DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:
The Protect College Sports Act, a bill that promises to bring stability to college sports, is racing to clear some of its final hurdles. It's on a glide path through the Senate, winning votes with big bipartisan majorities. Once it clears final passage there, it will head to the House. I'm joined now in the studio with NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan and NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel. Welcome to you both.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Hi, Debbie.
ERIC MCDANIEL, BYLINE: Hey there.
ELLIOTT: So, Becky, let's start - before we get into this bill, as you well know, I'm a big time college football fan, roll tide. But, you know, it's just remarkable the game is so different now. It's changed so much since athletes have been able to cut these deals for cash. Then we've even seen a school like LSU try to field former pro players. What's going on?
SULLIVAN: Yeah. I mean, you nailed it. College sports really has changed dramatically, I would say, over the last, you know, 10 years and counting. Like, this landslide of litigation has, I think, one by one essentially knocked away all of these NCAA rules that sort of used to govern how college sports works - the big one, of course, being amateurism, as you mentioned, players getting paid now. I don't think the toothpaste is going back in the tube on that one.
But there are all these other rules, like how long players are eligible for, how freely they can transfer between schools - right now, there's no limits on that. And so I think if you talk to folks in college sports, they really paint this picture of quite the chaotic environment, coaches who essentially have to reset their rosters every year. I think, even from the fans' perspective, it can be hard to build investment in your own team when you kind of don't know who these players are year in and year out.
And I think there's a lot of desire within the college sports world - especially, I should say, on the side of schools, conferences and NCAA itself - to rein some of that chaos in, and that is what the authors of this bill say that it's going to do. And so here is Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican of Texas, speaking last week about this.
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TED CRUZ: Right now, it is the Wild West. The Protect College Sports Act is bipartisan legislation designed to bring order to the chaos.
ELLIOTT: So would this bill actually bring order to the chaos?
SULLIVAN: That's what they say. What it does basically, Debbie, is it gives the NCAA some limited antitrust protection in order to kind of reestablish some of those rules. So the five-year eligibility - once you start college, you have five years to play ball once you've graduated from high school. They limit the transfers, that you can only freely transfer between schools once. If you want to do it again, you have to sit out a year, with some exceptions.
It would also more than double what is essentially this new salary cap for universities to directly pay players. That's about $21 million this season. That would double to 48 million. There's some other rules around keeping coaches from departing before the end of the season, other regulations around agents and so on, but those are the big ones.
ELLIOTT: Eric, this does seem to have a little momentum, at least in the Senate, but Congress has been trying to untangle this knot for a while now. What's been the holdup?
MCDANIEL: Right. For all of the reasons, Becky mentioned, there's been an obvious need for regulation since the Supreme Court kicked open this NIL era back in 2021, and there have been tons of competing proposals. This particular bill has been in the works for at least a year now with negotiations between the ranking senators on the committee that has jurisdiction here. That's Republican Ted Cruz and Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington.
The House had some traction on their own reform proposal, but it fell apart after the Congressional Black Caucus pulled their support. That was a protest over the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act a few months ago. And all this time, the Senate has been quietly chipping away at their own proposal, and that is the proposal that's been jumping hurdles in the Senate this week with 70-plus folks supporting it in procedural votes, so big bipartisan majorities.
ELLIOTT: So assuming this will get out of the Senate, it still has to go through the House to make it to the president's desk. How likely is that? And do we even know what Trump thinks about it?
SULLIVAN: I mean, I think the House thing is still a big question. We know that the president supports this bill, but there's a lot of opposition still. I think some folks, especially a lot of Democrats, are worried that this thing is too deferential to the sort of powers in college sports - the NCAA, the big sports conferences. There's also this provision that's concerning to some big schools in California, Florida, the Carolinas, about sort of whether you can transfer between power conferences.
I think that is going to prompt resistance from lawmakers in some of those states. There's concern over the antitrust provisions. There's concern over a lack of possibility for collective bargaining for athletes. There's still a lot of potential for opposition out there.
MCDANIEL: Still, I would say this has momentum. Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, told reporters last week that he would work to get House Republicans on board. I will say, I expect the effort might run into some senioritis problems. The House isn't coming back until after the November elections, so once it clears the Senate, things will go quiet for a couple weeks.
Then you could see attendance problems. There are a record number of House folks retiring, a possibility that Democrats take the chamber, which means some losing Republicans might just stay home. And after all of that, it has to compete with other priorities - right? - boring stuff like, well, funding the government. I'll also be watching to see if Democrats, should they take the House, wait to see if they can negotiate their own deal in the new year.
ELLIOTT: All right. Well, we'll wait and see. NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel and NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan. Thank you both for coming in.
MCDANIEL: Thank you.
SULLIVAN: Thanks, Debbie. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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