'I need to post my Undertaker meme. We’re back from the dead!' — Protect College Sports Act passes first major hurdle, but obstacles remain

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As voting concluded here at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, as senators sent their resounding support for a bill to regulate college athletics — the procedural first vote passed, 74-24 — the authors of the legislation, for a brief few minutes, buried their beaming happiness and postponed their celebration.

From a bird’s-eye view here in the Senate gallery, one could spot Sens. Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell, the Protect College Sports Act’s leading authors, embroiled in what appeared to be an intense conversation with two of their colleagues: South Carolina Sens. Tim Scott and Darline Graham.

“You saw a little bit of scramble there,” Cantwell told Yahoo Sports afterward. “We were down there really going at it.”

Cantwell declined to expound on the conversation she held with the two South Carolina senators.

Surely, a similar conversation has been — or will surely be at some point — held with the senators from Florida as well.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and ranking member Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., conduct a news conference with student-athletes and coaches outside the U.S. Capitol on the “Protect College Sports Act,” on Monday, September 14, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

This is all over conference expansion. A provision in the Protect College Sports Act — Section 205 — makes it more difficult for schools to move conferences. For one, it caps power conference membership at 19 schools and it requires power conference schools moving to another power league to operate as an independent for five years in a sort-of probationary period.

For all intents and purposes, the provision locks schools into their current conferences. Such schools as, say, Florida State and Miami. Or Clemson and North Carolina. Stanford too. All five school officials have privately voiced their resistance to a provision that, basically, prevents them from elevating to the Big Ten or SEC.

On Tuesday, at least a few of those lawmakers made noise with their votes and their voice from the Senate floor. Florida lawmakers Ashley Moody and Rick Scott were two of only four Republicans to vote against the bill (they joined Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Kentucky’s Rand Paul). And the South Carolina duo or Graham and Scott held that lengthy conversation with the bill’s authors.

Whether the expansion provision changes remains an open question.

Amendments can now be filed and Cruz said he expects some of those amendments to be adopted. Cantwell left the door ajar to changes to the provision, too, but she suggested the difficulty in relaxing the provision to make it easier for, say, a host of ACC programs to leave to form what may be considered two super leagues —the SEC and Big Ten.

“People want to know that conferences are going to be strong and not undermined and that you’re not going to have a ton of ways in which people are going to run off and create a super league or move around too much,” she said. “But you do want to honor some flexibility.”

However, what Tuesday showed is that the provision might not need to be changed to pass the legislation, at least in the Senate.

This was a blowout — 74 supportive votes (including 24 from Democrats) when only 60 were necessary to get the ball rolling. It is historic — the farthest any such, all-encompassing college sports bill has gone.

To be clear, there is plenty more time on the clock, so to speak.

(OK, we are done with the sports analogies)

You should understand that this was Vote No. 1 in a four-step voting process: three separate procedural votes, each with one full off day required between them, and then the final vote.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri and an influential co-author on the legislation, is aiming for a final vote mid-next week. In normal legislative circumstances, a procedural vote result often reflects a future final vote, he said.

It certainly signals overwhelming support for a bill that provides the industry with what supporters say are necessary guardrails. That includes (1) re-implementing the NCAA’s one-time transfer exception (limiting athletes to one transfer before having to miss a season of eligibility); (2) establishing a five-year eligibility standard (and banning pro players — a recent hot topic); (3) increases the per-school annual athlete revenue-share payments to around $48 million, up from $21 million, and provides the NCAA and College Sports Commission with legal protections to enforce such; and (4) creates an agent registry and certification system capping agent pay at 5%.

Those are the bill’s primary components. It does plenty of other things, like preventing coaches from leaving mid-season (dubbed the Lane Kiffin Rule) and permits FBS conferences to consolidate their media rights like the NFL (though that’s unlikely — just ask the SEC and Big Ten).

The landslide vote Tuesday means the legislation that so many doubted has a real chance in the next chamber, the House of Representatives. Leadership in the House has expressed skepticism over the bill and they decided earlier this month to break for recess after this week and not return until mid-November.

“When the Senate passes the bill [in the final vote], I believe the House will take it up and pass it,” he told Yahoo Sports from the Capitol. “I fully expect this will be signed into law before Election Day.”

Will the House decide to return to session to take up the college sports bill? President Donald Trump, an ardent supporter of the bill, has held communication with House leadership about the prospect, those with knowledge of the talks tell Yahoo Sports.

“It’s not out of the realm of possibility for them to take it up,” Schmitt said. “I think there is a strong desire to not let this lapse and go past the midterms.”

But there are plenty of detractors.

In fact, during a robust speech on the Senate floor before the procedural vote, Sen. Cory Booker, a former Stanford football player, eviscerated the legislation, calling it an “unjust bill” that doesn’t protect athletes enough and grants sweeping antitrust powers to a monopolized entity (the NCAA).

Those opposing the legislation often point to the fact that the bill restricts athlete movement and establishes a harder cap on their pay without touching the millions going to administrators and coaches. Many of them would prefer the conferences and schools bargain directly with the athletes — something that, while rife with obstacles and legal hurdles, they believe is a more fair course of action.

As it turns out, that pushback seemed to bury the bill last month, when senators got to the doorstep of a vote before opposition mounted.

“I need to post my Undertaker meme. We’re back from the dead!” Schmitt said outside of the Senate chambers.

But for some, all of the issues aren’t fixed. The conference expansion provision lingers as problematic, not just in the Senate but in the House too.

“Republican senators who would normally be inclined to support this bill are now withholding support due to the provision basically locking schools into conferences for eternity,” said one Senate staff member. “It could possibly tank the bill.”

At least through one round, it did not. Suffice to say, the clock hasn’t hit zeros yet.