At a June 2026 Senate hearing, Utah football player Lance Holtzclaw asked for reform made with athletes, not just for them. The bill gives athletes a microphone, but not real bargaining power.
TL;DR
- The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on the Protect College Sports Act on June 3, 2026. Nick Saban testified in support.
- Utah’s Lance Holtzclaw was the lone athlete on the five-person panel. His message: decisions should be made with athletes, not for them. It landed well.
- The bill gives the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption to enforce rules on transfers, eligibility, and compensation. It stays neutral on whether athletes are employees.
- The three groups that organize college athletes — the NCPA, Athletes.org, and the United College Athletes Association — all oppose the bill.
- The fight isn’t whether athletes get to speak. It’s whether they get to negotiate.
On June 3, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing with a title built for a press release: “Protecting College Sports: Supporting Student Athletes, Restoring Fair Competition, and Saving the Games Fans Love.” Five witnesses testified: Nick Saban, Notre Dame’s athletic director, the Pac-12 commissioner, West Virginia’s president emeritus, and one current college football player from Utah named Lance Holtzclaw.
Holtzclaw was the most interesting person at the table, and not because he was the most famous. He was the opposite. A defensive end who was recruited during COVID, started at Washington, lived through the end of the Pac-12, played in a national championship game, and transferred to Utah, he has personally run the gauntlet of NIL, the portal, and realignment that the senators were there to discuss. His message was clear: decisions about college sports should be made with athletes, not just for them. It landed. One senator joked he should run for office.
So this isn’t a story about athletes being shut out of the room. An athlete was in the room, he was good, and he said the right thing. The story is what happened to what he said. Holtzclaw was the one athlete in the room. He asked for athletes to have a seat at the table shaping the future of college sports. The bill still treats athletes more like guests.
For a broader breakdown of the bill itself, see our full explainer on the Protect College Sports Act. This article focuses on what the June 2026 hearing revealed about athlete representation, collective bargaining, and who actually gets a say in college sports governance.
What the bill actually does
The Protect College Sports Act of 2026 is the bipartisan product of Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell, joined by Eric Schmitt and Chris Coons. Strip away the framing and the mechanism is simple: it hands the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption so it can enforce a set of rules without getting sued every time it tries.
Those rules include limiting athletes to one penalty-free transfer, capping eligibility at five years, banning former professional athletes from returning to college, and stopping schools from poaching a coach mid-season, the provision Cruz nicknamed the “Lane Kiffin rule.” It also extends the revenue-share cap from the House settlement and lets conferences pool media rights, with strings attached for funding women’s and Olympic sports.
On the surface, plenty here is labeled for athletes: an Office of the Student Athlete Ombudsman, a private right of action so athletes can sue if the rules aren’t followed, an agent registry that caps fees at five percent, and a line about athlete representation on governance. Saban’s pitch was that Congress shouldn’t micromanage college sports but does need to end the legal chaos so the people inside the system can enforce fair rules. He warned that the system keeps drifting toward a professional model without anyone admitting that’s what it is.
He’s right about the drift. He’s also describing it from the only side of the table he has ever sat on in modern-era college sports.
Made with, or made for
Holtzclaw asked for one thing: that athletes help shape the rules rather than receive them. The bill in front of the committee does the opposite. It writes the rules on transfers, eligibility, and pay, and then asks Congress to shield those rules from legal challenge.
That’s the gap between speaking and negotiating. Holtzclaw got to speak. He did not get to bargain, because no athlete in that process has the standing to bargain. The hearing gave him a microphone. The bill withholds the thing that would have given his testimony teeth.
The groups built to close that gap saw it immediately. Three athlete advocacy organizations came out against the bill: the United College Athletes Association, Athletes.org, and the National College Players Association. Their objection is not that athletes were excluded from the conversation. It’s that compensation, transfers, eligibility, and working conditions should be negotiated by athletes, not imposed on them by law. NCPA executive director Ramogi Huma, who helped win athletes their NIL rights, said the bill would play athletes and organized labor for fools.
That is the same point Holtzclaw made, stated by the people whose job is to turn it into leverage. Made with, not made for.
Why the antitrust exemption is the whole game
What makes this bill different from the SCORE Act that stalled in the House is what it leaves out. It does not declare college athletes non-employees. It stays neutral on the single most important question in the fight: whether athletes are workers who can unionize and bargain.
That neutrality isn’t an accident. It is the seam the rest of the bill rests on.
An antitrust exemption gives college sports some of the stability it wants from collective bargaining, without requiring the NCAA or conferences to actually bargain with athletes. Pro leagues already have legal cover to set rules on transfers, salaries, and eligibility, but they got it through collective bargaining agreements negotiated with player unions. Owners earned cost certainty by giving players a permanent seat and a share of the money. The protection flows from the bargain.
College sports wants the cost certainty without the bargain. The Protect College Sports Act is an attempt to get the upside of a CBA, enforceable rules, capped pay, protection from lawsuits, without ever sitting across from an organized group of athletes. Senator Chris Murphy, a longtime backer of collective bargaining for athletes, said the bill’s main effect is to limit what athletes earn while protecting the salaries of the adults getting rich off them.
Even some of the people running college sports are starting to say the alternative out loud. The Pac-12 commissioner who testified called for honest conversations about collective bargaining. The SEC, one of the two conferences opposing this bill, has reportedly discussed allowing collective bargaining at its own league meetings. The only two routes out of the antitrust problem are legislation or a CBA. There is no third option.
Why the conferences are split
The ACC and Big 12 backed the bill quickly. The SEC and Big Ten, the two leagues with the most leverage and the most to gain from a super-league future, released a joint statement opposing it as written, saying it leaves critical issues unresolved and could end up routing revenue-share money away from athletes.
That split tells you who thinks the current rulebook protects them. The conferences afraid of getting left behind want a national framework that freezes the field in place. The conferences that could build their own model don’t want Congress drawing the lines. Notably, neither camp is fighting on the same side as the athlete groups. The schools are arguing over control. The athletes are arguing over standing.
Would former athletes change this
The fix you hear most from people watching this is that the panels should include more athletes, ideally former ones who spent a decade or two in business and understand the economics. It’s a fair instinct, and it would help. The optics improve, and so does the depth of the testimony.
It still doesn’t change the outcome, and it’s worth being precise about why. A witness is a witness, whether it’s a current defensive end or a retired player who built a company. They testify, they go home, and the people writing the rules decide what to do with what they heard. That’s advocacy, and advocacy works only when the people in power feel like listening.
What puts athletes in the room permanently, not as a guest but as a party who has to be dealt with, is standing. Employee status. A players’ association with the legal right to sit on the other side of the deal and say no. That is exactly what the NCPA, Athletes.org, and the UCAA are pushing for, and exactly what this bill is structured to avoid. A better witness changes the testimony. A seat at the bargaining table changes the result.
Where this goes
The bill faces long odds as written. It’s sprawling, the two most powerful conferences are against it, the athlete groups are against it, and a separate effort is pulling the other way: the College Athlete Right to Organize Act, backed by Senators Murphy, Sanders, and Warren along with several major unions, which would make athletes employees with the right to organize.
So the honest read on June 3 isn’t that the players had no voice. They had one, and he used it well. The read is that the system was happy to hear from an athlete and unwilling to bargain with one. The argument everyone keeps circling, antitrust exemption versus collective bargaining, comes down to a single question: do athletes get a permanent seat, or do they keep getting invited to speak and then sent home? On June 3, Holtzclaw spoke. The next bill, or the next lawsuit, decides whether anyone has to listen.
Update: Trump’s Endorsement Raises the Stakes
President Donald Trump publicly endorsed the Protect College Sports Act on June 4, urging Congress to pass a final version this summer.
In a Truth Social post, Trump described college sports as a system in crisis and called the legislation a bipartisan solution to restore stability to college athletics. He specifically thanked Senators Ted Cruz, Eric Schmitt, Maria Cantwell, and Chris Coons for introducing the bill.
The endorsement is politically significant, but it does not settle the debate. Supporters see the bill as a necessary step toward restoring order after years of lawsuits, NIL disputes, transfer portal uncertainty, and governance challenges. Critics argue that it grants the NCAA new protections while leaving athletes without meaningful bargaining power over the rules that govern compensation, eligibility, and movement.
What Trump’s support does change is the bill’s visibility. A proposal that already had backing from figures like Nick Saban, the ACC, and the Big 12 now has support from the President as well. Whether that momentum turns into legislation remains uncertain.
More from SportsEpreneur
SportsEpreneur covers NIL, athlete rights, college sports governance, revenue sharing, and the business of college athletics.
For more analysis on the Protect College Sports Act, collective bargaining, athlete employment, and the future of college sports, explore our NIL and college sports coverage. >> NIL HUB
Related reading: Cracking the College Sports NIL Fiduciary Code of Conduct. On The Strategy Addict, Shane Snively makes the case for the fiduciary standard college sports still hasn’t built.
FAQ
What is the Protect College Sports Act?
It’s a 2026 bipartisan Senate bill from Ted Cruz, Maria Cantwell, Eric Schmitt, and Chris Coons that would give the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption to enforce rules on transfers, eligibility, agents, and a revenue-share cap, while creating new athlete protections like an ombudsman and a private right of action.
Did any college athletes testify at the June 2026 hearing?
Yes. University of Utah defensive end Lance Holtzclaw sat on the five-person panel alongside Nick Saban, Notre Dame’s athletic director, the Pac-12 commissioner, and West Virginia’s president emeritus. His testimony argued that reform should be made with athletes, not just for them, and it was well received.
Do college athlete groups support the bill?
No. Three organizations that represent college athletes — the National College Players Association, Athletes.org, and the United College Athletes Association — have come out against it, arguing that the rules it sets should be negotiated with athletes through collective bargaining rather than imposed by Congress.
Does the bill make college athletes employees?
No, and it doesn’t rule it out either. Unlike the earlier SCORE Act, the Protect College Sports Act stays neutral on employee status, which leaves the door open to future collective bargaining.
Why do the SEC and Big Ten oppose the bill?
The two most powerful conferences released a joint statement opposing the bill as written, saying it leaves critical issues unresolved and could reduce the revenue-share payments athletes receive. Both are seen as the likeliest candidates for a breakaway “super league” and want more control over their own governance.
What’s the difference between an antitrust exemption and collective bargaining?
An antitrust exemption is granted by Congress and lets the NCAA enforce rules without legal challenge. Collective bargaining is negotiated directly with athletes as employees through a union. Pro leagues get their antitrust protection through CBAs; this bill seeks the protection without the bargaining.
More College Sports Articles from SportsEpreneur
The Protect College Sports Act Explained: NIL, Transfers, Antitrust, and the Future of College Sports
NIL Pros and Cons | The College Game Is Changed Forever
The Economics Behind College Football’s NIL Spending Explosion
Brendan Sorsby Bet on His Own Team and Is Somehow Still Eligible to Play
NIL, Youth Sports, and the Pressure Pipeline
Eric Kasimov is the founder of SportsEpreneur, part of the KazSource media network. Since launching the platform in 2015, he has hosted over 500 podcast episodes, written and published more than 1,500 articles, and advised business leaders, founders, and creators on building authority through media strategy.
Through his brands — KazSource, KazCM, SportsEpreneur, and QuietLoud Studios — Eric leads teams that produce podcasts, develop brand platforms, and help companies grow through modern content ecosystems. He also scaled KazSource Insurance into a seven-figure boutique agency, providing the foundation for the broader media network he operates today.
