During Senate testimony on the proposed Protect College Sports Act, Nick Saban and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua warned that rising football costs and policy confusion have already reshaped rosters and threatened Olympic and women’s sports. Lawmak
The day Nick Saban walked onto the Senate floor, he brought numbers that sounded less like sports trivia and more like a warning label for college athletics.
Saban. the seven-time college football national champion coach and now an ESPN personality. testified Wednesday. June 3. in support of the Protect College Sports Act of 2026—a proposal Senators Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell unveiled after years of turmoil over costs. NIL deals. and eligibility. The hearing came as President Donald Trump said on Friday. March 6. that soaring costs to pay for football at colleges were harming sports more broadly and would need to be addressed through legislation. adding he might also sign an executive order.
The tension inside the chamber wasn’t just about money. It was about what kind of college sports system—if any—would survive the current push to treat athletes like professionals.
Cruz opened the proceedings by framing the stakes in legal terms. declaring that “changing the law is the only way to fix the legal chaos that we’re seeing right now.” Cantwell followed with figures aimed at showing how quickly the landscape has been shrinking. She pointed to the elimination of 106 NCAA sports teams and more than 1,000 student-athlete roster spots since 2023.
Saban’s testimony put those broad claims into a football-budget reality. He described how funding changed at Alabama: “When we had our first collective, (Alabama) had $2.7 million,” he said. “Then, $7 million $10 million. After I was gone, $17 million and then $24 million.”
He said the end result is a growing gap between revenue-producing programs and everything else. “Now, you have schools that have close to $40 million rosters,” Saban said. “Basically, what’s going to happen is you’ll have football and basketball succeed and club sports for everything else.”
A commissioner-like blueprint—and what colleges lack
Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua offered both support and a sharper warning about what happens if the rules don’t change enough. He said he believes “there’s going to be two inevitable outcomes: You’re going to have a Super League. ” adding. “I don’t think a Super League is good for college football. and certainly don’t think a Super League is good for college sports.”.
Bevacqua argued the risk grows if Congress fails to rein in the combination of cost pressures and policy gaps, including what he described as a “failed House Settlement with a cap that’s not realistic and with continued motivation to move into the gray space of third-party NIL.”
He pointed back to the same kind of slide Cantwell had shown. saying the situation is already producing “decreased scholarships. roster spots and teams.” In Bevacqua’s view. the consequences would go far beyond athletics management. “I think that would be an incredibly sad day for this country and an unbelievably sad thing to take away from thousands of young men and women. ” he said.
Before leaving the hearing. Saban also pushed for a different kind of governance—one that resembles a league commissioner model more than a patchwork of collegiate regulations. He said he couldn’t stay throughout the entire proceeding because of a prior commitment. but he returned with his strongest recommendation in the closing moments.
Saban argued that if the current trajectory continues, college sports will stop behaving like college sports at all. “Otherwise. Saban said. college football programs no longer will be ‘college’ football programs. ” the testimony described. as he explained that spending on paying players keeps rising “and up and up and up.”.
He said the system would need uniform rules similar to those in the NFL. where there is an established structure for parity and player management. “I really think the only way to remedy this. we have competitive conferences. competitive teams. competitors involved trying to create an advantage. in college athletics. we have no legislative branch that says this is what the rules are. ” Saban said.
Then he made the analogy explicit: “IF I’m the commissioner of the NFL. and this is what you’re allowed to do. This is a salary cap. this is how we draft players. this is how we create parity. this is how we create revenue so that we can maintain a level of competition in all sports. Olympic sports and women’s sports as well.”.
Saban added that without that kind of centralized rulemaking. conferences can fracture—and he said that instability wouldn’t happen under a single authority. “We don’t have that in college,” he said. “We talk about conferences getting dismantled. that would never happen if you had somebody that was the head of all of this.”.
He returned to the human purpose underneath the policy fight, complaining that college athletics is drifting toward pay-first priorities. “Right now, it’s all about how much money we can create and are we deploying that money to maintain what’s best for student-athletes.”
Holtzclaw presses for standardized NIL and transfer rules
Utah graduate defensive end Lance Holtzclaw testified as an advocate for the Protect College Sports Act on Wednesday, June 3, and spoke in favor of uniform rules across NIL and transfers.
“I think what it does is it creates standardization and creates regulation and keeps everybody in a set standpoint of what we can and can’t do. ” Holtzclaw said. He noted his experience across multiple conferences. saying he began his career at the University of Washington and has since participated in the Pac-12. Big Ten and Big 12 conferences.
Holtzclaw said the value of the legislation is less about reducing competition and more about eliminating uncertainty. “I think it makes things a little bit easier in some circumstances,” he said. “You look at in eliminating the gray area a lot of times [with an established precedent] and looking at a lot of people that don’t really have the knowledge of what they can and can’t do.”.
Protecting Olympic and women’s sports stays central
Across testimony, one theme kept resurfacing: what happens to Olympic and women’s sports—often called “non-revenue” sports—if costs continue to escalate.
Bevacqua urged lawmakers to build “real teeth” into the bill to prevent those programs from being pushed aside. He said the “bedrock of the college athletic experience” needs strict protections.
“I think there does need to be real teeth in the bill where you are going to protect Olympic sports and women’s sports,” Bevacqua said. “Without protecting it, I think the U.S. Olympic movement will take real steps back. And I think you need to hold our feet to the fire.”
The hearing’s back-and-forth landed on a simple collision: lawmakers and advocates arguing that federal action is the only way to stabilize a system under financial strain, and a sports ecosystem moving toward models that look less like traditional college competition.
Taken together, the testimony turned the debate into something immediate. Cantwell’s figures about the elimination of 106 NCAA sports teams and more than 1. 000 student-athlete roster spots since 2023 weren’t treated as distant statistics. Saban’s Alabama funding numbers—rising from $2.7 million to $24 million after he left—put a timeline on the same idea. Bevacqua then warned that without enforceable safeguards, those pressures could accelerate into a “Super League” future.
What the Senate will do next—and how Congress decides to define the boundaries—was still the question hanging over the hearing as Trump weighed legislative action and the possibility of an executive order. For the witnesses, the message was consistent: this isn’t only a legal fix. It’s about which sports—and which athletes—end up with a place in the system.
Protect College Sports Act Nick Saban Senate testimony Ted Cruz Maria Cantwell NIL roster spots NCAA sports teams Pete Bevacqua Lance Holtzclaw women’s sports Olympic sports Donald Trump college athletics