Senate Votes 74-24 to Advance College Sports Overhaul Bill, NAACP and Four Black Senators Oppose It

The Senate voted 74-24 on Tuesday, September 15, to invoke cloture on the Protect College Sports Act, clearing the 60-vote threshold needed to move the bill toward a final floor vote, according to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the Associated Press.

The bill, introduced in late May by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), would create the first federal framework for college athlete compensation, replacing a patchwork of state NIL laws with national rules on transfers, eligibility, agent fees and health benefits. It would also hand the NCAA antitrust immunity to enforce its own rules, something the association has wanted for years.

Cruz told the chamber before the vote the choice was between "clear, national, enforceable rules" or "another decade of lawsuits, conflicting state laws, bidding wars, roster chaos, and uncertainty," according to ABC News. Cantwell called it a chance to "bring some sanity" to a system where athletes "do deserve revenue sharing," per the Commerce Committee's own release, and said the bill sets up a commission to study collective bargaining down the road.

In the bill

The bill would write into law the 22% revenue-sharing cap, roughly $21.5 million this year, that schools already agreed to in the House settlement governing player pay, according to the Associated Press. It adds a $27.5 million "retention pool" designed to pull some of the chaotic third-party NIL deals back in-house.

It would also let conferences pool their TV media rights, a move backers say could generate between $4 billion and $8 billion in additional revenue, though the AP reports the SEC and Big Ten don't agree on how that should work. Cantwell's office released a companion report the same day showing institutional and government support for athletics at 53 Power Four schools with public data rose $519.9 million between 2015 and 2025, a spending trend the bill's authors say is unsustainable.

Where the opposition comes from

The vote wasn't unanimous, and the dissent has a specific shape. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said the bill "at its core" protects "a system of exploitation," according to the Associated Press. All four Black Democrats in the Senate, Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks, voted no, and the NAACP has come out against the bill.

The concern, as Murphy and the NAACP frame it, is that locking the 22% cap into federal law and granting the NCAA antitrust immunity gives schools and conferences legal cover to hold compensation down without giving athletes anything like the bargaining leverage of a union. Critics quoted by ABC News and its sister station abc13 argue the bill could reduce athletes' earning potential and bargaining power through caps and new regulatory restrictions, even as it hands the NCAA more enforcement authority.

Supporters counter that the bill is the first federal law to guarantee revenue sharing at all, and pairs it with new protections: scholarship guarantees, in-season and post-career health coverage, an athlete ombudsman, whistleblower protections, and a formal seat at the table for athletes on rules that affect them, according to the Commerce Committee's summary. Cantwell herself has floated collective bargaining as a future step through the commission the bill would create, not something this bill delivers on its own.

Both claims concern a bill that hasn't become law yet, so neither the exploitation warning nor the stability promise can be checked against results. The text includes a hard revenue cap, NCAA antitrust immunity, and no collective bargaining mechanism beyond a study commission.

The trigger everyone's citing

The vote landed a week after the Southeastern Conference nearly moved to expel LSU over a canceled plan to roster players who'd attended NFL training camps. Cantwell told the Associated Press this was "like a big lamp for some people" who realized "how out-of-hand the situation was getting." The eligibility lawsuit behind that mess is exactly the kind of litigation the bill is designed to preempt.

John Calipari, the Arkansas head basketball coach, has publicly backed the bill, telling Fox News Radio's Rundown podcast that unchecked spending is putting athletic departments in financial jeopardy and that younger, less-connected recruits are getting squeezed out by an unregulated transfer portal favoring older transfers.

President Trump has said he would sign the bill "immediately," according to ABC News. The House of Representatives presents the bigger obstacle. The AP notes it has repeatedly failed to pass its own version of college sports legislation. The Senate still needs a final floor vote before the bill even reaches that chamber.