Congress Wants to 'Save' College Sports. The Pros Should Pay Attention.

Last week, Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), and Chris Coons (D-DE) introduced the Protect College Sports Act, a 111-page swing at giving college athletics a single national rulebook: nationwide NIL standards, limits on transfers and eligibility, and the antitrust protection that lets schools enforce the House settlement’s revenue-sharing cap without losing the inevitable lawsuits. It’s the Senate’s answer to the SCORE Act, the House version yanked from the floor a week earlier. The Senate bill is friendlier to athletes and, notably, takes no position on whether college athletes are employees, leaving that one to the courts.

That antitrust piece would have the biggest impact. Almost every rule college sports wants to enforce — capping what schools pay players, limiting transfers, setting eligibility windows — is the kind of restraint that invites an antitrust lawsuit, and the NCAA and its schools have been losing in court for years. A safe harbor is Congress saying these specific rules can’t be challenged on antitrust grounds.

SCORE tried to hand over a broad version of that protection, and it was a big reason why a lot of Democrats walked. The new bill narrows it: The shield only covers a defined list (transfers, eligibility, the revenue cap, agent rules, mid-season coaching moves) and only if those rules are actually written into the NCAA’s rulebook. That narrowing helped the Senate bill win bipartisan support. The question is whether the NCAA, and the SEC and Big Ten, can live with it.

Most of the coverage over the past week has been handicapping whether the bill passes. It probably won’t, at least not anytime soon. Congressional recesses in August before the midterm elections swallow the calendar, leaving almost no room to move a contested sports bill this term. So the more useful question is what athletic departments are already doing.

They aren’t waiting. Departments are planning around a cap that rises with or without Washington. The revenue-sharing number climbs to roughly $21.3 million per school in 2026-27 no matter what Congress does, an increase of about 4 percent over this past year’s $20.5 million. Schools are already talking about what they can do above it.

Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks floated the idea that the SEC could move forward on its own, saying “Maybe we develop our own luxury tax or something that gives us room so we can grow our rev share number.” It’s the same move pro leagues use to let big-market teams spend past the cap by paying a penalty. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey was quick to call it a discussion, not a plan, but the fact that one of the sport’s two most powerful conferences is even sketching cap relief tells you where the energy is going.

The provision of the legislation that could spark the most conversation is in the media-rights section. To make the bill work politically, its sponsors would let conferences pool their TV rights, selling them as a group instead of each conference cutting its own deal, and send a share of the potential increase to Olympic and women’s sports. That’s the sweetener for Democrats and smaller schools. It’s also the clause the SEC and Big Ten have the most reason to fight, because pooling flattens the media advantage they spent the last decade building. The provision was written to save the bill, but it might be the one that turns its most powerful would-be allies against it.

None of this is staying on campus, either. An enforceable cap, a luxury-tax escape hatch, and selling media rights as a group are how the NFL, NBA, and the rest of the leagues run, and they built all three slowly and quietly over decades of collective bargaining. College is about to test the same structure in public, potentially within a single year, with a new enforcement body (the College Sports Commission) figuring out its place in the ecosystem while the richest conferences maneuver around it.

Whatever holds up — with or without Congress — becomes the new precedent. The next time a league and a players’ association discuss a cap number, a luxury-tax line, or a media package, they’ll have a high-profile, recent example to point to, and both sides will reach for it.

For now the college cap sits at $21.3 million, the CSC is moving carefully, and the question of whether college athletes are employees is headed for a courtroom instead of the Senate floor. The bill may not survive the summer. But the structure it describes is already getting built, borrowed from the pros, and that building, not the vote count, is the story we’re tracking.

Michael Giorlando → Athletic Director, University of New Orleans
Giorlando, a former Loyola New Orleans AD, takes over a department that becomes LSU New Orleans on July 1, so his first job is running an athletic program through a full institutional rebrand and a move into the LSU System. That’s a transition most ADs never face, layered on top of the revenue-share shakeup everyone else is already managing.

Zach Feldman → Senior VP, Corporate Partnerships, New York Mets
Feldman joins the Mets’ executive team from Oak View Group, where he ran partnerships and revenue, to oversee a sales-and-activation operation in the league’s biggest market. The hire adds to a steady run of senior commercial additions under owner Steve Cohen, whose off-field spending has tracked his payroll.

Tom Kiley → SVP, Global Market Development, X Games
Kiley leaves the NFL’s international group after a decade to drive the X Games’ global expansion and host-city deals. The hire pulls directly from the league that has run the most aggressive overseas playbook in American sports, the model action sports is now trying to follow.

Todd Marcy → Partner, Weatherford Capital
Marcy moves over from Avenue Capital to help run sports investment strategy at the Weatherford brothers’ Tampa firm, which has built a billion-dollar book and a deep sports portfolio, from IMG Academy to a recent USL stake. Sports investing keeps drawing people from Wall Street, and the funds are hiring even faster than the deals are closing.

Lucas Reid → VP, Corporate Partnerships, Nashville SC
Reid takes over partnership strategy for an MLS club on the rise, coming off a run as CRO of Major League Rugby and, before that, a decade with the NHL’s Dallas Stars. He’s a revenue builder landing in a market that’s been investing hard, and his job is to grow a portfolio that’s already expanding past the local base.

Senior Manager, Corporate Development — PGA Tour (Ponte Vedra Beach): A seat on the Tour’s in-house deal team, evaluating enterprise partnerships, structuring transactions, and building the analyses that feed board-level capital decisions. Asks for seven-plus years out of corporate development, banking, or consulting — the caliber of finance talent league offices are increasingly chasing. Apply here

Premium Sales Manager — Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix (Las Vegas): Sells the top of the market for the night race down the Las Vegas Strip. That includes the suites, shared hospitality, and grandstands along the circuit, to buyers in the U.S. and abroad. The deals run six figures and the clients sit in the C-suite. It’s an event that went from first-year experiment to one of the marquee races on the calendar in three years. Apply here

Associate AD, Financial Operations — University of Virginia (Charlottesville): Runs the financial engine of an ACC department in the revenue-share era, the office now responsible for funding the cap against everything else a program has to pay for and keeping the budget whole while the rules underneath it move. A role that barely existed a few years ago, and one of the most consequential a program builds today. Apply here

Director, Corporate Communications & Publicity — Kansas City Chiefs (Kansas City): Leads corporate communications across brand, marketing, and international initiatives for one of the NFL’s most visible franchises, reporting to the VP of Corporate Communications. The job is as much about positioning executives as industry voices as it is traditional PR, and asks for eight-plus years. Apply here

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See you next Wednesday.