Despite Vote Delay, SCORE Act Negotiations Continue on Capitol Hill

House Republican leadership has not given up on passing the NCAA-backed SCORE Act, despite not being able to assemble enough “yes” votes to bring the bill to the floor this week. 

Negotiations are continuing with representatives on both sides of the aisle to secure the requisite 218 votes necessary to pass the bill, sources tell Front Office Sports, with one source saying House Republicans are now aiming to schedule the vote for October. 

Lobbying efforts are also ongoing—and in some cases, quite publicly. The SEC has been running ads asking fans to support the bill; the conference did so as late as this past Saturday during Alabama’s win over Wisconsin on ABC. Meanwhile, Texas Tech board of regents chairman, booster, and oil billionaire Cody Campbell—who helped the Trump Administration craft an executive order on college sports and who has started a lobbying effort of his own that calls the SCORE Act an inadequate solution—has been running ads promoting his agenda on college football Saturdays.

This is the closest the NCAA and power conferences have gotten to passing a bill since launching a multimillion-dollar lobbying blitz in 2019. But it’s still unclear if they’ll ultimately be successful.

The SCORE (Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements) Act, introduced in July, satisfies the NCAA’s entire wishlist: it offers antitrust protections to stop the flood of lawsuits challenging various NCAA rules; overrides disparate state NIL (name, image, and likeness) laws; and prevents athletes from obtaining employee status.

Before the August recess, House Republicans passed the SCORE Act through two committee markups and planned to introduce it on the House floor for a vote this month—and, more specifically, this week. But after working in “overdrive” to secure enough votes, leadership decided to delay the vote indefinitely, FOS reported last Thursday. 

Over the past couple of weeks, two conferences representing Historically Black Colleges and Universities—the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and the Southwest Athletic Conference—have been lobbying for Democrats in the Congressional Black Congress to support the bill. Two Democrats in the CBC, Rep. Shomari Figures (D., Ala.) and Rep. Janelle Bynum (D., Ore.), had agreed to co-sponsor the bill when it was first introduced; but CBC chairwoman Yvette Clarke (D., N.Y.) has been staunchly against it. 

Another meeting to make an attempt at gaining CBC support has been planned tentatively, but a date hasn’t been set yet, one source says—adding that they were skeptical the CBC would flip as an organization to endorse the bill.

Meanwhile, House leadership are continuing negotiations with four Texas Republicans who came out against the bill at the behest of Campbell. The negotiations, another source close to the administration told FOS last week, involved the inclusion of Campbell’s agenda items in the bill in exchange for these Republicans’ support. Campbell wants to amend the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to allow all FBS football rights to be sold together (in an attempt to create more revenue to fund Olympic sports) and create a new entity to replace the NCAA. 

As of Tuesday, negotiations are still ongoing, the source close to the administration said.

But Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R., Fla.), one of the SCORE Act’s sponsors, expressed skepticism about the ability to include an SBA amendment in the SCORE Act. “I don’t think we can get it through,” he told The Athletic this week. “(Amending the SBA) needs to be studied before there’s any action taken, in my opinion.”