Tuberville is fighting the bill his state’s G6 schools need

Sen. Ted Cruz stood on the Senate floor Tuesday and said what the Group of 6 has been living for years.

“The wealthiest conferences continue to consolidate power and resources,” Cruz told the chamber, “while many mid-major programs increasingly serve as feeder systems for the sport’s biggest brands.”

On Thursday morning, the Senate Commerce Committee will begin marking up the Protect College Sports Act — the bipartisan bill Cruz drafted with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) that represents the most viable college athletics legislation to reach this stage in years. Fifteen of the committee’s 28 members must vote to advance the bill to the Senate floor, where it would need 60 votes to pass.

The bill would give the NCAA an antitrust exemption to enforce transfer and eligibility rules. It would cap athlete compensation routed through associated entities — the creative workarounds that SEC and Big Ten schools have used to spend well above the $20.5 million revenue-share cap. It offers schools a voluntary path to pool media rights, protects non-revenue sports from being cut, stops conference expansion by the two richest leagues and bans coaches from leaving their teams before the season ends.

The NCAA supports it. The NFL, its players union, the NBA players union, Major League Baseball and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee support it. Twenty conferences — including the American, the Sun Belt, Conference USA, the Mountain West and the MAC — support it. More than 228 universities across 46 states support it.

The SEC and the Big Ten do not.

Neither does Tommy Tuberville.

‘A federal takeover’

The Alabama senator stood on the Senate floor for more than 15 minutes Tuesday and called the Protect College Sports Act a “federal takeover of college sports.” He proposed his own alternative, the Student-Athlete Act, which addresses transfer eligibility — five years of eligibility, five consecutive years, one penalty-free transfer — but leaves the structural issues untouched. No media pooling. No spending caps. No expansion freeze. No sport-preservation mandates.

“Trust me, if I thought it’d work, I’d support it,” Tuberville said. “Unfortunately, it gets too deep into the businesses of universities, conferences, athletics departments while doing far too little to give the student-athlete the stability and clarity that, actually, they need.”

Cruz told him his bill is dead on arrival. “Sen. Tuberville’s bill is not going to become law,” Cruz said. “The way the Senate operates, you’ve got to get 60 votes. If you can’t get 60 votes, your bill can’t pass.”

Cantwell objected to Tuberville’s motion for unanimous consent. She framed the stakes beyond football: “not just for those, the 2% of the system or 3%, that might play in a sport that does generate revenue, but for the 500,000 athletes that are part of our collegiate system.”

The businesses of universities. The conferences. The athletics departments. Read Tuberville’s words again and ask which businesses, which conferences and which athletics departments he is protecting.

The SEC opposes this bill. The Big Ten opposes it. Tuberville — who coached at Auburn — opposes it. The opposition is narrow and concentrated in the conferences with the most to lose.

The G6 case

When the Senate Commerce Committee first held hearings on this bill, the G6 was the evidence but not one of the witnesses. On June 10, that changed. Cruz and Cantwell convened a roundtable that included Memphis football coach Charles Huff, Middle Tennessee football coach Derek Mason and Big South Conference commissioner Sherika Montgomery. The G6 was in the room.

Huff won a national championship as an assistant under Nick Saban at Alabama. He has since been a head coach at Marshall, Southern Miss and now Memphis — three programs across the G6. He told Congress the system is “completely broken.”

“College athletics is one of the very few things left in our world that brings cultures together, brings race, creed, gender,” Huff told the roundtable, per the Memphis Commercial Appeal. “Whether it’s 100,000 people in a stadium or 100 people on the edge of a pool for 2½ hours, or whatever the game time is — we all come together.”

Without the bill, Huff warned, that changes. “This is going to affect the nation, it’s not just going to affect our student-athletes,” he said. “We need you guys to continue to carry this torch, please.”

The G6 was heard. What happened next tells you how much that mattered.

The committee’s own summary of the legislation uses language the G6 should be printing on letterhead. It says the bill exists so that “college sports does not become a two-conference minor league.” It warns that schools “are being eviscerated in the portal by the blue bloods.” It states that “without legislative action, more athletic programs will vanish, as will longstanding rivalries.”

Point 12 of the summary: “Stops Super League consolidation.”

The Protect College Sports Act was not written for the G6. It was written to protect the Big 12 and ACC from the SEC and Big Ten — Cruz is a Texas senator, and Texas Tech board of regents chair Cody Campbell has been one of the loudest voices pushing for media pooling. The G6 is a useful ally. Its crises make the best political argument for intervention. Its votes are needed to reach the 75% pooling threshold. But as we wrote when the bill was introduced, the ACC and Big 12 sent support letters because they fear becoming the G6 — not because they are allied with it. The common interest is real. The solidarity is not.

The G6 got into the room. Shaping the bill is a different fight — and the amendments filed for Thursday suggest the G6 is losing it.

