You may think the future of Virginia Tech football is being decided in the living rooms of potential recruits, particularly in the vaunted “757” — the area code for Hampton Roads, a region where Tech has lost its dominance.
It’s actually being decided in the halls of Congress.
When the U.S. Senate returns next month from its August recess, senators are set to vote on a consequential piece of legislation that, if passed, would see the federal government establish some far-reaching rules for college sports. Whether it can pass the Senate — and then the House — is a question that right now nobody can answer but we can, at least, talk about what’s at stake.
The impetus for this federal intervention is the 2025 court case — Grant House and Sedona Prince v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, et al. — that opened the way for college athletes to get paid and thus set off a financial arms race between schools. That has brought together an odd couple pairing of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, who have put together the Protect College Sports Act, a complicated piece of legislation whose details have been constantly changing throughout the summer as different groups push and pull on the bill.
The bill would create a type of salary cap — the bill calls it a “revenue-sharing cap” because it involves the school sharing revenue with athletes — and also would limit how many times an athlete can transfer from one school to another. “The cap is a hard cap,” Cruz posted recently. “Full stop.” Athletes could still sign name, image and likeness deals — “if the deal is genuinely commercial and the school isn’t directing it,” Cruz posted.
A revenue-sharing cap would seem to be a good thing for schools such as Virginia Tech that may otherwise have a hard time keeping up with the Alabamas and Ohio States of the world. It would definitely seem a good thing for schools such as James Madison University (which I must point out yet again relies on mandatory student fees to fund most of its sports programs because it has so few deep-pocketed donors and relatively little TV money). It would also seem to be good for the so-called Olympic sports that don’t generate revenue, and for women’s sports in general — those are all programs in danger of getting cut if schools have to find ways to ratchet up funding for football.
It might not be so good, though, for football players or men’s basketball players; they’re the ones with the potential to make the most money. That’s one of the many aspects of the bill that are now generating opposition. The news site NOTUS recently reported that Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, and Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, are trying to round up votes against the bill.
“This month is now our opportunity to explain what’s in the bill,” Murphy told NOTUS. “And explain to people, and explain to our colleagues on the left, that this is a fundamental civil rights issue. That this is an unprecedented restraint on compensation for student-athletes, but particularly young Black student-athletes.”
The AFL-CIO and the Congressional Black Caucus have now come out against the bill, both of which might have the effect of discouraging Democratic support for the bill.
“I just don’t think you can defend caring about the influence and money in college sports only when it pertains to largely Black athletes who are being vastly underpaid in football and basketball,” Murphy told NOTUS. “This bill doesn’t do anything to constrain endorsement deals for coaches. It doesn’t stop billionaires from plowing money into the schools. It only really limits the ability of the highest-value athletes to get paid. And I don’t think that that is going to save college sports.”
What’s happening here is the same thing that has happened in professional sports: Players don’t like salary caps for the obvious reasons; the owners do. College sports have now become professionalized, with one big difference: College football, in particular, helps fund all the other sports at the school. NFL teams don’t have to worry about that.
While the attempts to hold down spending on college sports is at the heart of the bill, there’s another provision that should be of particular interest to sports fans in Virginia — that’s the one that limits conference expansion.
The past few years have seen some tectonic shifts in conference alignments. The once-mighty Pac-12 conference on the West Coast simply imploded when 10 schools left for better-paying options elsewhere. That’s likely partly of Cantwell’s interest in the subject; one of her state’s schools, Washington State, was left behind because no other conference wanted the school. The Pac-12 has reconstituted itself, but with lesser-valued schools, so Washington State (and Oregon State) got devalued in the marketplace.
Closer to home, the Atlantic Coast Conference, in which Virginia and Virginia Tech play, has been seen as a conference in jeopardy of similar collapse. Once it was regarded on a financial par with the Big 10 and the Southeastern Conference. Now they’ve pulled away, and their member schools rake in far more money from TV rights than ACC schools do. (In 2024-25, Big 10 schools made an average of $76.1 million; SEC schools averaged $72.4 million. ACC schools averaged $47.1 million.) That’s led Clemson and Florida State to look at ways to exit the conference. For now they’re still in but the end of each conference’s TV deal is now in sight — the Big Ten’s in 2030, the Big 12 in 2031, the SEC in 2034 and the ACC in 2036. The closer that 2036 date comes, the less it will cost ACC schools to buy out their media rights, particularly if those schools think they can make much more in another conference.
We could be facing another round of conference realignments. Think of that as a game of high-stakes musical chairs. The worst-case scenario for Virginia Tech is that the ACC falls apart, it can’t afford to compete in the SEC, isn’t wanted by the Big 10 and has to settle for some lesser conference, such as the far-flung Big 12, where 13 of the 16 members are west of the Mississippi. That’s likely why Virginia Tech has endorsed the Protect College Sports Act. Without it, there will almost certainly be more realignment — and more separation between college’s haves and have-nots.
The original version froze conference membership; the current iteration caps the membership of the four top conferences at 19 schools. That would allow the Big 10 and ACC to add one more school apiece, the SEC and Big 12 to add three. The bill would also require schools changing conferences to spend five years as an independent, something that’s hard to do unless you’re Notre Dame and can command your own national TV contract. The requirement alone could bring conference realignment to a halt even if there were no caps on how many members conferences could have.
Not surprisingly, schools that might see themselves having other options don’t like these restrictions on conference movement and membership. “Officials at Clemson, Miami, Florida State, North Carolina, Georgia Tech and others have expressed, some privately and other publicly in meetings, their opposition to the concept,” Yahoo! Sports reports. You may notice that all five of those schools are now in the ACC — another sign of how precarious that conference’s lifespan could be if there are no rules limiting conference realignment.
The Big 10 and SEC, after initial resistance, have now endorsed the bill; that would seem to be a major boost. President Donald Trump also wants to see some kind of bill. That would seem to be a powerful incentive for Republican senators, although it’s unclear how hard Trump is pushing for the bill. Lots of senators may face cross-pressure because different schools in their states may have different interests. Look at North Carolina: The restrictions on conference expansion might impinge on the University of North Carolina’s freedom of movement but would help North Carolina State for the same reason it would help Virginia Tech. Updated: Virginia and Virginia Tech signed a joint letter in support of the bill, even though Virginia is often mentioned as a possible Big 10 member and might have options that Virginia Tech doesn’t.
And then there are schools such as James Madison University, Liberty University and Old Dominion University. They might like to see financial pressures capped, to the extent they can be. However, all those schools have ambitious programs and might entertain the prospect of joining an even-higher ranked conference if the opportunity ever presented itself (JMU and ODU are in the Sun Belt; Liberty in Conference USA). The idea of any of those schools being in the ACC is far-fetched today, but if the ACC ever lost a bunch of members and had to piece itself back together again the way the Pac-12 has, then one or more of those schools might look like good options. Of course, the question then would be whether the ACC still had the reputational value it does now — or whether it would be the equivalent of one of those aging rock bands that’s still touring but doesn’t have many original members left.
That’s why come football season, you may need to keep one eye on the game — and another on Congress.
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