U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz took a big bipartisan swing last month when he unveiled a compromise bill with Democrats to regulate college sports, a play he believes is the only path to saving the multibillion dollar industry from itself.

The Protect College Sports Act, which Cruz wrote with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, after months of negotiation, cleared a key hurdle Thursday when it passed the Senate Commerce Committee by a 19-9 vote. The bill is now eligible for a full vote on the Senate floor.

Cruz, who chairs the Commerce Committee, built a robust coalition of support behind the proposal, from several major NCAA conferences to legendary former University of Alabama Coach Nick Saban to President Donald Trump, who endorsed the bill earlier this month. And his decision to pursue reform in concert with Cantwell and Democrats, rather than take the GOP-driven approach that has floundered in the House, gives the bill broad momentum as it moves beyond the committee.

Passage would represent a key victory for Cruz, a massive sports fan and potential 2028 presidential candidate, on an issue that resonates far beyond just those who engage in politics. It also would reshape college football, a sport regarded with near-religious reverence in Texas.

But opposition from powerful athletic conferences, plus disagreements with the House GOP and Congressional Black Caucus, could slow Cruz’s ambitious timeline for passage this year.

Cruz equated passing the bill to a football team going for it on fourth down instead of punting.

“The greatest threat to college sports is inaction,” Cruz said in the hearing, clarifying the stakes. “The laws enacted by past Congresses are the reason why the current system is growing more unstable. If Congress doesn’t fix these laws and pass this bill, the cost of our failure will be measured not only in dollars, or wins and losses. The cost of our failure will be measured in lost opportunities.”

Reform has eluded college sports since the seismic 2021 ruling that allowed college athletes to profit off of their name, image and likeness, and the massive 2024 settlement that emerged from a class action lawsuit that compelled the NCAA and athletic conferences to share revenue with athletes. The NIL era has brought millions to athletes who were previously barred from profiting from the sports they played and transformed the economics of college sports, generating record high revenue.

But the new era of college athletics has also fundamentally reshaped the system and created stark divides between top conferences and the smaller ones, and the revenue-generating sports and those that don’t — typically women’s sports and Olympic sports. The wild west system, as it has been called, has drawn increasing scrutiny from lawmakers and from the NCAA itself, which has asked Congress to step in and create a framework to replace the patchwork of laws that exists today.

Cruz and Cantwell have pitched their bill as the only solution that can reasonably bring the parties together in time.

“Anybody who thinks that there’s another opportunity forward is going to be mistaken,” Cantwell said. “I think we have seen, from the NCAA and the conferences, that they cannot figure out how to get this structure right. They need our help.”

Trump wants to see a deal done this summer.

“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 in early June.

The debate over the best approach has been intense, complicated by the competing desires between top-earning conferences and smaller football programs, as well as thorny questions of whether athletes should be classified as employees and how to balance the interests of players, coaches, fans and conferences.

The Protect College Sports Act does not address the employment question, which has been a sticking point in debates. Supporters, including some Democrats, argue that athletes should be classified as employees to receive labor protections, form unions and ensure they are properly compensated. Opponents, including some Republicans, want to ban student athletes from employee status, saying doing so would destroy smaller programs and non-revenue sports, as well as decouple sports from academics. By contrast, a House bill, which has little Democratic support, would ban student-athletes from being classified as employees.

But Cruz and Cantwell’s approach does protect students’ ability to earn NIL compensation and creates more transparency around the NIL process, including protections from deceptive agent conduct and the creation of an NIL disclosure database that would list the value of agreements.

Cruz sees a narrow window to regulate college sports before the NCAA is forever altered by the potential of a “super-league” — a prospective merger between the Big Ten and the SEC that could bring untold riches to the two powerful conferences but devastate dozens of schools in other conferences and eliminate scores of non-revenue programs, completely changing the face of college athletics.

And the Texas senator sees the issue as existential for programs outside of the state’s biggest rivalry.

“If the system continues on the path it's on, there are only two schools that I am certain would survive — University of Texas and Texas A&M,” Cruz said in an episode of his podcast “Verdict.”

“They have a big enough donor base that no matter what happens, those two survive,” he said. “But if we're sitting here three, five years from now, and the other schools — University of Houston, Baylor, TCU, SMU, Texas Tech, Rice — if the other college programs in Texas go under, that's terrible for Texas. It's terrible for athletes. It's terrible for the sport.”

