The Senate on Monday approved a sweeping bipartisan college sports bill aimed at bringing order to an industry transformed by soaring athlete compensation and largely unrestricted movement between schools.
The legislation passed by an overwhelming 77-22 vote, marking Congress’ strongest effort yet to establish nationwide rules for college athletes’ name, image and likeness payments and transfer rights. It would restore authority to the NCAA to oversee those regulations while granting the organization limited antitrust protections to enforce them.
The measure follows years of negotiations in the Senate, which accelerated after a 2025 lawsuit settlement dramatically altered college athletics by allowing schools to pay their players directly.
The bill still must clear the House. If enacted, it would write the settlement into federal law while adding new limits intended to slow rapidly rising costs for colleges.
“It would be nice if college sports could somehow magically fix itself, but this is a matter of law, federal law, and only Congress can fix it,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz. He negotiated the legislation with the panel’s top Democrat, Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell.
More than 70 senators from both parties backed the bill, saying it would reduce the lawsuits and uncertainty affecting athletes, universities and fans. Supporters also say the legislation would provide new health and labor protections for hundreds of thousands of student-athletes.
The Senate passed a sweeping bipartisan college sports bill on Monday following a lengthy delay
Opponents counter that the bill falls short of protecting athletes and does little to address the vast sums flowing to coaches, schools and athletic conferences.
“This is a bill that essentially ensconces a system of exploitation, and it doesn´t fix the broader problems,” said Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat who has joined labor and civil rights groups in opposing the measure.
The legislation’s path forward remains uncertain.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly shown interest in the proposal, and the White House formally endorsed it last month. Yet the bill could face significant obstacles in the House, which failed several times over the past year to bring a separate version to the floor and is scheduled to remain in recess until after the November elections.
If both chambers do not approve the bill by the end of the year, lawmakers will need to begin the process again in the next Congress.
College sports have been navigating major upheaval since the 2025 court settlement permitted schools to pay athletes directly for their name, image and likeness. The changes have reshaped the business and helped push some football roster payrolls above $40 million.
The bill would codify the settlement, including a revenue-sharing limit under which schools could distribute as much as $21.5 million to athletes. It would also more than double that figure for some programs by allowing up to an additional $27.5 million through a retention fund. That provision helped secure support from the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference, the two largest conferences.
The measure would also allow schools and conferences to pool their television media rights as they seek to generate additional revenue.
Arch Manning is one of the prominent faces of a college sports landscape watched by millions each week
The legislation seeks to bring greater stability to the NCAA transfer portal, where athletes have increasingly moved from one team to another. It would permit one “free” transfer over a five-year period without requiring a player to sit out a season, subject to certain exceptions, while limiting athletes to five total years of eligibility.
The proposed eligibility cap comes amid criticism of schools that have pushed the boundaries of the current system. One example was LSU’s now-abandoned plan to add players who had taken part in NFL training camps to its roster.
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“That was probably like a big lamp for some people who saw it and said, ‘Oh my God, this is so out of control,’” Cantwell said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
The bill would further bar coaches from leaving their schools during the season, require schools switching conferences to operate as independents for three years and prevent conferences from expanding beyond 20 programs. Those provisions are intended to stop so-called “superleagues” from dominating college sports.
A last-minute amendment proposed by Florida Sen. Ashley Moody raised that cap from 19 in the original legislation.
The vote was delayed several hours on Monday as senators negotiated Moody’s amendment and others that were eventually adopted, including provisions to make it easier for athletes to sue over sexual assault and a requirement to disclose foreign financing.
US Senate Majority Leader John Thune speaks with the media ahead of Monday’s Senate vote
The Senate rejected an amendment by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., that would have put limits on ticket prices for fans and two by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., that would have capped coaches’ salaries at $5 million a year and increased compensation for athletes who have catastrophic injuries.
The legislation includes new protections for athletes, including caps on agent fees and guarantees for health insurance and scholarships.
It would also require schools to maintain a minimum number of sports and roster spots – an effort to ensure that women’s and Olympic sports are not cut in favor of football, basketball and other sports that generate more revenue.
Still, some Democrats say it wouldn’t do enough to limit the big money in college sports.
The legislation ‘places a cap on the students´ cut of the revenues, but there are no caps on coaches´ salaries or on the size of donations to athletic programs,’ Murphy said last week.
Groups like the NAACP, Congressional Black Caucus and AFL-CIO have also opposed the bill, in part, because it leaves unresolved whether athletes should be considered employees with the ability to collectively bargain.
All four Black Democrats in the Senate – Booker, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland – have opposed the bill.
Booker, who played football at Stanford in the late 1980s on a scholarship, noted the ‘outsized role’ that Black athletes play in college sports. He said it wasn’t until college athletes were able to begin to win cases in court that the power started to shift, ‘and now the NCAA is coming here to the United States Senate, asking for sweeping powers’ to exempt antitrust laws.
‘We know who this bill is protecting,’ Booker said.
Despite strong bipartisan support in the Senate, the bill faces a murky path in the House.
House lawmakers won’t return to Washington until mid-November, after the elections. And it’s unclear what will be on Republican leaders’ agenda in the chaotic last few weeks of the session.
Pressure from Trump could help push the bill to passage. But some House Republicans have insisted on language explicitly stating that athletes are not employees, which the Senate bill does not have – a key concession to Cantwell to win enough Democratic support.
