Senate Passes The Protect College Sports Act: What It Means For NCAA Oversight And Athlete Pay

The Senate has taken its most significant step yet toward regulating the rapidly evolving college sports landscape. On September 28, the Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act (PCSA) by a bipartisan vote of 77-22.¹ The bill will now move to the House of Representatives for consideration. If enacted, the legislation would represent the most consequential federal intervention in college athletics in decades, restoring key NCAA enforcement powers while establishing a national framework for athlete compensation; name, image, and likeness (NIL) transactions; revenue sharing; and athlete agent regulation.

The PCSA would:

1. Restore NCAA enforcement authority by providing antitrust exemption for the NCAA, conferences, and institutions when enforcing eligibility, transfer, and other competitive rules that have faced increasing legal challenges since NCAA v. Alston.²
2. Codify athlete revenue sharing by embedding the framework established by the 2025 House settlement into federal law and providing greater certainty around direct payments from universities to student-athletes.³
3. Increase scrutiny of NIL deals by establishing mechanisms to review and verify certain NIL agreements, particularly those that may function as disguised compensation designed to circumvent revenue-sharing limits.⁴
4. Create a more uniform national framework by reducing reliance on the patchwork of state NIL laws, litigation, and private arrangements that currently govern college athletics.⁵
5. Expand athlete agent regulation by extending federal law to NIL representation; imposing registration and contract requirements; limiting certain agent fees and contract terms; creating a public, searchable athlete-agent database; establishing a private right of action for student-athletes; and authorizing fines or decertification for certain violations.

In the five years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in NCAA v. Alston,⁶ courts, state legislatures, conferences, universities, and student-athletes have collectively reshaped college athletics with little centralized oversight. The PCSA would shift that balance toward a federally sanctioned regulatory framework and give the NCAA new tools to police an increasingly commercialized marketplace.

How We Got Here

For decades, the NCAA maintained a strict amateurism model that limited athlete compensation and gave the organization broad authority over eligibility and competition rules. That framework began to unravel in 2021, when the Supreme Court unanimously held in Alston that certain NCAA restrictions on education-related benefits violated federal antitrust law and made clear that NCAA rules would not receive special antitrust treatment simply because they involved college sports.⁷ Although the decision addressed a narrow category of benefits, its reasoning invited broader challenges to NCAA compensation and eligibility rules and weakened the NCAA’s ability to regulate college athletics through traditional means.

The post-Alston era saw an explosion in NIL compensation and culminated in the House settlement, which permits participating universities to share a capped amount (initially $20.5 million) of athletic revenue directly with student-athletes, set roster limits for sports, and established a clearinghouse to review certain NIL deals and identify arrangements that exceed fair market value.⁸ In addition, courts invalidated or weakened other long-standing rules governing student-athlete eligibility and transfers.

As athlete compensation, transfer activity, and roster costs continued to rise, college athletics increasingly came to be governed by a patchwork of litigation, state laws, and private arrangements. The PCSA represents Congress’ most significant effort to date to impose a more uniform federal framework on that fragmented system.

What the PCSA Could Mean for Stakeholders

If enacted, the PCSA would establish a substantially more centralized regulatory framework after years in which college athletics has been shaped by litigation, state legislation, NCAA rules, and private arrangements.

For universities, the principal benefit of the PCSA would be greater predictability. Schools would gain greater certainty regarding athlete compensation, roster management, transfers, and competitive rules, as well as statutory protection from certain antitrust challenges arising from compliance with or enforcement of specified rules. At the same time, universities would face increased compliance, reporting, and disclosure obligations and enhanced NCAA oversight, including new requirements related to athlete compensation and NIL activity.

For student-athletes, the PCSA would establish a more uniform federal framework governing compensation, eligibility, transfers, and NIL activity, while reversing some of the increased flexibility and bargaining freedom that athletes have gained through recent litigation and state-law reforms. The legislation would preserve athletes’ ability to receive revenue-sharing payments and NIL compensation, but would subject those arrangements to more prescriptive federal rules and increased NCAA oversight. It also would permit greater restrictions on transfers, including generally requiring an athlete who transfers a second time to sit out an academic year, subject to specified exceptions.

For athlete agents, the PCSA would significantly expand federal regulation. The bill would amend SPARTA to expressly cover NIL agreements, impose new registration and contract requirements, cap agent fees on endorsement contracts at 5%, and limit agency contracts to a student-athlete’s collegiate eligibility. It also would require a publicly available, searchable athlete-agent database and authorize fines or decertification for certain violations. The legislation would also create a private right of action for current and former student-athletes for specified violations.

The NCAA would regain regulatory tools that have become increasingly difficult to exercise in the wake of Alston. The PCSA would provide antitrust protection for the enforcement of specified rules governing athlete compensation, eligibility, transfers, and other areas of college athletics, while authorizing sanctions for violations of those rules. The legislation would therefore place the NCAA in a stronger position to establish and enforce nationwide rules in areas that have increasingly been shaped by litigation, state law, and institutional policies.

What Is Next?

The PCSA’s Senate passage marks a major political victory for proponents of federal college sports legislation, but the bill remains far from becoming law.

The bill faces an uncertain future in the House, where lawmakers will determine whether Congress is prepared to replace the current litigation-driven system with a comprehensive federal regulatory framework.

In addition to the typical challenges facing landmark legislation, the PCSA is subject to a narrow time window for passage. At present, the House stands in recess until the midterm elections in November 2026. ⁹ The truncated period between the election and the seating of a new Congress places significant time constraints on PCSA passage. If Congress does not enact the legislation before the end of the 119th Congress, a renewed legislative effort would be required in the next Congress.

Despite its strong margin in the Senate and support from President Trump, the PCSA continues to attract both support and opposition. Supporters describe the legislation as a necessary response to what they characterize as a “Wild West” era of athlete compensation and transfers and argue that it would help protect Olympic and women’s sports from cuts driven by rising athletics costs. Critics contend that the legislation prioritizes institutional interests by imposing new restrictions on athletes without providing collective bargaining rights or addressing other cost drivers in college athletics.

Regardless of its ultimate fate, the PCSA represents Congress’ most ambitious attempt to reshape college athletics since the emergence of the NIL era. More than any legislation proposed to date, the bill seeks to replace a system shaped principally by litigation and market forces with one governed by federal law and NCAA oversight. Whether that effort ultimately stabilizes college athletics or sparks a new wave of legal challenges remains to be seen.

Jack Wilson, a Law Clerk at Wiley Rein LLP, contributed to this alert.

Footnotes

1 See Roll Call Vote No. 250, 119th Cong., 2d Sess. (Sept. 28, 2026).

2 Protect College Sports Act of 2026, S. 4668, 119th Cong. § 118 (2026).

3 Id.; see also In re College Athlete NIL Litigation (House settlement), No. 4:20-cv-03919-CW (N.D. Cal. June 6, 2025).

4 Protect College Sports Act of 2026, S. 4668, 119th Cong. § 118 (2026).

5 Id.

6 National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, 594 U.S. 69, 141 S. Ct. 2141 (2021).

7 National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, 594 U.S. 69 (2021).

8 See In re College Athlete NIL Litigation (House settlement), No. 4:20-cv-03919-CW (N.D. Cal. June 6, 2025).

9 Sarah Ferris and Lauren Fox, House to Adjourn Early, Stave Off Hegseth Impeachment Vote, CNN (Sept. 16, 2026), https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/16/politics/house-early-recess-hegseth-impeachment.