Congress Is Trying to Protect College Sports. But Nobody's Talking to the Athlete.

Congress has been busy lately.

On May 27, 2026, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell announced bipartisan agreement on the Protect College Sports Act of 2026. The bill was introduced with support from Senators Eric Schmitt and Chris Coons and advanced out of committee — making it one of the most serious federal attempts yet to regulate college athletics.

It hasn't been signed into law. But it's moving. And if you follow college sports at all, you've seen the headlines. NIL regulations. Revenue sharing caps. Agent rules. Transfer restrictions. A whole new federal framework for college athletics.

It's a big deal. I'm not going to pretend it isn't.

But here's what I keep thinking about: in all the coverage, all the debate, all the back-and-forth about what this means for the NCAA and the conferences and the schools —

Nobody's talking to the athlete.

And more specifically, nobody's talking about the one thing no legislation can touch: your personal brand.

What the bill actually does

I'll give you the quick version. The Protect College Sports Act would create a national set of rules for NIL deals, put a cap on revenue sharing, regulate agents, restrict certain transfer situations, and give the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption so it can actually enforce rules without getting sued into oblivion every five minutes.

There are athlete protections in there — medical coverage, scholarship guarantees, privacy requirements for NIL disclosure over $600. That's real.

But here's the thing about legislation: it governs the system. It doesn't govern you.

The bill tells schools what they can pay you. It tells agents what they can charge. It tells the NCAA what rules they can enforce.

It doesn't tell a brand whether they want to work with you. It doesn't tell a coach whether they feel like they know you. It doesn't tell a fan whether they care about your story.

That part is still entirely up to you.

The number nobody's talking about

The college athlete influencer economy is projected to hit $2.55 billion this year. That's where the market actually is right now, five years into the NIL era.

And here's what drives that number: not the best athletes. The athletes with the strongest brands.

I spent 17 years at Kroenke Sports Entertainment — the Nuggets, the Avalanche, the Mammoth. I watched how brands make decisions about which athletes to partner with. I can tell you from the inside that the conversation almost never starts with "who's the best player."

It starts with: who has an audience? Who has a story? Who do people actually care about?

That's the brand question. And the Protect College Sports Act doesn't answer it for you.

What I keep seeing

I've been doing athlete profile reviews every day this week. TikTok, Instagram — real athletes, real pages, real feedback.

And the pattern I keep seeing has nothing to do with NIL legislation.

Athletes with genuinely compelling stories and real credentials are posting content that shows none of it. Highlights with no context. Captions that are just hashtags. Moments that should stop a coach or a brand in their tracks — buried in a photo dump with no caption.

The issue isn't the system. The system is actually more favorable to athletes right now than it has ever been in the history of college sports.

The issue is that most athletes don't know how to tell their own story. Nobody ever told them that the story mattered. Nobody ever sat them down and said: the highlight gets you on the list. The brand gets you the call.

What actually protects you

Here's my honest take on the Protect College Sports Act: it might help. It might not. Federal legislation in college athletics has a long history of taking longer than expected and delivering less than promised.

But while Congress debates, you have something they can't regulate, cap, or legislate away.

Your name. Your image. Your likeness. Your story.

The athletes who come out of this era ahead won't necessarily be the ones with the best lawyers or the biggest revenue share checks. They'll be the ones who built something real — an audience that follows them because they know who they are, not just what they can do on the court or the field.

That's not a content strategy. That's clarity. Knowing who you are, what you stand for, and being consistent enough about it that other people start to feel like they know you too.

I played overseas for years. Spain. France. Germany. China. Denmark. Ireland. Getting paid almost nothing, grinding in gyms in front of crowds of 200 people. Nobody was writing legislation to protect me. Nobody was capping anyone's revenue on my behalf.

What I had was the experience of building something under uncertain conditions — which, looking back, is exactly what every college athlete is doing right now.

The rules are going to keep changing. They always do.

Build the thing they can't change.

If you're an athlete reading this

Start with one question: if a brand or a coach found your social media today, would they understand who you are in 30 seconds?

Not just what sport you play. Not just your stats. Who you are.

If the answer is no — that's where to start. Not with a content calendar. Not with a posting schedule. With the clarity that makes everything else make sense.

The bill can wait. This can't.

Jared Harding is the founder of Tewdilly, a brand strategy consultancy for athletes and sports organizations. He spent 17 years at Kroenke Sports Entertainment and played professional basketball overseas in six countries.