The Protect College Sports Act, a bill reshaping college athletics, is one step closer to becoming law.
On Monday night, the United States Senate passed the bill to the House of Representatives via 77-22 vote.
Per ESPN’s Dan Murphy and Shwetha Surendran, the House of Representatives is not scheduled to vote on any bills until after November’s midterm elections. They added, “if the bill doesn’t get through the House during a lame-duck legislative session before a new Congress takes over in January, the full process would have to start from the beginning.”
Regardless, congressional supporters saw progress with the Senate vote.
“Student-athletes from across the country and all three NCAA Divisions worked hard to get this legislation moving and thanks to their advocacy, the bill just received a massive, bipartisan vote in the Senate,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a statement. “There is much work left to do to ensure student-athlete benefits are codified into federal law and future generations of young people can access those benefits and use college sports as the launching point for their careers.”
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The bill, if it becomes law, would provide the NCAA with antitrust exemption and allow it to enforce a cap on athlete pay. The Senate voted 52-47 against a provision that would have capped coach salaries at $5 million.
The SEC released a statement on the bill’s passage:
