In the aftermath of Congress failing, once again, to advance a college sports reform bill, colleges might recognize that they hold the key to figuring out their own problems.

They might also recognize that even if Congress eventually passes and President Donald Trump signs a college sports reform bill, new rules will only work if colleges don’t undermine those rules.

Early Saturday morning, the clock ran out for a potential vote on the Protect College Sports Act ahead of the Senate’s five-week recess. Sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the PCSA would provide the NCAA and its members with a targeted antitrust exemption related to eligibility and transfers, media rights pooling and a hard cap on school spending.

The bill came close to a vote, but pockets of opposition by several senators, who individually can hold a bill’s advancement, halted progress.

One source of opposition concerned whether the PCSA would preempt state laws that prohibit transgender students from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. The White House legal counsel’s office issued a letter stating that the PCSA’s preemption language has no bearing on transgender athlete eligibility “or anything related to sex-based discrimination.” Instead, the language concerns the athlete being a student, meeting academic requirements, not being a professional and playing no more than five years past age 24. The letter didn’t sufficiently abate those (and other) concerns, and the PCSA didn’t reach the floor.

In explaining the failure of a vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters, “NIL is an issue that we’ve got to get better clarity on.”

Keep in mind, Congress has held numerous hearings on NIL over the last six years. It’s hardly an unexplored topic on Capitol Hill.

In theory, NIL should be straightforward. It reflects the commercial use of a college athlete’s right of publicity, which includes name, image and likeness but also signature, voice, nickname and other identifying traits. NIL deals are supposed to resemble endorsement deals in pro sports.

But NIL has often become code for pay-for-play payments, which involve a school or an associated entity of a school paying a recruit to enroll or paying an athlete to remain at that school. That transaction might be coined an “NIL deal” to superficially comply with NCAA rules, but it’s much more like a signing bonus found in an ordinary employment situation.

It stands to reason if colleges don’t want to treat NIL as NIL, they probably shouldn’t expect Congress to have “clarity on” what it is.

The PCSA could still become law. The bill’s supporters optimistically stress how Thune has promised there will be a vote in September. They also warn that if the PCSA doesn’t become law, colleges and their athletes should brace for the fallout.

“The state of play of college sports is that if this bill is not made into law, chaos will reign, schools will continue to hemorrhage money and cut student programs,” Randy Levine, vice chair of Trump’s Saving College Sports roundtable and president of the New York Yankees, told Sportico in a phone interview. “The disparity between big and small schools will multiply in record speed, and student athletes will continue to lose scholarships, health protections and not get paid for their services.”

Still, the window for passage of the PCSA is narrowing. The bill will need the support of at least 60 senators to invoke cloture and overcome a potential filibuster. Even if it passes the Senate, the PCSA will go to the House, which will be out of session for much of the rest of the year.

The PCSA could advance more quickly in the House, which lacks the procedural features of the Senate that empower individual members to halt legislative progress. But the House is narrowly divided, with 218 Republicans and 212 Democrats, and several prominent groups, including the Congressional Black Caucus and the AFL-CIO, have come out against the PCSA. If political experts are correct that the Democrats will win control of the House in the November midterms, a new speaker with new legislative priorities will arrive on Jan. 3.

It’s too early to tell if the PCSA will join the graveyard of college sports reform bills, but there’s no shortage of tombstones. Dozens of these bills have been introduced since 2021—the year when the NCAA changed rules to permit athletes to capitalize on their NIL without suffering an eligibility penalty and when the U.S. Supreme Court held in NCAA v. Alston that NCAA rules are subject to ordinary scrutiny under antitrust law.

None has become law, and that’s true while the Republicans controlled Congress and the White House and while the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House.

One reason for the failed legislative pattern is that Division I schools, which range from power conference institutions that generate massive revenues to budget-challenged and lower-profile schools, face vastly different constraints. The PCSA has been tweaked to address those differences.

One modification contemplates allowing schools to pay more money to athletes.

Per the House settlement, participating colleges can directly pay athletes a share of up to 22% of the average power conference athletic media, ticket and sponsorship revenue. This will work out to about a $21.3 million cap in 2026-27 and is in addition to athletic scholarships, which cover tuition, housing, health resources and other benefits, as well as NIL deals athletes sign with third parties.

A revised version of the PCSA would permit schools to also draw from a $22.5 million retention pool as a way of inducing current athletes to stay instead of transfer or possibly turn pro. In addition, there would be a $5 million pool for women athletes and those from nonrevenue sports, with the hope that schools would spend more on those athletes than they are right now.

Whether a school would choose to pay out about $49 million ($21.3M + $22.5M + $5M) to its athletes would be up to the school. While that type of spending might make sense for one of the 68 colleges in a power conference, for most of the roughly 300 other D-I schools, it would probably be a benefit they can’t fully use.

According to a new Government Accountability Office report, 94% of D-I programs lost money in 2023-24. Granted, the math can be contextually questioned, since money-losing programs still tend to attract applicants, improve admissions yield, boost fundraising efforts with alumni and generate media attention. Yet for schools that generate modest revenue on athletics, being able to spend more money on athletes wouldn’t mean they would do so.

It’s clear that some colleges are willing to pay athletes much more than the House settlement permits. Colleges don’t need Congress to greenlight that outcome. The House settlement is a contract that could be revised with the consent of the parties and the presiding judge, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken.

In addition to amending parts of the House settlement, there are a couple of ways the “chaos” of college sports could be reduced without Congressional intervention.

First, NCAA member schools could play by NCAA rules. If they treated NIL as NIL, that would be a good start.

Along those lines, much of the recent eligibility litigation has been driven by schools that incentivize eligibility-expired athletes to sue by promising them roster spots if they can land an injunction in court against the NCAA to let them play.

It’s obvious why coaches would prefer to have a 22- or 23-year-old who is a seasoned college athlete and more physically developed over a 17- or 18-year-old freshman, and it’s obvious why that 22- or 23-year-old wants to play another year of college sports to earn NIL and revenue-share money, plus enjoy another year of college life, if their pro prospects aren’t ironclad.

But schools should remember they voted to adopt those eligibility rules and, as NCAA members, are contractually bound to follow them. They should also remember that eligibility rules are essential to fair play and fair competition since they ensure colleges, coaches and athletes are treated similarly in similar situations. All sports leagues have them.

Second, schools could reconsider their opposition to the recognition of at least some D-I college athletes as employees who in turn might unionize. As Sportico has detailed, there are hurdles to college athlete employment and unionization, including in states where public university employees are barred or restricted by state laws and university system charters.

But much of the “chaos” in college sports reflects compensation, team spending caps, eligibility and related topics that in pro leagues are tightly and predictably governed by collective bargaining agreements. CBA terms are protected by the nonstatutory labor exemption, which reflects a series of Supreme Court decisions that hold when management and union bargain rules related to wages, hours and other conditions, those rules are exempt from antitrust scrutiny. Teams in pro leagues also face heavy penalties from their commissioners if they try to cheat.

Maybe Congress will finally pass a law that sets rules for schools, coaches and athletes. Maybe—and given the history of cheating in college sports, this is a big maybe—those college-sports actors will actually follow the spirit and letter of that law. But if that doesn’t happen, it’s not as if schools can’t follow the rules they’ve already created and are contractually bound by.