On Friday, a federal judge in Colorado gave college athletes from the Class of 2022 a fifth year of eligibility — the latest court ruling to strip the NCAA of its power to enforce competition rules. The NCAA introduced an age-based policy in June that would have let incoming classes play five seasons but excluded Class of 2022 athletes who had already used four years. Plaintiffs sued on antitrust grounds and won. That same night, the Big Ten and SEC endorsed the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act, pulling it back from apparent collapse. The bill's co-sponsors, Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Maria Cantwell, wrote it to replace the current patchwork of rulings and state laws: a $21.3 million compensation cap, a unified NIL framework, and a limit of one transfer per career — but it needs 60 Senate votes before summer recess, roughly one week away.

The NCAA: Courts Are the Problem, Congress Is the Fix

Baker and the big conferences say courts cannot run a national sport — only a federal law with antitrust protection can stop the rulings from multiplying.

Baker called Friday's ruling the case for passing the bill now. "Today's rulings and the chaos they bring to college sports are exactly why it's time to pass this bill," Baker said. His core case: courts apply antitrust law to individual disputes but cannot set rules that bind all 350-plus Division I programs at once. Each ruling creates a different eligibility standard in a different circuit, forcing schools to comply with contradictory obligations.

The Big Ten and SEC endorsed the bill outright Friday night. Both conferences released a joint statement saying they backed the Protect College Sports Act "as currently drafted." Their endorsement came after a week of negotiations that produced new language clarifying how NIL deals from third-party entities — corporate sponsors and multimedia rights partners — must stay independent from schools. Without that language, the compensation cap would have been easy to circumvent.

UConn coach Dan Hurley and Trump both backed the bill. Hurley's support carries weight among coaches: he won back-to-back national championships with UConn in 2023 and 2024 while his recruits navigated transfer portals, NIL payments, and eligibility rules that change season to season.

Athletes: The Bill Trades Court Wins for a League-Designed Ceiling

Player unions say the one-transfer rule and the compensation cap lock athletes into terms they never agreed to — and block states from passing better ones.

Ten player unions call the bill a rollback. In a June statement, the council said the act "further silences college athletes' voices on the job, undermines their right to collective bargaining to improve their workplace conditions, jeopardizes fair compensation and stops states from passing laws that would protect and advance their rights." The single-transfer restriction reverses freedoms that courts and the NCAA itself had expanded over the past several years.

Meghann Burke, NWSLPA executive director, names the central contradiction. Universities that receive federal funding cannot operate "a de facto for-profit sports business" while avoiding labor obligations, she argues. No version of the Protect College Sports Act classifies athletes as employees or grants them formal collective bargaining rights.

Athletes.org says the bill shields institutions, not athletes. The nonprofit argues the legislation "undermines independent athlete representation to protect the College Sports Commission, conferences and NCAA leadership." Cade Tyson, a Minnesota men's basketball guard and a named plaintiff in the Class of 2022 case, argued through his attorneys that the NCAA's exclusion of his class from the fifth-year rule was an unlawful restraint of trade. A federal judge agreed.

Small Programs: The Big Ten and SEC Wrote Themselves a Deal

Some senators and mid-major schools say the compensation cap is manageable for Alabama but existential for smaller programs.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville opposes the bill; Sen. Bill Cassidy calls it chaotic. Their objection is not primarily about athlete rights — it is about which schools can absorb the new financial requirements. The bill's $21.3 million direct compensation cap applies equally to all FBS programs regardless of budget. For Ohio State, Alabama, and Michigan, that figure is manageable. For smaller FBS programs, it eats up a significant share of their entire athletic budget.

The one-transfer limit also lands differently across the system. Programs with deep recruiting pipelines gain stability when roster turnover slows. Mid-major programs that have used the transfer portal to keep pace with power conferences would lose one of their main competitive tools.

Smaller conferences have not formally endorsed the bill, and passage is not guaranteed even with Big Ten and SEC support. If the Senate votes yes, the bill would still need to pass the narrowly divided House of Representatives.

Where This Lands

Courts have spent five years expanding college athletes' rights through the transfer portal, NIL, and eligibility rulings. Athletes won each of those victories through antitrust litigation — not collective bargaining, not union contracts. The Protect College Sports Act would end that path. It gives the NCAA the antitrust cover courts have stripped away, caps compensation, restricts transfers, and preempts state laws athletes won through years of lobbying. The conferences support it because it provides stability on terms they helped negotiate. The AFL-CIO and Athletes.org oppose it because those same terms set a ceiling on what athletes can demand next. If the Senate passes the bill before recess, athletes lose their most reliable tool for pushing the system further. If the Senate doesn't, the courts stay open for the next class of plaintiffs.

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