His work has been featured in Forbes, Axios, and Front Office Sports, and his podcasts have included conversations with top founders, investors, and athletes turned entrepreneurs.
What the Protect College Sports Act Reveals About Athlete Representation
At a June 2026 Senate hearing, Utah football player Lance Holtzclaw asked for reform made with athletes, not just for them. The bill gives athletes a microphone, but not real bargaining power.
TL;DR
On June 3, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing with a title built for a press release: “Protecting College Sports: Supporting Student Athletes, Restoring Fair Competition, and Saving the Games Fans Love.” Five witnesses testified: Nick Saban, Notre Dame’s athletic director, the Pac-12 commissioner, West Virginia’s president emeritus, and one current college football player from Utah named Lance Holtzclaw.
Holtzclaw was the most interesting person at the table, and not because he was the most famous. He was the opposite. A defensive end who was recruited during COVID, started at Washington, lived through the end of the Pac-12, played in a national championship game, and transferred to Utah, he has personally run the gauntlet of NIL, the portal, and realignment that the senators were there to discuss. His message was clear: decisions about college sports should be made with athletes, not just for them. It landed. One senator joked he should run for office.
So this isn’t a story about athletes being shut out of the room. An athlete was in the room, he was good, and he said the right thing. The story is what happened to what he said. Holtzclaw was the one athlete in the room. He asked for athletes to have a seat at the table shaping the future of college sports. The bill still treats athletes more like guests.
For a broader breakdown of the bill itself, see our full explainer on the Protect College Sports Act. This article focuses on what the June 2026 hearing revealed about athlete representation, collective bargaining, and who actually gets a say in college sports governance.
What the bill actually does
The Protect College Sports Act of 2026 is the bipartisan product of Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell, joined by Eric Schmitt and Chris Coons. Strip away the framing and the mechanism is simple: it hands the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption so it can enforce a set of rules without getting sued every time it tries.
Those rules include limiting athletes to one penalty-free transfer, capping eligibility at five years, banning former professional athletes from returning to college, and stopping schools from poaching a coach mid-season, the provision Cruz nicknamed the “Lane Kiffin rule.” It also extends the revenue-share cap from the House settlement and lets conferences pool media rights, with strings attached for funding women’s and Olympic sports.
On the surface, plenty here is labeled for athletes: an Office of the Student Athlete Ombudsman, a private right of action so athletes can sue if the rules aren’t followed, an agent registry that caps fees at five percent, and a line about athlete representation on governance. Saban’s pitch was that Congress shouldn’t micromanage college sports but does need to end the legal chaos so the people inside the system can enforce fair rules. He warned that the system keeps drifting toward a professional model without anyone admitting that’s what it is.
He’s right about the drift. He’s also describing it from the only side of the table he has ever sat on in modern-era college sports.
Made with, or made for
Holtzclaw asked for one thing: that athletes help shape the rules rather than receive them. The bill in front of the committee does the opposite. It writes the rules on transfers, eligibility, and pay, and then asks Congress to shield those rules from legal challenge.
That’s the gap between speaking and negotiating. Holtzclaw got to speak. He did not get to bargain, because no athlete in that process has the standing to bargain. The hearing gave him a microphone. The bill withholds the thing that would have given his testimony teeth.
The groups built to close that gap saw it immediately. Three athlete advocacy organizations came out against the bill: the United College Athletes Association, Athletes.org, and the National College Players Association. Their objection is not that athletes were excluded from the conversation. It’s that compensation, transfers, eligibility, and working conditions should be negotiated by athletes, not imposed on them by law. NCPA executive director Ramogi Huma, who helped win athletes their NIL rights, said the bill would play athletes and organized labor for fools.
That is the same point Holtzclaw made, stated by the people whose job is to turn it into leverage. Made with, not made for.
