Last chance????

Trump boosts Senate’s new college sports proposal: ‘Last chance to save College Sports’

The bipartisan effort came after the SCORE Act fell apart in the House.

Gregory Svirnovskiy

President Donald Trump threw his support behind the Protect College Sports Act, a new Senate bill that would create a federal rulebook for collegiate sports, urging lawmakers to come together on a bipartisan law for his signature this summer in a social media post Thursday.

“This Law resolves many of the most urgent issues challenging our Universities and Student-Athletes, stops the chaos and, most importantly, it may be the last chance to save College Sports, and Colleges themselves, before it’s too late,” he wrote on Truth Social.

The bill, a brainchild of Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), would enact limits on transferring for student-athletes, ban coaches from moving schools mid-season and enshrine certain “name, image and likeness” protections.

The boost to the Senate effort came after House lawmakers’ high-profile attempt to regulate college sports, the SCORE Act, fell apart.

Congressional Black Caucus members — who were crucial for getting it out of the lower chamber — abandoned the bill, furious at predominantly Southern, collegiate-sports heavy states that were moving to eliminate majority-Black congressional and legislative seats.

One difference between the two bills is a provision in the SCORE Act barring college athletes from ever attaining employee status.

The Southeastern Conference and Big Ten, college sports’ two largest and wealthiest conferences, announced their opposition to the Senate bill Tuesday, writing that it doesn’t “meaningfully preempt the patchwork of state laws or provide the protections needed to make and enforce consistent rules.” Both supported the House’s SCORE Act.

Trump thanked Speaker Mike Johnson and House GOP Leader Steve Scalise “for their work to fix this very major problem,” but he urged “the House and Senate to come together to pass a final Bipartisan Law.”

Cruz and Cantwell promoted their bill in a commerce committee hearing featuring Nick Saban, the famed former University of Alabama football coach, on Wednesday.

“The House of Representatives tried multiple times to pass a bill. Unfortunately, it failed,” Cruz said at the hearing. “The Protect College Sports Act is the only bipartisan bill. It is the last best hope we have to save college for us.”

On Thursday, Trump agreed, writing that the path to saving college sports from a “ROAD THROUGH HELL” lies in Congress.

“University Presidents, Conference Commissioners, Student-Athletes, Coaches, and Athletic Directors all complained to me that it has become a disaster, after years of no action, and that Schools were losing Hundreds of Millions of Dollars a year,” he said. “They compared it to a freight train that can’t be stopped!”