• The US Senate is preparing to vote on the Protect College Sports Act (PCSA). If passed, the bill will be sent to the House of Representatives.
• The PCSA provides the NCAA with an antitrust exemption and institutes a revenue-sharing cap while remaining ambiguous about athletes' employment status.
• Certain aspects of the bill threaten to undermine Title IX protections for women's college athletes.

This week, the Senate will vote on Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Maria Cantwell’s Protect College Sports Act (PCSA). If passed, it would go to the House of Representatives for approval. Donald Trump has endorsed the bill and said he would sign it if it receives congressional approval.

The PCSA would codify into federal law new rules governing, among other things, revenue sharing, roster spots for women's and Olympic sports, and grant the NCAA an antitrust exemption. Proponents point to protections it creates or expands for athletes, such as improved health and safety standards and the regulation of agent fees. Opponents are less optimistic about the supposed benefits for athletes.

Jennifer Abruzzo spent 20 years as a lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board and served as the general counsel under President Joe Biden. She now serves as an advisor to the United College Athletes Association (UCAA) – a burgeoning union for college athletes with women leading the charge. Abruzzo questions how much the PCSA actually protects college athletes.

“To me, [this legislation] is about capping compensation, controlling the money and avoiding liability,” said Abruzzo. “What it should be about is treating players with dignity and respect, giving them a true voice and collective power to better their conditions.”

On the Protection of Roster Spots

The bill is especially consequential for women’s college athletes. Section 125 of the bill deals with the “Protection of Women’s Sports and Olympic Sports.”

Recently graduated Radford University Volleyball player Meredith Page is the current Division I chair of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC). SAAC, which describes itself as representing 500,000 student-athletes, has publicly endorsed the bill.

“Part of the bill that I think helps women’s athletics is the enhanced roster spots that have to happen,” said Meredith Page. “You have to go back to where you were in 2024-2025 so it gives more roster spots to all of our teams, but also our women's ones.”

The PCSA does set require schools maintain the roster opportunities that existied during the 2024-2025 academic year. Wether this is the best way to protect women's roster spots is debatable.

Better enforcement of Title IX would protect opportunities for women’s athletes. With over 93 percent of colleges and universities out of compliance with Title IX, according to the Drake Group, better enforcement is sorely needed. The bill's current language does nothing to rectify this discrimination. Instead, it establishes the 2024-2025 levels of non-compliance as an acceptable status quo.

With such systemic inequality the private right of action – in which individual athletes can take disputes to court supposing they can afford the costs of time-consuming litigation – hardly seems up to the task.

The AFL-CIO has critisized the way this section of the bill seems antithetical to the PCSA's stated intent.

“When it comes to protecting women athletes against discrimination,” wrote AFL-CIO’s director of government affairs Jody Calemine in a letter to Senators, “the bill undermines Title IX protections by freezing compliance at a discriminatory baseline.”

To the extent that section 125 of the bill does protect women’s and Olympic sports, the protections are not the same at every university and loopholes exist to skirt these requirements.

Large institutions, defined as making more than $80 million a year in athletic revenue, can file a waiver to demonstrate financial hardship and become exempt from matching 2024-2025 participation levels for a year. If the waiver is approved, the institution must cut revenue-generating coaching staff costs in proportion to cuts in non-revenue-generating sports.

Mid-sized institutions, defined as generating $50-$80 million in revenue per academic year, may file a similar waiver but are not subject to reducing coaching costs.

Smaller institutions are not subject to this minimum protections.

Senator Cantwell’s office released a report detailing the financial crisis facing athletic programs. Much of the report focused on spending before revenue sharing began or expenditures not addresed in the bill like facillity costs. By only limiting spending on players, it seems likely the reported financial hardship will persist and keeping the future of women's and Olympic sports tenuous.

It is worth noting that unlike in the PCSA, finalncial hardship does not exempt an institution from fullfilling it's Title IX obligations.

University of Tennessee cross country runner Kaitlyn Vanderkolk summed up some of the frustrations in this portion of the bill.

“Simply mentioning women’s and Olympic sports in a bill does not mean those athletes are actually protected,” Vanderkolk said. “The bill leaves athletes at roughly 70 percent of Division I schools without guaranteed protection from roster and scholarship cuts. Even where protections apply, they expire.”

“The future of college athletics should protect all athletes and preserve the opportunities created by Title IX, ensuring that women’s and Olympic sports remain part of the future of college athletics.”