Why the antitrust exemption is the whole game
What makes this bill different from the SCORE Act that stalled in the House is what it leaves out. It does not declare college athletes non-employees. It stays neutral on the single most important question in the fight: whether athletes are workers who can unionize and bargain.
That neutrality isn’t an accident. It is the seam the rest of the bill rests on.
An antitrust exemption gives college sports some of the stability it wants from collective bargaining, without requiring the NCAA or conferences to actually bargain with athletes. Pro leagues already have legal cover to set rules on transfers, salaries, and eligibility, but they got it through collective bargaining agreements negotiated with player unions. Owners earned cost certainty by giving players a permanent seat and a share of the money. The protection flows from the bargain.
College sports wants the cost certainty without the bargain. The Protect College Sports Act is an attempt to get the upside of a CBA, enforceable rules, capped pay, protection from lawsuits, without ever sitting across from an organized group of athletes. Senator Chris Murphy, a longtime backer of collective bargaining for athletes, said the bill’s main effect is to limit what athletes earn while protecting the salaries of the adults getting rich off them.
Even some of the people running college sports are starting to say the alternative out loud. The Pac-12 commissioner who testified called for honest conversations about collective bargaining. The SEC, one of the two conferences opposing this bill, has reportedly discussed allowing collective bargaining at its own league meetings. The only two routes out of the antitrust problem are legislation or a CBA. There is no third option.
Why the conferences are split
The ACC and Big 12 backed the bill quickly. The SEC and Big Ten, the two leagues with the most leverage and the most to gain from a super-league future, released a joint statement opposing it as written, saying it leaves critical issues unresolved and could end up routing revenue-share money away from athletes.
That split tells you who thinks the current rulebook protects them. The conferences afraid of getting left behind want a national framework that freezes the field in place. The conferences that could build their own model don’t want Congress drawing the lines. Notably, neither camp is fighting on the same side as the athlete groups. The schools are arguing over control. The athletes are arguing over standing.
Would former athletes change this
The fix you hear most from people watching this is that the panels should include more athletes, ideally former ones who spent a decade or two in business and understand the economics. It’s a fair instinct, and it would help. The optics improve, and so does the depth of the testimony.
It still doesn’t change the outcome, and it’s worth being precise about why. A witness is a witness, whether it’s a current defensive end or a retired player who built a company. They testify, they go home, and the people writing the rules decide what to do with what they heard. That’s advocacy, and advocacy works only when the people in power feel like listening.
What puts athletes in the room permanently, not as a guest but as a party who has to be dealt with, is standing. Employee status. A players’ association with the legal right to sit on the other side of the deal and say no. That is exactly what the NCPA, Athletes.org, and the UCAA are pushing for, and exactly what this bill is structured to avoid. A better witness changes the testimony. A seat at the bargaining table changes the result.
Where this goes
The bill faces long odds as written. It’s sprawling, the two most powerful conferences are against it, the athlete groups are against it, and a separate effort is pulling the other way: the College Athlete Right to Organize Act, backed by Senators Murphy, Sanders, and Warren along with several major unions, which would make athletes employees with the right to organize.
So the honest read on June 3 isn’t that the players had no voice. They had one, and he used it well. The read is that the system was happy to hear from an athlete and unwilling to bargain with one. The argument everyone keeps circling, antitrust exemption versus collective bargaining, comes down to a single question: do athletes get a permanent seat, or do they keep getting invited to speak and then sent home? On June 3, Holtzclaw spoke. The next bill, or the next lawsuit, decides whether anyone has to listen.
Update: Trump’s Endorsement Raises the Stakes
President Donald Trump publicly endorsed the Protect College Sports Act on June 4, urging Congress to pass a final version this summer.
In a Truth Social post, Trump described college sports as a system in crisis and called the legislation a bipartisan solution to restore stability to college athletics. He specifically thanked Senators Ted Cruz, Eric Schmitt, Maria Cantwell, and Chris Coons for introducing the bill.
