After House talks imploded this week over the fate of a college athletics bill, senators now believe they have the upper hand in shaping a sweeping package that would enact new rules for a multibillion-dollar industry that has been destabilized by years of political and legal battles.
Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, have been spending hours every day for the past week at the negotiating table.
“Both of us, I believe, want to get to ‘yes,’” Cruz said in an interview Tuesday. “There’s a real crisis in college sports and if Congress doesn’t act, we are going to see continued damage.”
Cantwell, in a separate interview Tuesday, agreed talks were progressing: “Everybody’s working hard.”
It would be a major achievement if Cruz and Cantwell can land a deal that their House counterparts have repeatedly fumbled. The stakes are especially high for Cruz, who still isn’t ruling out a presidential bid in 2028 and has sought to use his chairmanship of the Commerce Committee to flex his policy chops.
The two senators also would solve a dilemma for Congress, which is being called upon by President Donald Trump and sports officials to pass legislation that would set new limits for how athletes can be paid for their name, image and likeness.
Colleges and universities have been lobbying lawmakers for years to preempt a patchwork of competing state laws governing compensation of student athletes, which is increasingly difficult to manage.
“College sports have been an incredible avenue for millions of young men and women to get scholarships, to go to college, to get an education, to build life skills,” said Cruz, but all that is in “in jeopardy right now” as higher education lacks a fair and consistent set of standards.
“The current path is unsustainable,” he added.
But it remains to be seen exactly how the senators will square their own policy differences — or craft a proposal that would pass muster in the House and avoid the same pitfalls that doomed efforts in that chamber.
“I hope there’s a landing spot,” Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said Tuesday of Cruz and Cantwell’s efforts.
He also acknowledged there remained sticking points that still needed to be hammered out, including how to address whether “student athletes are the employees of the universities and colleges, or not, and the question of unionization.”
For months, House GOP leaders have been looking to build enough support for their own legislative solution to this problem, the so-called SCORE Act. They had to pull the bill from the floor last December amid various complaints from hard-liners, including from Rep. Byron Donalds, a gubernatorial candidate in Florida who doesn’t think regulating the college sports industry is the job for Congress.
Since that time, leaders have been working to overcome opposition on their side of the aisle, including by offering concessions to conservative holdouts like Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) on matters like coach salaries and recruitment requirements.
Leaders planned to put a revamped SCORE Act back on the House floor this week, believing they were close to reaching necessary consensus — but other Freedom Caucus members wouldn’t commit to supporting a procedural vote to advance it.
At the same time, the entire Congressional Black Caucus announced Monday night it would boycott a package “benefiting major athletic institutions that continue to remain silent” amid efforts by red states to redraw congressional maps and eliminate majority-minority districts across the South.
That meant two original Democratic cosponsors — CBC Reps. Janelle Bynum of Oregon and Shomari Figures of Alabama — would no longer support the legislation.
A House Democratic aide granted anonymity to share private deliberations said that Republican leaders were relying on only a handful of Democratic votes to try to pass the bill this week after changes to the legislation tilted it farther to the right. The CBC’s blanket opposition killed those chances.
Republican leaders also lost Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), a former college volleyball player who had been trying to negotiate with Republicans but was unhappy with where they landed. She declared on a press call Tuesday that the SCORE Act as currently written “bails out the NCAA and the Power Two conferences by silencing athletes and rolling back the rights that they fought so hard to win.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise in an interview last week stressed last-minute changes were possible, like with any big bill, and that “it’s taken months to build this coalition.”
A Scalise spokesperson declined to comment Tuesday.
Back in the Senate, there’s no guarantee Cantwell and Cruz’s efforts won’t also be overtaken by political pressures related to the redistricting wars — or that the two lawmakers will be able to bridge their own differences. Both were tight-lipped about the status of their discussions Tuesday and where their visions might diverge.
Cantwell said she’s pushing provisions that would protect student athletes and expand revenue for schools of all sizes — provisions from her bill known as the SAFE Act, which would promote women’s and Olympic sports and help smaller schools compete with the traditional sports powerhouses.
It’s unclear whether Republicans will agree to incorporate these ideas but Cruz on Tuesday suggested he was sympathetic to the underlying concerns.
“Women’s sports is in jeopardy, Olympics sports is in jeopardy, and most schools are hemorrhaging cash,” he said. “I believe Congress should act, and I believe we will act.”
One thing Cantwell did make clear is that no matter what proposal she and Cruz come up with, it shouldn’t be associated with the House’s product that’s been so mired in drama.
“It’s definitely not a companion bill,” Cantwell said.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
