Congress
Inside the lobbying fight threatening Congress’ college sports overhaul
Efforts to pass legislation governing the nation’s $19 billion college sports industry are teetering amid a fierce lobbying fight over media rights and antitrust protections.
The Protect College Sports Act advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee on a 19-9 vote last month that pulled in seven Democrats. It was a hopeful moment for advocates of the Senate’s yearslong legislative push to regulate college athletics after the 2021 landmark Supreme Court decision that ultimately led to the NCAA allowing college athletes to profit off of their name, image and likeness.
But nine people close to the process say Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) have struggled to secure support among key industry players, including the Big Ten Conference and the Southeastern Conference, and universities are pushing for major changes to the bill before it’s brought to the floor.
With just a handful of legislative days left before the Senate leaves town for August recess, universities are on the cusp of starting another school year governed by a patchwork of state laws and court rulings that they say is financially unsustainable.
“It would be challenging for me to imagine supporting it if the Big Ten Conference and our two member universities in the state aren’t supportive,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) said of Cruz’s bill.
The bill, which lays out guidelines for everything from student athlete pay to negotiating broadcast rights, has languished amid pushback from the Big Ten and the SEC, the nation’s two most powerful college sports conferences. They’re zeroing in on a section allowing conferences to jointly negotiate their media rights, insisting it include explicit language clarifying that such action is voluntary.
Supporters of that “media pooling” provision argue it would bring stability to the industry by distributing streaming revenue more evenly across conferences, helping them absorb costs associated with the new era of paying student athletes outright. But the Big Ten and the SEC, which stand to lose the competitive edge their member schools reap from lucrative TV contracts, worry it would force them to share revenue with rival conferences — and they’re not the only ones taking issue with the section.
“We were unclear why the [media pooling provision] needed to be in this bill,” said Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman, who represents schools that could stand to profit from jointly negotiating media rights. “We’re not convinced that’s the magic wand.”
Ackerman said she had not yet seen modeling that proved media pooling would significantly increase revenue, adding that she had “all sorts of questions” around the provision that the committee had not answered.
Lawmakers have inched closer to bringing the SEC and the Big Ten on board in recent days, according to people directly engaged on the bill, but a deal remains elusive. Cruz and Cantwell hosted a call Sunday night with several commissioners and Notre Dame Athletic Director Pete Bevacqua alongside Vermont Sen. Peter Welch, one of the bill’s Democratic cosponsors.
“For how many conversations we have had with the Cruz and Cantwell team, I would say we’ve made stunningly little progress,” said one lobbyist directly engaged on the bill who was granted anonymity to describe private deliberations.
But Cruz regularly projects optimism that the bill is nearly ready. Asked if he was concerned about Republican votes for the bill if the two major conferences were not on board, he said no, adding that 70 percent of the committee voted for it.
“I think we will see something comparable on the floor next week,” he told Blue Light News on Wednesday. “I believe we’re going to pass this bill, and we’re going to see a large bipartisan vote on the floor of the Senate.”
Cruz has poured renewed energy into the effort to get the bill across the finish line in recent days, penning an op-ed in USA Today and meeting with other lawmakers including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, according to one person familiar with the matter.
Two people granted anonymity to share private discussions said Senate Majority Leader John Thune has expressed interest in moving the bill to the floor once it can get 60 votes.
Thune told reporters last week he thinks it’s unlikely PSCA will pass the Senate before August amid other major priorities on Blue Light News. But on Monday, he struck a slightly different tune, saying talks were “steering in a really good direction.” In a Wednesday interview with Blue Light News, Thune didn’t rule out teeing up the bill for the fall before the August break.
The Commerce panel has made some concessions to the conferences, including clarifying that schools can’t face litigation for declining to participate in media pooling, according to three people granted anonymity to describe private talks.
The lawmakers are also offering to provide schools with an additional $20 million pool of funds for retaining student athletes, in addition to $5 million specifically for name, image, likeness promotional opportunities in women’s sports, according to the people.
But new legislative text sent to the two conferences on Tuesday afternoon lacks several key demands that the SEC and the Big Ten say are critical to winning their support, including a provision clarifying that postseason tournaments and contests would be excluded from media pooling, according to a draft obtained by Blue Light News.
Complicating things further, the draft includes a blank section called “IGNITE HBCUs Sports and Media Act.”
