With the Senate back in session next week — and with the college football season in full swing — lobbying around the Protect College Sports Act is picking up again.
If you watched even a moderate amount of football last weekend, you know that Nick Saban, the legendary former coach, appeared in a pro-PCSA commercial funded by a group called Saving College Sports. If you turned on ESPN’s College GameDay at a certain time, you would have heard Saban and Pat McAfee discussing how Congress has to regulate the industry, another endorsement of the bill. This week, Saving College Sports is out with another television spot, this one starring Colorado Coach Deion Sanders, as Politico first reported.
With a tight window before the midterms, those pushing the bill are getting heavy hitters to support it in public. On the other side, though, some of the biggest names in opposition have been operating behind the scenes.
Michele A. Roberts was executive director of the National Basketball Players Association from 2014 to 2022. DeMaurice Smith was executive director of the NFL Players Association from 2009 to 2023. Early in the summer, as the PCSA gained traction in the Senate, Roberts and Smith decided to link arms and fight the bill together.
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Working with a small group of lawyers and labor advocates, Roberts and Smith — whose involvement has not been previously reported — have provided extensive materials to the Congressional Black Caucus, which has been a major factor in past negotiations on college sports. Smith, a longtime presence in D.C. (where the NFLPA is headquartered), said he has also been in regular communication with Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the Democratic senator most publicly opposed to the bill. And on the other side of recess, they plan to keep contacting politicians in both chambers, particularly focusing on members who could be swayed by what Roberts and Smith described as labor and race issues with the PCSA.
“What I find astounding is that all of this is being done without athletes,” Roberts told The Washington Sun last week. “Beyond it being horrific legislation, it’s even being done without the participation of the labor that’s bringing in all the wealth.”
The PCSA has eight co-sponsors, including four Republicans and four Democrats. Before the August recess began, Senate Majority Leader John Thune agreed to hold a cloture vote on the bill once the chamber returned. President Donald Trump has supported it throughout the summer, though the bill would still have to pass through the Senate and House before making it to his desk. To that end, if the Democrats take control of the House in the midterms, that would likely end this round of College Sports on the Hill.
Roberts and Smith are not one brain, but they both believe, more than anything, that athletes should be directly involved in any negotiations for a college sports bill, sweeping (like the PCSA) or otherwise. Further, they believe college athletes should have employment rights, which eventually could allow them to unionize and collectively bargain with their conferences or schools.
The PCSA states neutrality on employment, which its Democratic co-sponsors consider a significant win. The bill’s lead sponsors are Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), their parties’ top members of the Senate’s commerce committee. When Cruz introduced his ideal version of college sports legislation in the fall of 2023, it included a provision to bar college athletes from becoming employees. The same was true of the SCORE Act, which was crafted and pushed by House Republicans in 2025, all the way to the edge of a floor vote that never happened.
But while the PCSA does not explicitly ban employment, many labor leaders, including Roberts and Smith, feel that is a smoke screen. Their argument mostly focuses on the bill’s antitrust protections, which would allow the NCAA and conferences to set rules on compensation, eligibility and the transfer portal without the threat of lawsuits. To the labor leaders, that would stunt any future organizing efforts, seeing that the chance to collectively bargain over those issues — compensation, eligibility, player movement — would be a key way to entice athletes to sign union cards.
“Take it out of sports and put it into another context,” Smith told The Washington Sun. “Let’s make the constitutional amendment say there is nothing under the Constitution which would bar or prevent a state from recognizing Black people as citizens. Are you fucking happy with that? No, no, we actually created the 14th Amendment to identify them as citizens. Ding, ding, ding. So why don’t we just say this the other way?”
This is just another example of how, despite the stated neutrality, the employment question looms over the PCSA. If a bill established employment rights for athletes, that would be a non-starter for most Republicans, according to aides on both sides of the aisle. But that won’t stop Roberts, Smith and other labor advocates from pushing for it — or from using it to sway pro-labor politicians against this specific bill.
After Roberts and Smith first discussed the PCSA, they connected with Patrick Bradford, a New York-based lawyer who has worked in college sports for the last five years or so. Roberts is also an advisor to DYK Media, an advocacy group that educates college athletes on labor issues.
“We were trying to get to any member of the Senate and House who we thought would at least give us a meeting and read our materials,” Bradford told The Washington Sun. “Because in truth, the August bill hasn’t been dissected at all.”
When they were considering their ways into Capitol Hill, Bradford reached out to Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Maryland), having tried a case with Ivey before he ran for Congress. Ivey is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, or CBC. From the beginning, Smith, Roberts and Bradford, along with the rest of their team, knew that lobbying the CBC should be one of their routes. They had seen how the CBC influenced the demise of the SCORE Act in the House. They also knew that, once again, it would be hearing from HBCUs that support the PCSA.
In the materials they shared with the CBC this summer, they framed the PCSA as a civil rights issue, noting, among other things, that the bill would turn back the clock by restricting the earning power of Black athletes in football and men’s basketball.
In May, in a big final swing against SCORE, the CBC said in a statement that it could not support legislation that would benefit universities and conferences that “remain silent” on Black voting rights “being systematically dismantled across the South.” In August, the CBC opposed the PCSA in a statement, saying “We will not be complicit in efforts to further exclude the interests of Black people by advancing legislation that will determine the economic future of Black athletes, their families, and their communities without their meaningful participation and engagement.”
On the other hand, the United Negro College Fund, which represents 37 private HBCUs, supports the bill. As smaller colleges keep feeling the strain of spending and constant player movement in the name, image and likeness (NIL) era, any bill that regulates those areas is a logical sell to them. The PCSA also includes a federal grant program that would help HBCUs fund the broadcasting of sporting events.
If the bill does make it through the Senate, the CBC would be a bigger factor during negotiations — and potential voting — in the House. The PCSA could, in theory, pass through the House on a party-line vote. But Republicans have a slim House majority, and the expectation is that members of both parties would offer a lot of input.
That’s why Roberts, Smith and their colleagues aren’t limiting their advocacy to CBC members. They plan to phone-bank politicians with their central view, which is that this bill would be a setback for athlete labor.
“The rights conferred in this legislation are a de facto prohibition against organizing,” Roberts said. “All the rules and regulations and powers stay with the NCAA.”
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