WASHINGTON — Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., plan to introduce a bipartisan bill called the Protect College Sports Act (PCSA). The legislation is designed to regulate payments to college athletes, limit them to one unrestricted transfer over their college careers, and prohibit midseason coaching changes.

The bill would offer a “targeted” antitrust exemption for college sports in exchange for “public-facing protections” for athletes in 10 areas, including health insurance, scholarships, and stricter regulation of third-party name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals. It would also preempt much of the existing patchwork of state laws governing NIL arrangements and adopt an eligibility framework similar to the NCAA’s planned five-year eligibility period.

“This is a stability bill, not just an NIL bill,” Cruz said. He added that midseason coaching changes would be barred under a provision nicknamed the “Lane Kiffin Rule,” explaining, “It's not fair or right to poach a coach in the middle of the season while the team is still competing. There’s a reason the NFL has a rule that you can’t do that. Obviously, NFL teams hire coaches away from each other but they don’t do so in the middle of the season.”

Cantwell emphasized the urgency of the legislation, stating, “He and I really do believe the college sports system is in a bit of chaos.” She elaborated on the bill’s purpose: “I think it's better predictability. Why did we do it? Because when you've got thousands of athletes being cut, hundreds of programs being cut, the risk to the whole infrastructure was too high to not try to get better predictability.”

The bill would rework the Sports Broadcasting Act to allow athletic conferences to pool their television rights. Conferences that opt into this arrangement would be required to dedicate a percentage of any resulting revenue increase to support women's and Olympic sports. Cantwell said, “If you do nothing, then obviously, all these other women's and Olympic sports and less revenue-driven activities are going to suffer. I've heard directly from my institutions, they say they're counting on this. Not creating this stability now would be a missed opportunity.”

The legislation takes a “neutral” stance on whether college athletes should be classified as employees of their schools. It also includes provisions to distinguish between legitimate market-based NIL deals and those involving multimedia rights holders or affiliated entities, which would face restrictions. A hard, enforceable salary cap on players may be imposed to prevent circumvention of the House v. NCAA settlement’s $20.5 million revenue-sharing limit.