“Major concessions were made overnight,” a committee aide told Blue Light News on Wednesday. “At this point, with every passing minute, odds are slimmer that we can move the bill before the August recess. We’ve been working night and day to make the revisions they said they needed, and we need an answer.”
The SEC has also pressed lawmakers on another priority: to insert “critical amendments” broadening antitrust and preemption language, according to University of Tennessee Chancellor Donde Plowman, who chairs a coalition of presidents and chancellors across the Southeastern Conference. This would shield the NCAA and conferences from certain antitrust lawsuits and block states from setting their own rules governing college athletics and athlete pay.
But the latest draft of the bill failed to meaningfully change those pieces of the legislation.
Cruz and Cantwell are also unlikely to win the support of a broad group of southern GOP senators without the backing of the SEC — a goal they continue to pursue regardless.
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) said Tuesday she plans to offer an amendment ensuring some of its provisions apply to high school sports. Britt has yet to publicly declare her position on the package amid opposition from Auburn University and The University of Alabama, the largest universities in her home state.
“We don’t need to solve one problem in order to then create or leave a gap in another,” Britt said in an interview. “Additionally, I want to make sure that we still protect people’s ability to allow their programs and conferences to thrive, and I don’t think we’ve hit the mark on that just yet. But I certainly hope we can find a pathway forward.”
Britt’s fellow GOP senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville — the former head football coach at Auburn, University of Mississippi, Texas Tech and University of Cincinnati — has been vocal in his opposition to the bill.
Cruz and Cantwell have touted support for the legislation across two dozen conferences and more than 250 individual universities, plus organizations like the NFL Players Association and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
But many of these same groups are also expressing some qualms with the package’s current form.
One of those groups is Ackerman’s Big East conference, which consists of 11 universities including Georgetown and Villanova. Ackerman said while Big East ultimately thinks “it’s better to have the bill than not to have the bill,” several crucial sticking points remain.
That includes the fact that Cruz and Cantwell’s bill doesn’t address whether college athletes can be considered employees with bargaining rights — an omission Ackerman called “disappointing.”
The House’s college sports bill, the SCORE Act, explicitly barred college athletes from attaining employee status. It had the support of many of the industry’s largest conferences, including Big East, but failed to make it across the finish line amid opposition from hard-liners who argued the bill was too favorable to the NCAA.
“We’re trying to strike the right balance” with the remaining sticking points, said Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, one of the bill’s GOP cosponsors who has been in many of the recent meetings with Cruz and Cantwell. “There’s a lot of things going on. But I feel good about it — we’re trying to build as broad a coalition as possible.”
Cruz and Cantwell have also touted backing from Louisiana State University, pointing to its board chair Lee Mallett and president Wade Rousse as signatories on a June 1 letter expressing “enthusiastic support” for the bill.
But Mallett and Rousse later said they did not support Cruz and Cantwell’s Senate legislation. Mallett said he meant to support the House’s SCORE Act, not the Senate’s version, and Rousse said he never agreed to have his name signed onto the letter.
“While we appreciate all the efforts surrounding the Protect College Sports Act, we believe key issues remain with the legislation and we do not support the bill in its current form,” Rousse and Mallett wrote in a separate letter to the Commerce panel last week. Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy shared the letter on social media and said “LSU is right” to oppose the bill.
Supporters of the Protect College Sports Act applaud its provisions requiring agents to register with states and capping how much they can charge student athletes, along with the sections governing athlete compensation.
“The bill is not perfect, but it does address some very vital components in my mind that would improve the health of the college sports ecosystem,” West Coast Conference Commissioner Stu Jackson said in an interview.
Jackson, whose conference includes Gonzaga University and the University of Portland, said he would like to see the bill include limitations on expansion for larger conferences and a higher salary cap for student athletes, but he said talks with the Commerce panel about the bill had been “very productive.”
That’s not a view shared by multiple lobbyists representing college athletics conferences who are directly involved in talks about the bill.
“There’s not honest engagement or negotiation,” said a second lobbyist, granted anonymity to describe private discussions. “It’s really hard to get to a deal when there’s no trust, and there’s not a lot of trust right now.”
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
The House is back in session Monday for the first time in five weeks. It’s not clear how long members will stick around.
Speaker Mike Johnson is hoping to tick the lone essential item off the chamber’s to-do list in lawmakers’ first days back: sending a shutdown-averting spending bill to President Donald Trump’s desk. Otherwise, the Capitol Hill agenda is devoid of must-pass legislation until later in the year.
