Protect College Sports Act Reshapes NIL and Athlete Rights

US senators recently introduced the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act of 2026, a sweeping proposal that would establish a federal framework for college athletics and address longstanding uncertainty surrounding student-athlete name, image, and likeness compensation; athlete protections; and the governance of collegiate sports. The legislation signals continued congressional efforts to create national standards in an area currently governed by a patchwork of state laws, litigation outcomes, and National Collegiate Athletic Association policies.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Following the recent failure of the SCORE Act in the House of Representatives, senators unveiled new bipartisan legislation to address the status quo in college sports.
• The Protect College Sports Act of 2026 proposes comprehensive federal regulation of student-athlete name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights and protections, as well as transfer and eligibility requirements, providing targeted antitrust exemption and preempting conflicting state laws.
• The Protect College Sports Act of 2026 further seeks to establish a federal framework for college sports media rights by authorizing collective broadcast-rights negotiations under a limited antitrust exemption, imposing governance and revenue-distribution requirements, restricting certain conference consolidations, and preserving women’s and Olympic sports.
• Institutions, conferences, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) face new requirements for NIL transparency, academic, medical, and transfer standards, as well as athlete representation.
• Revenue share caps, agent regulation, and whistleblower protections are established, with enforcement mechanisms and private rights of action.

BACKGROUND

US Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Senator Eric Schmidt (R-MO), and Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) recently unveiled the Protect College Sports Act, bipartisan legislation to further regulate college sports post-House. The release of the Protect College Sports Act comes after the House of Representatives pulled consideration of their legislation, the SCORE Act, for a second time due to an ongoing lack of support. Given the impasse in the House, the Protect College Sports Act may represent Congress’s most viable legislative vehicle for addressing college sports issues before the midterm elections.

Cruz and Cantwell have worked behind the scenes for months to put together a comprehensive package that they hope can clear the Senate. Additionally, Chairman Cruz has reportedly been in contact with the White House during the development of the legislation—which coincided with recent executive orders on college sports, as well as meetings of the White House Council on College Sports, which wrote to Cruz and Cantwell on May 18 urging them to pass their legislation. White House support for the bipartisan bill could play an important role in the bill’s prospects for enactment in 2026.

CORE PROVISIONS OF THE PROTECT COLLEGE SPORTS ACT OF 2026

The Protect College Sports Act, which seeks to balance NIL rights and protections while promoting a level playing field, would fundamentally reshape the legal and business landscape of college athletics. This comprehensive federal legislation would preempt the disparate state laws currently enacted and provide uniformity and certainty regarding issues that have posed challenges for student-athletes and the NCAA, including NIL compensation, athlete eligibility, and institutional oversight.

In light of the numerous antitrust legal challenges surrounding college sports in recent years, the act gives legal protections to schools, conferences, and the NCAA by explicitly exempting them from antitrust laws while enforcing rules related to athlete compensation, transfer limits, eligibility, recruitment, and collective media rights agreements. This includes adopting and enforcing pay caps on student-athlete compensation from institutions implemented in the House v. NCAA settlement, which have been increasingly circumvented by creative third-party NIL contracts, and largely codifying the third-party NIL framework included in the House settlement. The act also provides for the extension of the revenue-sharing system at the heart of the House settlement after it expires in 2035.

In tandem with providing legal protections and other benefits designed to limit ballooning costs to institutions and the NCAA, Title I of the Protect College Sports Act would establish comprehensive protections for NIL rights while enacting measures meant to shield student-athletes from exploitation. These include the following:

• Codified NIL rights: The Protect College Sports Act would codify student-athletes’ right to market and earn compensation for their NIL and enter into NIL agreements.
• Institutional interference: Under the act, colleges, conferences, and athletic associations would be prohibited from restricting student-athletes’ ability to enter into compliant NIL deals. Retaliation or reductions of grant-in-aid based on NIL activities are prohibited, except where NIL agreements violate institutional codes of conduct or involve unauthorized use of school marks.
• Mandated reporting: The act requires student-athletes to report any NIL agreements exceeding $600 while enacting privacy protections for those disclosures. Further, institutions must report anonymized NIL data to the NCAA, which must maintain public databases so that the fair market value of NIL deals may be estimated. According to the bill’s framework, these provisions are intended to help student-athletes by allowing them to negotiate fair and competitive NIL deals and may help address concerns regarding the data currently being used by the College Sports Commission and NIL Go to evaluate NIL agreements.
• Regulations on agent conduct: The act amends the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act to cover NIL agreements and imposes registration requirements and fee caps for athlete agents. Under the act, agents for student-athletes must be certified and registered, and athletic associations must maintain public registries of certified agents.
• Academic and scholarship protections: The act codifies academic protections, barring athletic departments from unduly influencing academic choices or retaliating against athletes for such choices. Grant-in-aid may not be revoked or reduced based on athletic performance, injury, or roster management, except for transfers or violations of institutional standards.
• Health and wellness protections: The act mandates comprehensive medical coverage for injuries or diseases incurred during participation, including coverage for five years post-eligibility and the establishment of a catastrophic injury fund. It further prescribes health, wellness, and safety standards, including concussion management, heat illness, rhabdomyolysis, sickle cell trait, and asthma, and mandates independent athletic health and safety officers.
• Private rights of action: The act creates private rights of action so student-athletes may pursue violations of NIL or agent-related provisions, with whistleblower protections for individuals reporting violations.

