[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 145 (Tuesday, September 15, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4714-S4715]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Protect College Sports Act
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, there is a lot to say in a short period
of time, but we will be having a vote soon to move to proceed to the
Protect College Sports Act, a bill that does deserve the attention of
this institution.
There are lots of things I would like to focus on. I didn't
necessarily call the shot that we were having this vote, but, I will
tell you, it is definitely worth proceeding to.
The importance of protecting college sports is about us working in a
bipartisan basis with a variety of Members on both sides of the aisle
and working with universities across the United States in every
conference and thousands of athletes who want to have a better system.
I think the best thing I can do is to read from a business sports
article by a key individual, and so I am going to do that.
This is Lamell McMorris, a graduate of Morehouse College and, for two
decades, he worked at the intersection of sports and politics,
entertainment, community engagement, and business. He serves as the
vice chair of the National Urban League board of trustees, a board
member of the National Action Network, and a former board member of the
NAACP.
But these views that he is expressing here--it was published
yesterday--are his own. So I am quoting from him in his letter:
College sports are in a free fall, and everyone inside the
game knows it. Universities are borrowing and spending tens
of millions just to keep up, while nonrevenue, women's and
Olympic sports are cut to feed football and men's basketball.
Courts, not campuses, increasingly decide who plays and
where. Smaller schools have become unpaid development leagues
for the giants.
I have spent my [whole] career on both sides of a table
that rarely agree, as the founder of a sports agency
representing athletes, including a No. 1 overall NFL draft
pick, and as a graduate of Morehouse College who loves our
historically Black institutions. From both chairs, I can tell
you the status quo is unsustainable, and the Protect College
Sports Act is the best chance we have to fix it.
Let me say something my former colleagues will not like.
The agent world around these young athletes is largely
unregulated, and too much of it preys on the very [young]
kids it claims to serve. In the pros, agent fees are capped
around 5%; in college, some agents reportedly take 20-25% of
an athlete's NIL deal. Others push players into the transfer
portal chasing an offer that never comes, and more than 40%
of transfers each year risk losing their scholarships and
support. I know this business. It is not built around the
best interests of student-athletes, and this bill finally
brings order to it.
The legislation sets national rules everyone plays by. It
protects Olympic and nonrevenue sports, invests in women's
athletics, strengthens health and safety, safeguards
scholarships, and creates real accountability for schools and
athletes alike. And it directs nearly a billion dollars over
the next six years into HBCUs, through the IGNITE investment
in HBCU sports, media, journalism and broadband. It is why
the United Negro College Fund and the Thurgood Marshall
College Fund, along with more than 360 schools and every
major conference, support it. At a place like Morehouse, home
to a sports-journalism program founded with Spike Lee, that
money is generational.
I do not dismiss the people opposing this bill; several are
friends and allies. The NAACP and the Congressional Black
Caucus have tied it to the fight over Black voting power. Let
me be clear: Voting rights are sacred, and I will stand in
that fight with anyone. But I cannot agree that the way to
wage it is to hold thousands of student-athletes'
scholarships, health protections and futures hostage to a
Supreme Court decision they did not make. Let us fight for
voting rights with everything we have, and let us not make
these young people the collateral.
The other objection, pressed by organized labor, is that
collective bargaining should fix all of this. I wish it were
that simple. More than 80% of Division I schools are public
institutions, and their athletes would be state employees,
outside the reach of federal labor law and, in many states,
barred from bargaining at all. A national bargaining system
would require reopening New Deal-era statutes this Congress
is not going to touch.
[[Page S4715]]
Meanwhile, the protections in this bill are real, and they
are available now.
Is the bill perfect? No. I would still press the House for
full funding for the HBCU investment, not a promise on paper.
But I will not let the perfect be the enemy of the essential.
This is the last, best chance to save college sports and to
put HBCUs at the table where the future gets decided.
I have negotiated against institutions, and for the people
they overlooked. From both chairs, the answer here is the
same. Pass the Protect College Sports Act, in the Senate this
fall and in the House right behind it. Student-athletes need
protection, universities need a sustainable system, and our
HBCUs deserve this investment. The time to act is now.
Mr. President, this letter that I just read from Lamell McMorris I
think is a representative of all the issues combined in this
legislation. I can just tell you that the unsustainable 300-percent
increase in recruiting student-athletes without the proper rules and
regulations is bankrupting our higher education system. Taxpayers are
asked to foot the bill in higher tuition fees that students pay who are
not even athletes. They are going to State legislatures and asking for
bailouts, and they are using university funds that should go to
research and putting them, instead, into what is an arms race.
This bill brings order to this, it helps women's and Olympic sports,
and it sets up a commission to look at the real future, which I think
should include collective bargaining, for what college sports can be
organized in the future.