Meanwhile, the thin GOP majority has had trouble opening the House floor for debate on any number of legislative priorities, and many Republicans lawmakers are simply eager to get back home ahead of the November midterms rather than endure more headaches in Washington.
Together that has fueled open speculation among members and aides that House leaders will call it quits until mid-November much sooner than the currently scheduled Oct. 1 exit date.
“So many people are having to run back and forth to campaign,” Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) told reporters Thursday. “I think we can get some other things done [beyond the spending stopgap], but the big bills will probably have to wait until after the election.”
Another House Republican, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, was more blunt: “I think we have very little to do.” A third member, running for reelection in a competitive district, said in a text message, “I’d be happy to be sent home early!”
The agitation for an early exit is likely to grow louder if Johnson can win approval as planned this week for the Senate-passed government funding bill, which would postpone a possible shutdown from midnight Sept. 30 to Dec. 11. The funding patch also would extend the deadline to reauthorize lapsing surface transportation authorities.
GOP leaders plan to put the bill on the floor Tuesday under a fast-track method requiring a two-thirds majority vote, and there are reasons to believe it will pass without much drama. Trump and key congressional Democrats have endorsed the 10-week punt.
That bipartisan support is expected to overcome Republicans concerns over a Senate-inserted provision backed by the White House to delay the start of an intoxicating hemp product ban, as well as a provision favored by Democrats to temporarily hold up a Trump administration proposal to put political appointees in charge of federal grant approvals.
“I would say that we’re going to avoid any kind of shutdown, and we’ll be in good shape going into the elections,” Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia, a GOP appropriator, told reporters earlier this month.
Lawmakers have already punted other major deadlines, leaving members eyeing the post-election “lame duck” session for substantive legislating. But there are also lingering questions about whether House Republican leaders can move forward with a partisan agenda in any case.
Rebel factions upset over matters ranging from ethanol fuel regulations to immigration policy votes have frustrated Johnson’s attempts all summer to pass procedural measures necessary to bring GOP bills to the floor. Many Republicans believe those dynamics will continue into September, leaving the fast-tracked bills passed under “suspension of the rules” as leaders’ only legislative option.
“I don’t think many things are going to pass except for suspension bills,” said another House Republican granted anonymity to speak candidly about the GOP’s expectations for the pre-election session.
While leaders and their top aides acknowledge no current plans to send members home early, a frozen floor could quickly lead them to determine otherwise. At the same time, some Republicans are wary of beating an early retreat after many of them hammered the Senate for leaving town earlier this month without taking up key House-passed bills.
“We need to campaign, but it’s not a great look for us to not come into town and work,” a fifth House Republican granted anonymity said. The member, representing a safe red district, acknowledged that others in more competitive districts likely feel differently.
“People already think we are on vacation when we’re home,” the lawmaker added. “What kind of damage does it do if we leave D.C. again?”
Both chambers will be out of session next week following the Labor Day holiday, and many Republican lawmakers are expected to travel to Dallas at the end of that week for the GOP’s midterm convention. Republicans are looking to amp up one of their top campaign messages beforehand — that Democrats are left-wing extremists — by forcing a vote this week on a resolution condemning socialism “in all its forms.”
The House could also vote this week to censure Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) for inappropriate conduct toward two female staffers following an Ethics Committee recommendation. Edwards, who dropped his bid for reelection two days after the panel issued a lengthy report, attempted to clear his name to his colleagues last week ahead of the expected vote.
House GOP leaders could also put a Senate-passed Russian sanctions bill on the floor before the end of the month, though it is unclear whether it can pass. Many House Democrats — including Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the party’s leader on the Foreign Affairs Committee — believe the bill would give too much authority to Trump.
But with many other House priorities currently in Senate limbo, there could be little incentive for members to hang around to wait to see if the Senate will act once it returns Sept. 14 for a brief three-week session.
House Republicans rushed before their summer recess to adopt a budget blueprint for a fresh party-line spending package, but it’s currently stuck across the Capitol amid competing demands from defense hawks, fiscal conservatives and some GOP senators who aren’t convinced another such bill is needed at all.
Senate Republicans don’t expect the budget measure to be brought to the floor before the election, according to five people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions.
House Republicans appear to be acknowledging that reality. When asked if he was confident the Senate would take up a third reconciliation bill, Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) told reporters this month that “‘confident’ is probably the wrong word.”
