Emails Reveal Powerful Network Behind Protect College Sports Act

Over the summer, Dary Stone—a Dallas real estate executive and former Baylor University board chair—sent a flurry of emails on behalf of Saving College Sports, the advocacy group that natural gas billionaire and Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell set up last year to push federal college sports legislation.

The emails, aimed at passing the Protect College Sports Act in the Senate, reached a wide range of powerful people. They include major conservative political figures, a DraftKings executive, university leaders, and conference commissioners.

David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth and a co-founder of the Federalist Society, and Malcolm Turner, DraftKings’ head of corporate development and strategy, were among those invited by Stone to an Aug. 4 SCS strategy call with Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.

The involvement of McIntosh and Turner in the effort to pass college sports legislation has not been previously reported.

Front Office Sports obtained the emails through public records requests to the University of North Carolina, Florida State University, and the University of Louisville. They offer a rare look at how the organization operated and reveal a network with deeper political ties than previously known.

The call came at the peak of SCS’s summer effort to coordinate lobbying by university officials and conference executives for the bill. SCS has not publicly disclosed its donor list because it is legally exempt from disclosure requirements.

The bill would establish nationwide rules governing college athletes’ compensation, eligibility, and transfers while granting the NCAA, conferences, and schools antitrust protections; supporters say it would add much-needed stability to a chaotic college sports landscape.

Critics argue that the legislation would restrict athletes’ earning potential and legal rights while shielding the NCAA from lawsuits, without giving players a meaningful role in negotiating those rules.

The lobbying effort also extended into sports media. As previously reported by Awful Announcing, ESPN and Fox Sports executives participated in discussions about the legislation, while ESPN aired on-air advocacy for the bill, including the College GameDay interview where Sen. Ted Cruz pushed the bill.

Spokespeople for McIntosh, Sen. Schmitt’s office, and Saving College Sports did not respond to requests for comment.

Political Connections

McIntosh’s invitation to the Aug. 4 call was part of a longer run of correspondence. He appears as a recipient on SCS communications throughout the summer. McIntosh, a major player in conservative politics, had not previously been involved with college sports. He has led the Club for Growth, a powerful conservative political advocacy group, since 2015, and its super PAC aims to spend $175 million this cycle supporting Republican candidates for Congress.

McIntosh has maintained a direct relationship with President Trump dating back to his first presidency. In January 2026, for example, Trump posted on his Truth Social account, “I was with David McIntosh of the Club for Growth, and we agreed that we will both work tirelessly together to take out Indiana Senate Majority Leader Rod Bray”

Stone provided recipients with lobbying templates to send to senators, sent numerous campaign updates, and repeatedly pleaded with the mailing list recipients to contact university leaders and senators.

A June 1 letter, drafted internally at Saving College Sports and signed by 85 university leaders, went to the bill’s four Senate sponsors. The letter praised the senators for pursuing a “bipartisan” framework. 

But the messages obtained by FOS show a campaign that ran primarily through some of the biggest names and checkbooks in Republican politics.

At least six people on Stone’s core distribution list have each given more than $500,000 to Republican candidates and committees since 2017, according to an FOS review of Federal Election Commission records.

In late June, as Stone was rallying university leaders behind the bill, he and Campbell gave a combined $30,000 to Winning For America Fund, a joint fundraising committee for Schmitt. FEC records show Campbell gave $25,000 on June 22, and Stone gave $5,000 on June 30. Five weeks later, Schmitt headlined a strategy call to rally support for the bill.

Campbell has given more than $2.2 million to Republican candidates and committees since January 2025, including $500,000 to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc., FEC records show.

Stone himself has given more than $180,000 to federal Republican candidates and committees since 2017.

SCS also has close ties to Cruz, who pushed his legislation in a notorious College GameDay appearance. Its executive director, David Polyansky, previously served as Cruz’s chief of staff. In 2023, Polyansky joined Never Back Down, the super PAC behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid.

SCS’s mailing list recipients have given more than $800,000 since 2017 to support Cruz, FEC records show. That includes $500,000 that Paul Foster, a former chair of the University of Texas System Board of Regents, gave in October 2024 to Truth and Courage PAC, the super PAC backing Cruz’s re-election.

Penn State trustee Jay Paterno, son of the late football coach Joe Paterno, appears regularly on the lists as a recipient. He told FOS that he joked on one SCS call: “I may be the only Democrat on here.” Paterno ran for Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania in 2014 as a Democrat. 

A DraftKings Address On The Chain

Turner, the DraftKings executive, also appears as a recipient often in the emails obtained by Front Office Sports.

His dual roles with DraftKings and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have drawn criticism from the start. At an April 2021 committee meeting of the UNC System Board of Governors, which appointed him to the Chapel Hill board, member Art Pope objected.

“The fact of the matter is that DraftKings is promoting sports betting on college sports, and I just do not think that’s appropriate,” Pope said.