The endorsement is politically significant, but it does not settle the debate. Supporters see the bill as a necessary step toward restoring order after years of lawsuits, NIL disputes, transfer portal uncertainty, and governance challenges. Critics argue that it grants the NCAA new protections while leaving athletes without meaningful bargaining power over the rules that govern compensation, eligibility, and movement.
What Trump’s support does change is the bill’s visibility. A proposal that already had backing from figures like Nick Saban, the ACC, and the Big 12 now has support from the President as well. Whether that momentum turns into legislation remains uncertain.
More from SportsEpreneur
SportsEpreneur covers NIL, athlete rights, college sports governance, revenue sharing, and the business of college athletics.
For more analysis on the Protect College Sports Act, collective bargaining, athlete employment, and the future of college sports, explore our NIL and college sports coverage. >> NIL HUB
Related reading: Cracking the College Sports NIL Fiduciary Code of Conduct. On The Strategy Addict, Shane Snively makes the case for the fiduciary standard college sports still hasn’t built.
FAQ
What is the Protect College Sports Act?
It’s a 2026 bipartisan Senate bill from Ted Cruz, Maria Cantwell, Eric Schmitt, and Chris Coons that would give the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption to enforce rules on transfers, eligibility, agents, and a revenue-share cap, while creating new athlete protections like an ombudsman and a private right of action.
Did any college athletes testify at the June 2026 hearing?
Yes. University of Utah defensive end Lance Holtzclaw sat on the five-person panel alongside Nick Saban, Notre Dame’s athletic director, the Pac-12 commissioner, and West Virginia’s president emeritus. His testimony argued that reform should be made with athletes, not just for them, and it was well received.
Do college athlete groups support the bill?
No. Three organizations that represent college athletes — the National College Players Association, Athletes.org, and the United College Athletes Association — have come out against it, arguing that the rules it sets should be negotiated with athletes through collective bargaining rather than imposed by Congress.
Does the bill make college athletes employees?
No, and it doesn’t rule it out either. Unlike the earlier SCORE Act, the Protect College Sports Act stays neutral on employee status, which leaves the door open to future collective bargaining.
Why do the SEC and Big Ten oppose the bill?
The two most powerful conferences released a joint statement opposing the bill as written, saying it leaves critical issues unresolved and could reduce the revenue-share payments athletes receive. Both are seen as the likeliest candidates for a breakaway “super league” and want more control over their own governance.
What’s the difference between an antitrust exemption and collective bargaining?
An antitrust exemption is granted by Congress and lets the NCAA enforce rules without legal challenge. Collective bargaining is negotiated directly with athletes as employees through a union. Pro leagues get their antitrust protection through CBAs; this bill seeks the protection without the bargaining.
More College Sports Articles from SportsEpreneur
The Protect College Sports Act Explained: NIL, Transfers, Antitrust, and the Future of College Sports
NIL Pros and Cons | The College Game Is Changed Forever
The Economics Behind College Football’s NIL Spending Explosion
Brendan Sorsby Bet on His Own Team and Is Somehow Still Eligible to Play
NIL, Youth Sports, and the Pressure Pipeline
Eric Kasimov is the founder of SportsEpreneur, part of the KazSource media network. Since launching the platform in 2015, he has hosted over 500 podcast episodes, written and published more than 1,500 articles, and advised business leaders, founders, and creators on building authority through media strategy.
Through his brands — KazSource, KazCM, SportsEpreneur, and QuietLoud Studios — Eric leads teams that produce podcasts, develop brand platforms, and help companies grow through modern content ecosystems. He also scaled KazSource Insurance into a seven-figure boutique agency, providing the foundation for the broader media network he operates today.
His work has been featured in Forbes, Axios, and Front Office Sports, and his podcasts have included conversations with top founders, investors, and athletes turned entrepreneurs.