Instead, the Senate is expected to focus in September on confirming Trump’s nominees and holding a vote on cryptocurrency legislation, as well as trying to advance a bill to overhaul college athletics and the Senate version of the farm bill.
Some House Republicans, including Majority Whip Tom Emmer, have been trying to build public pressure on the Senate to pass the crypto bill known as the Clarity Act for months. But a mid-September vote on that measure is likely to fail. And while negotiations continue over the Senate’s college sports bill, a bill on the same topic in the House has stalled out, giving lawmakers little reason to stay to see if a Senate deal comes together.
As for the farm bill, the House passed its version earlier this year largely along party lines, while the Senate version failed to advance in committee earlier this month due to GOP absences and Democratic opposition. Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.)said he plans to try again in September.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is eager to advance the farm bill before the election, but doing so will require Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to return from a monthslong absence — or Democrats to agree to a deal.
While Republicans are hopeful that McConnell could come back in September, any final agreement on the major agriculture package is expected to wait until after Election Day.
“I think our Democrat colleagues are probably saying we want to wait until after the election to find out what the House of Representatives is going to look like, the Senate is going to look like,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said at an agricultural conference in South Dakota earlier this month.
Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.
Congress
The midterms are months away. Members are already jockeying for seats on this powerful panel.
Lawmakers can spend years trying to land seats on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Several could finally get their chance in the next Congress.
The panel with vast jurisdiction over health care, artificial intelligence, energy and telecommunications will have at least eight empty slots in the next Congress — four on each side of the aisle — thanks to a combination of planned retirements, attempts to climb to higher office and primary election defeats.
Democrats are losing Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Marc Veasey of Texas, Robin Kelly of Illinois and Diana DeGette of Colorado. Republican departures include Reps. Buddy Carter of Georgia, Neal Dunn of Florida, Dan Crenshaw of Texas and John James of Michigan. Some of these members also lead influential subcommittees, opening coveted spots that will need to be filled next year.
The intense interest in Energy and Commerce is leading to a high level of public campaigning, particularly among Democrats who believe they stand a chance of winning the majority in the midterms and are eager to influence major policy debates.
“Since I first arrived at Congress in 2021, Energy and Commerce has always been my number one committee that I’ve sought to serve on,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, a progressive Democrat who is making a particularly concerted push, said in an interview.
The Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, made up of leadership and lawmakers from regions across the country, will make selections based on a variety of factors including years of tenure and geographical representation. But the current intraparty jockeying could also set the stage for a proxy battle pitting progressives against moderates, mirroring the ideological clash Democrats are watching play out on the campaign trail.
Democrats famously tied themselves in knots over this dynamic in 2020, when members of the Steering and Policy Committee were torn between progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then-Rep. Kathleen Rice, a fellow New York Democrat and a centrist.
The panel ultimately gave the open seat to Rice, who in the closed-door meeting was perceived as likely to be more cooperative in advancing the party’s key legislative priorities. She ended up being among a trio of moderates who thwarted then-Chair Frank Pallone’s health care agenda by opposing a drug pricing provision, punting the issue to another committee of jurisdiction.
Four years later, Ocasio-Cortez finally made it onto the committee.
“The argument that some individuals in the caucus had made against my appointment in a previous term was this idea about being a team player,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a recent interview. “But ironically … not only did they deny me the seat on those grounds, but they appointed someone who actually voted with Republicans.”
“So when we talk about who’s going to be a team player,” she continued, “I think that especially if we are working with thin margins, it’s very important that on an issue as important as health care, energy, et cetera, and confronting a Trump White House … we need to have very strong Democrats on the committee that are going to fight forcefully for the caucus’s priorities.”
Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat who is in line to continue leading Energy and Commerce Democrats, has hinted he plans to pursue progressive policies — such as a crackdown on data centers that could involve a nationwide moratorium — should his party prevail in November. He’ll need buy-in on such plans from the left wing of his caucus, but he was not eager in July to discuss the committee assignment process.
“Let’s get elected in the majority first,” Pallone said in an interview. “I’m not going to deal with that until later.”
For now, Democrats now vying to be on Energy and Commerce are leaning less into their ideological leanings and more the policy expertise they would bring to the table — and the value their appointments would bring to constituents.
Stansbury, for example, called the committee a critical platform for tackling climate and energy policy, adding it was “very important to my district to address the rural health care crisis and the behavioral health crisis.”
Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), a first-term lawmaker, is also making her case to get onto the committee, pointing to her experience as a critical care physician and pulmonologist.
“I’ve seen firsthand the enormous burdens patients, families, and healthcare providers face every day,” she said in a statement. “It’s part of the reason I ran for office — because so many of the problems I encountered couldn’t be solved in the exam room.”
Historically, members interested in joining Energy and Commerce tend to bide their time on the House Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over public lands, energy development, fisheries and Native American issues. Ocasio-Cortez made the leap, and Stansbury and Dexter are hoping to follow.
Rep. Jill Tokuda of Hawaii, who serves on the Agriculture and Armed Services committees, is also looking to be seated on Energy and Commerce. An aide said in a statement that she would be “first congressional delegation member from Hawaiʻi to join the committee” as well as only the second Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander.
An aide for Rep. Eric Sorensen of Illinois, who currently sits with Tokuda on Agriculture and Armed Services, said he is interested in joining Energy and Commerce next year, too. So is Rep. Luz Rivas of California, an engineer who appeared at the committee’s “Member Day” forum to speak about her STEM background and interest working on AI issues.
Republicans looking to get on the panel will be picked after the elections by the GOP Steering Committee, and Rep. Bob Onder of Missouri is making an especially forceful push. He said in an interview last week his more than 30 years as a physician would be an asset for the committee, which has traditionally had a handful of lawmakers with medical backgrounds and is set to lose two: Carter, a pharmacist, and Dunn, a urologist.
He also said he has made his interest known to Guthrie and that Reps. Greg Murphy of North Carolina and John Joyce of Pennsylvania — co-chairs of the GOP Doctor’s Caucus — wrote a letter last week to Speaker Mike Johnson on his behalf, saying that Onder’s “clinical experience, policy engagement, and demonstrated leadership make him exceptionally well qualified.”
Rep. Brad Knott (R-N.C.) is also making his interest known, saying he has “talked to a lot of folks” and is pursuing a “kind of whole committee wide approach” to convincing Steering members to put him on Energy and Commerce.
“North Carolina is one of the fastest-growing states,” Knott said in an interview. “Energy demand will at least double in the next 10 years. Got to get that policy right.”
Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said in an interview in July “there’s a couple buzzing around” who want to join the panel but declined to elaborate.
“We have a lot of talented members, but I’ll let them say what they are interested in,” he said.
A top pollster for President Donald Trump is pushing back on recent public polling showing Republican Mike Rogers trailing progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the marquee Michigan Senate race.
Tony Fabrizio, who is conducting polling for Rogers, says the polls released this month are over-sampling Democratic-leaning voters, specifically college-educated and Black voters, according to an internal memo obtained by Blue Light News. A Susquehanna poll released this month showed El-Sayed leading by seven points and a TIPP poll showed him leading by four points.
El-Sayed’s lead in those polls is a “fake narrative,” Fabrizio wrote. His polling for AARP — conducted alongside Democratic firm Impact Research — showed the race essentially tied.
The warning follows huge polling misses in the Democratic primaries in the Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, which he wrote were “some of the most egregious examples of public polling failures in recent memory.” It’s also a sign that Republicans are wary of the string of bad polling numbers for Rogers in the race, which is crucial for determining control of the chamber.
Jim Lee, CEO of Susquehanna Polling and Research, told Blue Light News that the firm did not oversample any demographics. “I think their head is in the sand,” Lee said, noting in part what he said was a gap in enthusiasm between Democratic and Republican voters this cycle.
TIPP didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Fabrizio, in the memo, argued on the Susquehanna poll: “50% of the sample in this survey is college-educated – making them massively overrepresented to what they should be. We took a look at 2022 and 2024 Exit Polls and VoteCast data and, as shown below, there is no indication that the Michigan electorate will be anywhere near 50% college-educated. In fact, it is unlikely they will be even 40% college-educated.”
He also noted “a huge gap” between college-educated and non-college educated voters.
“This was the driving issue of the public polling misses for President Trump in 2016 and 2024, especially in the Upper Midwest states of Michigan and Wisconsin,” Fabrizio added. “By increasing college-educated voters by 10+ points, and thus decreasing non-college educated voters by the same, we can pretty much guarantee this poll is significantly overestimating El-Sayed’s vote share.”
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
The Dictatorship12 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words