These roster obligations sunset after nine years and four years for large and mid-size institutions, respectively.

Kaitlyn Vanderkolk

House Settlement and Revenue Sharing

Perhaps the most talked-about portion of the bill is the revenue-sharing structure. The PCSA codifies the revenue-sharing arrangement established by the 2025 House settlement.​​

The House Settlement ordered the NCAA to pay $2.8 billion in back damages to former athletes whose Name, Image, and Likeness earnings were denied. Male football and basketball players received 90 percent of the damages, women’s basketball received five percent, and all other athletes received the other five percent.

Several women have appealed the House Settlement, asserting that it violates institutions' Title IX obligations. Those appeals are awaiting judgment in the 9th Circuit Court.

This breakdown of damages was largely justified in the House Settlement by the value of the media rights across sports and gender. Here too, women will naturally find it difficult to demonstrate profitability because of the way their broadcast rights are packaged.

Historically, the broadcast rights for popular women’s sports like basketball and volleyball, which continue to see rising attendance and viewership every year, have not been sold individually. Instead they are packaged up with dozens of other sports. As a result, those sports cannot accurately demonstrate their market value.

The unequal distribution of damages sets a dangerous precedent for how the revenue-sharing cap outlined by the House settlement will be distributed. The bill sets the revenue sharing cap at $20.5 million for the 2025-2026 academic year and increasing by four percent each year to adjust for inflation. The bill also provides an additional $22.5 million annually to retain athletes.

For opponents of the bill like Democratic Senator Chris Murphy this revenue sharing cap is an insult to all college athletes.

“What the bill does at its core is to protect a system of exploitation,” said Murphy. “This bill protects the billions of dollars that coaches and sports industry executives are making over the suppression of compensation for some of the most highly valued athletes in the world.”

The cap may indeed be exploitative to athletes as a whole, but it may hurt women disproportionately. Because of how the bill categorizes revenue-sharing payments, its obligations to compensate women fairly, let alone equally, are non-existent. NWSL Players Association Executive Director Meghann Burke explains.

“The bill risks undermining the promise of Title IX,” Burke said. “Schools should not be able to evade their Title IX obligations simply by calling revenue-sharing payments compensation rather than athletic benefits.”

By codifying a revenue-sharing structure that gives schools full discretion over how to distribute the funds, we will likely see universities distribute funds disproportionately to men’s athletic teams. In fact, we already are.

Since the House Settlement, Penn State has reported paying men $18,248,391 in institutional revenue sharing, while women received only $120,000 in 2025. Only 10 thousand of that went to the volleyball team that won the National Championship in 2024

Collective Bargaining

To its marginal credit, the PCSA expands certain health and safety protections for athletes, provides better protection against predatory agents, and ensures, despite flaws, some revenue sharing for at least some athletes.

However, many argue that stability, protection, and fair compensation would be better achieved through collective bargaining.

“Athletes should not have to give up our economic rights and legal leverage just to receive basic protections we already deserve,” said Maryland women’s basketball player and Interim President of the UCAA Oluchi Okananwa. “We are not fighting against structure in college sports; we are fighting for a fair structure, one where athletes have a meaningful seat at the table and a real voice in the decisions that shape our lives and careers.”

Intererim Presidentt of the UCAA

Collective bargaining would bring athletes' opinions to the foreground and allow them to advocate for fairer compensation and worker protections every few years, ensuring treatment of athletes remains safe and equitable as the landscape changes. It could also give women an avenue to negotiate a fairer distribution of revenue sharing.

The PCSA remains ambiguous regarding athletes employment status but does grant the NCAA an antitrust exemption. This combination ensures athletes are not protected by labor laws that, among other things, give workers the right to organize and collectively bargain.

The debate over whether athletes should qualify as employees is ongoing. Meredith Page of the student athletic advisory committee believes that athletes are different from employees.

“I think it's important to make the distinction that student athletes are not employees,” said Page. “I've said that since 2023 and I’ll say it till I die. Student athletes are uniquely positioned because they are there to be a student. They're in classes with everybody else. They have the same meal plan as everybody else. They just get the opportunity to compete at the highest level.”

Former General Counsel to the NLRB Jennifer A. Abruzzo disagrees. Abruzzo argues that college athletes meet all the qualifications of employees and should be considered as such. Thus, any legislation with such transformative implications should be bargained for collectively.

“Collective bargaining is what gives players a voice in how they are treated,” said Abruzzo. “It holds institutions accountable and it addresses systemic problems.”