NEWNow you can listen to Pak Gazette articles!
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has been trying for years to get more regulations around name, image and likeness (NIL) agreements in college sports, and said in 2023 that the landscape was “in jeopardy.”
Now, in 2025, Cruz sees college football specifically as a “disaster.”
Cruz responded to a post on X, which called the “current college football landscape…unsustainable.”
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON PakGazette.Com
Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, arrives for a hearing at the US Capitol on December 17, 2025 in Washington, DC The Federal Aviation Administration’s hearing with the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Subcommittee on Aviation, Space and Innovation focused on assessing progress, ensuring accountability and results. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
The publication noted that the Iowa State Cyclones, who just lost head coach Matt Campbell to the vacant Penn State Nittany Lions job, only have 17 players left on their roster for next season. Among those players, only one was a starter.
Basically, the Cyclones will have to field an entirely new roster and team and hope they can gel heading into 2026.
SCORE ACT RECEIVES SUPPORT FROM MORE THAN 20 CONSERVATIVE GROUPS AS FIGHT OVER NIL REFORM ACCELERATES
Cruz criticized the fact that the NCAA allows this.
“An absolute crisis,” he wrote in X. “Congress NEEDS to act. For months, I have been working around the clock to try to unite Republicans and Democrats to save college sports.
“If we don’t do it, it will be a total tragedy. And it’s happening before our eyes.”
Cruz introduced a bill in 2023, two years after NIL was born, hoping that stricter regulations would help college sports across the country. Instead, we’ve seen programs pay for top players through NIL deals, while the transfer portal has allowed players to move from one school to another each year.
Cruz is one of the leading lawmakers supporting the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Endorsements and Endorsements (SCORE) Act, which would give the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption in hopes of protecting the organization from potential lawsuits over eligibility rules and prohibit athletes from becoming employees of their schools.
FILE – Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Feb. 20, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Maryland. (José Luis Magaña/AP Photo)
“The SCORE Act is the free market, individual liberty, and limited government solution to the ‘name, image, and likeness (NIL)’ issue in college athletics,” read a letter to House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., earlier this month.
Pro-SCORE Act groups said the bill is the “common sense way” to set rules and avoid confusing state laws in the NIL era.
“HR 4312 prohibits trial lawyers from suing under federal or state antitrust law. It also provides that athletes who receive NIL compensation do not need to be employees of these universities, which protects them from mandatory unionization. This means that student-athletes can be treated as small business owners, not union workers,” the letter adds.
Conservative groups framed the SCORE Act as a better plan than the “Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement (SAFE) Act,” which has been overwhelmingly supported by Democrats. The SCORE Act has at least gained some bipartisan support in the House.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) holds a press conference with families who lost loved ones in the January 29, 2025 DCA plane crash on December 15, 2025 at the United States Capitol in Washington, DC. The bipartisan press conference addressed language in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which changes military airspace policy. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
The SCORE Act also requires schools to share revenue, under the terms of the House agreement, in the amount of 22 percent “if such rules provide that such pool limit is AT LEAST 22 percent of the average annual college sports revenue of the 70 highest-revenue schools.”
Finally, the SCORE Act prohibits schools from using student fees to fund NIL payments.