Steve Long, another UNC board member, said “The reality is that these Boards of Trustees do get involved with college athletics.”

Turner was ultimately approved to join the board by a vote of 17–6. The Daily Tar Heel noted his appointment came with a promise that he would recuse himself from athletics-related matters.  

The June 1 letter SCS sent to the bill’s sponsors listed Turner as chair of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill board. Private SCS correspondence reached him at his DraftKings email address.

Turner told FOS he participates in Saving College Sports in his capacity as UNC-Chapel Hill Board Chair and not on behalf of DraftKings, despite using his DraftKings email address. He said he has attended weekly SCS calls in that capacity. 

Mobilizing University Leaders

In early June, the PCSA appeared to be dead in the water. The SEC and Big Ten had publicly come out against the bill and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told Politico, “Nobody can credibly say they’re going to move a bill to address college athletics and have opposition from the two major college athletic conferences.”  

Stone’s June 5 cover note to SCS’s mailing list offered an early account of the lobbying efforts.

“We are in minute by minute communication with both Senators,” meaning cosponsors Cruz and Maria Cantwell, the Washington Democrat, “ and they are working feverishly,” he wrote.

“Many of you helped handle several emergency Senator/President issues today and your influence and attention was invaluable. Thank you very much.”

Paterno explained to FOS how the weekly strategy calls worked. Trustees of different universities would compare notes and see what concerns individual schools had with the bill. He told FOS he provided insight into issues Big Ten schools had that wouldn’t be on the radar of a group dominated by southern schools, like how the bill would affect eligibility rules for college hockey. 

In a June 18 StateCollege.com column, Paterno wrote about a recent call with trustees and presidents from around the country in which Cantwell discussed rising football and basketball expenses and their potential threat to universities’ academic work.

As the bill faced down an uncertain future in the Senate, Stone ramped up his urgency.

On July 30, Stone sent an instruction: “There will be a vote amongst the Conferences on PCSA today. Please contact your Presidents.” He asked recipients to have them vote in favor, adding, “Very important. This is it.”

The bill had stalled in the Senate with the SEC and Big Ten still not publicly endorsing it. 

That afternoon, Stone sent the list a link to a social media post by FOS’s Amanda Christovich that included an official White House statement. He added a one-line note: “The President asks for PCSA to be passed!!!”

That evening, Stone told the group that the ACC and Big 12 had re-endorsed the bill. He also noted that Yahoo Sports reporter Ross Dellenger had reported that no formal vote took place.

“The reason for a lack of formal vote is likely so they don’t have to ‘out’ any minority positions,” Stone wrote.

Florida State board chair Peter Collins would later tell Tomahawk Nation “there was a lot of division amongst a lot of the presidents, and there wasn’t a vote.” 

Ed Burr, a former chair of FSU’s board of trustees, forwarded that update to the school’s athletic director, Michael Alford, later that evening.

Ahead of an Aug. 4 call that was designed “to outline the next steps of getting PCSA to the floor of the Senate and securing the strongest majority vote possible,” Stone invited conference commissioners on behalf of SCS’s board and asked them to bring university presidents. Sen. Schmitt would join, he wrote, and the organizers hoped Sen. Cantwell would participate as well.

The goal was to get the bill to the Senate floor with as much support as possible.

In an Aug. 3 email to ACC presidents and chancellors, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips canceled the conference’s board meeting scheduled for Aug. 4, the day of the call. In the same message, he passed along the invitation to the SCS call.

The invitation for the Aug. 4 call went to roughly 150 recipients. Alongside McIntosh, Turner, Campbell, Polyansky and Phillips, it reached SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, commissioners from more than two dozen other conferences, and dozens of university leaders. No attendance records were produced as part of the records request.

The call came on the same day as the Senate Commerce Committee had released a revised version of the PCSA, while the SEC and Big Ten had officially come out in support of the bill a few days earlier on July 31.  

On Aug. 6, Stone asked university presidents, chancellors, and commissioners to contact senators. Commissioners should ask their university leaders to make calls, he wrote, and leaders should reaffirm their schools’ support for the bill.

The appeal reached university leaders who previously held office as Republicans, including Florida International University president Jeanette Nuñez, a former Florida lieutenant governor under DeSantis; Florida Atlantic University president Adam Hasner, a former Florida House majority leader; and University of South Alabama President Jo Bonner, a former congressman.

The same day, Stone told his distribution list that “we are down to the wire” and asked recipients to have commissioners and university leaders contact their senators one more time.

The final update that FOS received in produced materials occurred at 11:30 p.m. on Aug. 7.

Stone sent the following, “Our Senate leaders and our team continue to be in active negotiations to achieve the consensus necessary to bring the PCSA for a vote,” he wrote. “This is ongoing as I type.”

The Senate would go on to pass the PCSA 77-22 on Sept. 28. The bill is currently waiting on a vote in the House of Representatives.