But none of that can happen, and the 500,000 athletes that are at
risk--because thousands of them have already been cut from the system--
are just going to continue to see failure.
The other night, I talked to the Pac-12 commissioner, who said: I
just met with all the student-athletes in the Pac-12.
She said: You know what the No. 1 question I got from those student-
athletes was?
I said: No. What?
They wanted to know whether their sport was still going to be there.
There is going to be a moment when the United States is standing at
the Olympics, and we are not going to be winning gold or silver or
bronze because we are not going to have the athletes because the
collegiate system will have collapsed, and people won't be funding them
because they will be in an arms race over football.
Let's bring some sanity, recognize that athletes do deserve revenue
sharing, and that this bill will put that into law for the first time--
the first-time athletes will get a Federal preemption on NIL rights and
revenue sharing that will be historic. Let's move forward.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, today, the Senate has an opportunity to do
something that doesn't happen nearly enough in Washington. Republicans
and Democrats can come together, solve a real problem, and protect an
American institution that millions of people love.
College sports today are in crisis. For years, court decisions,
litigation, conflicting State laws, unlimited transfers, eligibility
issues, and inconsistent enforcement have chipped away at the
foundation of college athletics. The result is what we are seeing right
now: the Wild West.
The rules change from State to State, court to court, and season to
season. Athletes don't know what rules will govern them, coaches don't
know what rosters will look like from one year to the next, and schools
don't know what rules they can legally enforce. And fans are watching
traditions and rivalries disappear--traditions and rivalries that have
existed for generations. Doing nothing is not an option.
The Protect College Sports Act is a bipartisan solution designed to
bring order to that chaos. And let me be clear about what this bill
does: It protects the rights of student-athletes to earn money from
their name, image, and likeness. It establishes clear, enforceable
rules governing eligibility and transfers. It provides important
protections for athletes, and it protects scholarships. It protects
women's sports and Olympic sports from being sacrificed in an unchecked
spending arms race. It protects rivalries and traditions that make
college sports unlike anything else in the world. And it gives the
limited legal certainty needed to actually enforce the rules.
The bill doesn't turn back the clock. The NIL era is here, and
student-athletes deserve the opportunity to benefit from their talent
and hard work.
But rights without rules produce chaos, and having rules means very
little if every attempt to enforce them immediately ends up in court.
That is the fundamental question before the Senate today: Do we want
college sports to have clear national enforceable rules or do we want
another decade of lawsuits, conflicting State laws, bidding wars,
roster chaos, and uncertainty?
The status quo is not working, and the people that will ultimately
pay the price if Congress fails to act aren't the highly paid coaches
or conference commissioners. They are the young men and women whose
sports don't generate millions of dollars in television revenue. They
are the swimmers and the wrestlers and the gymnasts and the rowers and
the volleyball players and the track athletes and the thousands of
other student athletes whose opportunities depend upon a healthy
college athletic system.
They are the high school athletes hoping to get that scholarship that
will give them the opportunity to earn a college degree. And they are
the fans who want their kids and grandkids to inherit the rivalries
they grew up loving.
This legislation isn't perfect. No bipartisan legislation is. Senator
Cantwell and I both compromised to get here. But Senator Cantwell and
I, along with many other Senators from both sides of the aisle, have
spent months listening to student-athletes, to coaches, to
universities, to conferences, to Olympic leaders, to professional
sports organizations, and to fans. We found common ground, and now it
is time to act.
When this bill came before the Commerce Committee in June, I said we
were in fourth down territory. Well, the ball is now on the Senate
floor. There is no more time to punt. We can sit on the sidelines and
watch college sports continue to unravel or we can step onto the field
and lead.
I urge my colleagues--Republicans and Democrats--to vote yes on the
Protect College Sports Act. Listen to the 29 conferences that have
endorsed this bill. Listen to the more than 370 universities that have
endorsed this bill. Listen to the historically Black colleges and
universities that are begging the Senate to pass this bill. Listen to
the United Negro College Fund that has endorsed this bill. Listen to
the Thurgood Marshall scholarship fund that has endorsed this bill.
This bill has the support of the NFL, of the NBA, of Major League
Baseball, of the National Hockey League. It has the support of the NBA
Players Association and the NFL Players Association. It has the
enthusiastic support of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
Today is a chance for us to stand up and fight for the half-million
college athletes who are competing right now, because, if the Senate
doesn't act, hundreds of thousands of those students will see their
roster slots go away and their scholarships go away.
Let's fight for the students to protect their rights, to protect
their future. Let's come together and demonstrate that the Senate--
Republicans and Democrats working together--can lead and protect an
institution that is unique and valuable. That is college sports in
America.
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