The Protect College Sports Act effectively eliminates the ability for the Big Ten and SEC to merge by banning large-revenue conferences from consolidating or growing by acquisition. Based on feedback, the senators tweaked the bill late Wednesday to set a $700 million revenue floor to trigger the anti-expansion provision, which would also impact the ACC and likely Big 12.

It allows teams a path to pool television rights — the largest revenue driver — if 75 percent of the schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision agree, triggering an antitrust exemption. For professional leagues like the NFL, the entire league negotiates to sell its media rights, with broadcast revenue shared instead of each team going it alone.

If teams agree to pool media rights, they would have to agree to protect women’s and Olympic sports roster spots, and existing rivalries between schools. But the Big Ten and SEC, which have massive media rights deals, could squash the pool if all teams in those conferences, plus unaffiliated Notre Dame, band together.

Cruz’s bill has drawn support from 23 conferences, including the commissioner of the Big 12 — which includes Baylor, Houston, TCU and Texas Tech — and the presidents of Texas universities including Baylor, Rice, SMU, Texas Southern University, TCU, University of Texas, El Paso and University of Texas, San Antonio. Professional leagues, including the NFL, NBA and MLB, as well as the players’ unions for the NFL and NBA, and the NCAA commissioner, have come onboard as well.

The bill is opposed by the commissioners of the Big Ten and the SEC, which have the most to gain from consolidation, with the SEC casting a large shadow across Texas. In a joint statement released Thursday morning, the leagues said they will continue to propose revisions they want to see implemented.

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said earlier in June that while he supports the bill’s objectives, he wants to see significant changes because the legislation as written “imposes a higher standard on the SEC and Big Ten.”

Other elements of Cruz and Cantwell’s bill include medical protection for student-athletes, giving athletes a private right of action to sue schools, a provision preventing football coaches from switching teams midseason (a la LSU’s Lane Kiffin), a continuation of the revenue-sharing cap that the NCAA has implemented and a mandate that schools provide men’s and women’s sports teams with comparable facilities and services.

It also addresses the transfer portal and player eligibility, which has brought a level of chaos to football and basketball because athletes can transfer schools an unlimited number of times. Cruz’s bill sets a five-year eligibility cap, with some exceptions for military service or pregnancy, and allows athletes one transfer, with additional transfers permitted for special circumstances such as a coach leaving or sexual harassment.

Beyond the opposition of the Big Ten and SEC — influential players in the Midwest and South, respectively — Cruz’s coalition will need to contend with opponents on the left and right.

On the left, the Congressional Black Caucus has urged Cruz and Cantwell to pause consideration of the bill over their objections to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and subsequent moves by Republican-led Southern states to redraw congressional maps and eliminate Black Democrats’ seats.

The CBC’s posture is part of a pressure campaign to urge college athletic institutions to engage on voting rights. The group does not want Congress to confer any benefits on them until they do so.

“For generations, Black athletes have helped build college athletics into one of the most powerful and profitable industries in American life,” CBC Chair Yvette Clarke, D-New York, wrote in a letter to Cruz and Cantwell. “The success, visibility, and cultural influence of major athletic conferences and institutions are inseparable from the talent, labor, leadership, and cultural contributions of Black communities. The Congressional Black Caucus believes institutions that profit from Black talent and Black communities have a responsibility to stand with those communities when their fundamental rights are under attack.”

Cantwell said she planned to communicate with CBC members further about the bill.

On the right, some Republicans don’t want to support a bill that doesn’t eliminate any potential for athletes to be classified as employees. Others, like Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, say they won’t support any sports legislation that doesn’t ban trans athletes from competing.

In Thursday’s committee vote, the bill drew support from six Democrats and 13 Republicans, a rare instance of bipartisanship in Washington. Two Republicans and seven Democrats voted no.

The next test will be a vote on the Senate floor, with multiple senators expressing interest in making additional changes before it gets there.

In an interview with Punchbowl News in early June, Cruz said he wants the bill to pass the full Senate with a big, bipartisan margin, and that Senate Majority Leader John Thune had agreed to put it up for a vote if it can pass.

“If we’ve got a bill that can move, he’ll put it on the floor,” Cruz said. “If we vote it out of the Senate with a big bipartisan vote, I think it goes to the House with momentum, and I think the President is more than happy to lean in behind it.”

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This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.