What’s at stake Thursday

The markup is where amendments get proposed, debated and voted on. Dozens have been filed. Several would reshape what the bill means for the G6:

• Wicker (R-Miss.): Raise the media pooling threshold from 75% to 85%, making it nearly impossible to trigger without SEC participation. Shield conferences that decline to pool from legal liability.
• Duckworth (D-Ill.): Limit the one-time transfer restriction to Power 4 football and men’s basketball only. Raise the revenue-share cap from 22% to 50%.
• Schmitt (R-Mo.): Lower the pooling threshold from 75% to 70%, making it marginally easier to reach without the SEC and Big Ten.
• Section 114 (associated entities): The NCAA told commissioners this week that associated-entity NIL deals would count toward the revenue-share cap. More than $500 million in above-cap deals have been submitted. The SEC and Big Ten account for more than 75% of that spending.

Look at where the senators are from. Wicker is from Mississippi — SEC territory. The question for every G6 stakeholder watching Thursday: who is filing amendments to protect your program?

Read the Duckworth amendment carefully. It stabilizes Power 4 rosters while leaving the G6 as an open pantry. A player transferring from Troy to Alabama would face no restriction. A player transferring from Alabama to LSU would have to sit. The protection runs one direction — and it is not toward the programs getting poached. The G6 should oppose it loudly.

Blue-blood programs are spending more than $50 million all-in while the revenue-share cap sits at $20.5 million. A hard cap levels the playing field. That is precisely why the SEC and Big Ten oppose it.

The Alabama problem

Tuberville’s opposition is a state-level case study for a national problem.

Alabama has two SEC programs — Alabama and Auburn. It also has four G6 programs — UAB, Troy, South Alabama and Jacksonville State. All four schools are individually listed as supporters of the Protect College Sports Act. Their conferences — the American, the Sun Belt and Conference USA — all formally support it. The NCAA supports it. Nick Saban supports it.

Tuberville opposes it. The man who would like to be Alabama’s next governor stood firm against the interests of four of its FBS universities while advancing the interests of its two most powerful.

The SEC is headquartered in Birmingham. Sankey’s office sits across the street from UAB’s home stadium. The conference lobbying against this bill and the G6 program that needs it share a zip code — and it casts the longest shadow in the state’s sports scene.

UAB faces a particular complication. The university is governed by the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees — a board with deep ties to Tuscaloosa and the flagship campus. Speaking against a position that aligns with Alabama’s interests requires institutional courage that the UA System has not historically encouraged from UAB.

But Alabama’s G6 programs are not unique in this dynamic. Every state with both Power 4 and G6 programs faces a version of this. The senator from Mississippi is filing amendments to protect Ole Miss and Mississippi State — not Southern Miss. The two richest conferences had separate meetings with senators last week. The G6 conferences sent support letters. Letters don’t testify. Letters don’t answer questions. Letters don’t get quoted in the recap stories.

The breakaway scenario

Sports law attorney Mit Winter raised a possibility this week that should keep every G6 administrator up at night.

“I think the Protect College Sports Act is actually pushing the SEC and Big Ten to more seriously consider doing their own thing,” Winter wrote. “Not necessarily via a combined super league. But as leagues that both self govern outside the NCAA. And that could play each other.”

Winter described the bill as “being outed as mostly an attempt to rein in the Big Ten and SEC, cloaked in the veil of ‘saving’ college sports.”

If the SEC and Big Ten leave the NCAA structure, Alabama and Auburn leave with them. So do Ohio State and Michigan, Texas and Oklahoma, Georgia and LSU. UAB, Troy, South Alabama, Jacksonville State, Marshall, Appalachian State, James Madison, UNLV — the programs whose crises built the case for this bill — stay behind in whatever remains.

The bill is designed to prevent that outcome. Tuberville is fighting it. Sankey is lobbying against it. Both conferences are pushing back on media pooling — the provision that would give the G6 a voice in how television money flows.

As we wrote when the bill was introduced: the pooling math is razor thin. The 75% threshold is technically reachable without the SEC and Big Ten — but only if every other school opts in. If Wicker’s amendment raises it to 85%, the math collapses entirely.

The last train

Cruz told 32 Division I conference commissioners this week: “This is the last train leaving the station.”

NCAA President Charlie Baker endorsed the bill Wednesday, writing that “the current state of play cannot continue.” He referenced “all 1,100 schools” twice — positioning the NCAA as representing everyone. But the SEC and Big Ten are lobbying against the bill independently while Baker endorses it. The 1,100-school framing includes every G6 program. The opposition comes from 34 schools across two conferences.

Baker said “getting important legislation done requires compromise.” He is right. The question is who compromises and who gets compromised.

More than 20 conferences formally support the legislation. Hundreds of schools are on the record. But support and advocacy are different things. Supporting a bill means signing a letter. Advocating means being in the room when the amendments are written — and making sure the provisions that protect your programs survive the markup.

Thursday’s markup will shape what this bill looks like when it reaches the Senate floor — if it reaches the Senate floor. Amendments filed by senators from Power 2 states will attempt to gut it. The August recess is the deadline.

Alabama’s four G6 programs sit in three different conferences. They compete against each other on the field. They do not coordinate off it. The same is true nationally. The G6 has the numbers — 60-plus FBS programs, millions of fans, hundreds of communities. It does not have a unified political voice. It only recently got a witness in the room.

It has a closing window to help shape the bill that could help solve some of its problems. This isn’t the time to sit back and let others decide your fate without input from you.