A notable inclusion in the bill is Title II, which addresses TV and broadcasting rights by amending the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 and works to limit further conference realignment, all with the stated goal of increasing institutional revenue and promoting competitive balance. Under the proposed legislation, conferences and schools may negotiate future media rights collectively, with the goal of reducing revenue disparities and preserving traditional rivalries among schools. The amendment would grant antitrust exemptions for joint media rights agreements so long as at least 75% of the institutions participating in the Football Bowl Subdivision choose to participate in such a “covered entity.”

It further provides that each member of this covered entity (should it be created) will enjoy certain specified voting rights and that revenues will be allocated in a manner that ensures that each member receives a minimum allocation of revenues, this amount exceeds the media rights revenues currently enjoyed by such member, and that additional revenues may be allocated to members based upon their athletic performance moving forward. Notably, therefore, the proposed pooling of media rights will not result in revenue parity; it is intended to generate additional revenues for all members while preserving (at least initially) the revenue advantage enjoyed by certain conferences and providing an avenue for individual institutions to expand their share of the revenue pool based on their contributions on the field.

At the same time, the Protect College Sports Act works to protect local interests, preserve women’s and Olympic sports, and limit further conference consolidation and realignment. The act mandates that all football and basketball games be broadcast within an institution’s local designated market free of charge, ensuring that local fans continue to have access to their team’s games despite the increased shift in sports towards subscription-based platforms. In addition, any school that participates in the proposed collective media rights deal would be required to preserve grant-in-aid opportunities and roster spots for non-revenue-generating sports programs, thereby protecting women’s and Olympic sports. Further, the act prohibits conferences with more than $1 billion in revenue from merging or consolidating with or acquiring other conferences’ assets, media rights, or membership to slow the further concentration of power in certain conferences like the Big Ten and SEC.

KEY EXCLUSION FROM THE PROTECT COLLEGE SPORTS ACT OF 2026

With that said, while the Protect College Sports Act seeks to address many of the ills facing college sports, including many of the “asks” of the various stakeholders on both sides of this debate, there is one glaring—and intentional—omission from the bill. It is expressly neutral on the employment status of student-athletes. Previously proposed legislation, such as the SCORE Act, drew criticism by categorically prohibiting student-athletes from being classified as employees, which in turn barred access to federal labor protections like collective bargaining and workers’ compensation.

The Protect College Sports Act takes no position on this issue, and in fact, Senator Cantwell has publicly stated that questions regarding whether student athletes should be deemed employees and allowed to collectively bargain remain open for discussion. For some, this is a critical and significant shortcoming of this bipartisan legislation. For others, it may be enough for them to look past the bill’s other provisions and get to “yes.”

WHAT COMES NEXT?

The legislation has drawn criticism from some lawmakers and stakeholder groups. In the hours following the release of the text, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) criticized the “hard cap” on athlete compensation, saying it disadvantaged players. Across the Capitol, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY) and House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI), whose committees oversaw development of the SCORE Act, cast doubt on the current bill absent employment status certainty, saying, “Congress cannot deliver real stability, consistency, or certainty to schools, conferences, and student-athletes while leaving that question [are student athletes employees?] unresolved.”

Reactions from stakeholders are mixed, highlighting deep divides in college athletics:

• NCAA: The NCAA conveyed their continued desire to establish a sustainable, uniform framework in a measured response to the bipartisan effort. NCAA President Charlie Baker stated, “We are reviewing the proposed bipartisan legislation and look forward to further productive dialogue with members of Congress, student-athletes and NCAA schools to safeguard the opportunities college sports provides to more than half a million student-athletes each year.”
• Power conferences: Leaders of the Big 12, Big Ten, ACC, and SEC have expressed cautious support for bipartisan engagement but are far from fully endorsing the bill. Their public statements to date have been measured and circumspect, while many pundits query whether there is sufficient support for pooling media rights and/or any legislation that does not address the employee status of student athletes.
• Athlete advocates: Groups like Athletes.org strongly oppose the bill, arguing it “attempts to codify NCAA-supported restrictions limiting college athletes’ freedom, mobility and ability to earn their true market value” and stating, “If passed, this bill will directly attack athlete freedom.”

Similarly, the National College Players Association conveyed similar contempt, calling the bill “an unprecedented federal assault on college athletics,” “stripping athletes of their leverage and handing the NCAA the legal tools it needs to keep exploiting athletes,” and putting “a predatory industry above the law.”

Similar concerns, often competing, have likely sealed the SCORE Act’s fate. Cruz and Cantwell have scheduled a hearing on June 3 to discuss these issues and others. Between the hearing and a subsequent markup, Cruz and Cantwell will have to thread the needle on amendments that can get them above the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Stakeholders must monitor this process closely over the next several weeks, as Cruz and Cantwell’s ability to run the “two-minute offense” with the legislative clock winding down will determine whether there’s a path forward before the midterms force “roster changes.”

CONCLUSION

The Protect College Sports Act of 2026 marks a significant shift in the regulation of college sports, setting comprehensive federal standards for NIL rights, athlete protections, academic and medical benefits, governance, and broadcasting. Stakeholders should closely monitor legislative developments and begin preparing for the operational and compliance changes required under the act. The act’s broad scope—if enacted—will require coordinated responses from institutions, athletic associations, and student athletes alike.