the bill, said multiple new protections for student athletes had been added, including scholarship guarantees, extended health coverage and a 5-percent cap on payments to agents.
“I agree that college athletes deserve their rightful share of the revenue of college athletics, because they are the ones risking their health and taking a beating on the field,” he said. “But if we don’t get some stability in place by dealing with the eligibility problems, the transfer portal and the skyrocketing payments to coaches and athletes, we’re not going to have college sports within another year or two.”
But Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey and a former Stanford football player, was not persuaded. He said the legislation unfairly restricted compensation for players, but not coaches.
“It is doing all kinds of things to stop players from earning money, putting bureaucracy between them and the possibility, but it does nothing to affect coaches,” Mr. Booker said. He noted that coaches at public universities were often the highest-paid public employees in their states.
“This is an unjust bill,” he said.
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