Inside the ACC’s Campaign to Help Shape the Protect College Sports Act

Rapid Response / Legal Alert | September 14, 2026

For months, the public story around the Protect College Sports Act has been about whether college sports can persuade Congress to give the industry something it has repeatedly failed to secure elsewhere: a durable national rulebook.

The newly released records add another layer.

According to documents obtained through public-records requests by Tomahawk Nation, ACC officials were communicating regularly with the Senate offices negotiating the legislation, collecting technical questions from schools, organizing lobbying efforts and reviewing draft language as the bill evolved.

Commissioner Jim Phillips told ACC presidents and chancellors on July 24 that conference officials were interacting “daily” with the Cruz and Cantwell teams and intended to use feedback from member schools in those discussions. The day before, Phillips wrote that he and ACC Chief Legal Officer Pearlynn Houck had met with Sens. Ted Cruz, Maria Cantwell and Eric Schmitt while the senators negotiated the legislation.

By July 30, Senate Commerce Committee staff were circulating what staff director Brad Grantz called the “best-and-final offer.” Conference leaders were asked two direct questions: whether they supported the final bill and whether they would actively work for its passage. Staff also indicated that the legislation would move forward if the Big Ten and SEC endorsed it.

That is the genuinely new part.

The ACC’s support for federal legislation was already public. What had not been visible was the extent to which conference officials were participating in the feedback loop while the text was still being negotiated.

Stakeholder lobbying on federal legislation is neither unusual nor inherently improper. Universities, athletic conferences, athlete groups, leagues, businesses and advocacy organizations routinely try to influence legislation affecting them.

What makes these records noteworthy is what Congress is regulating.

The current bill does considerably more than establish NIL rules.

Section 205 would amend the Sports Broadcasting Act and create new statutory restrictions on certain conference mergers and acquisitions. Under the revised text, a football-driven conference reporting more than $700 million in annual revenue could not acquire the assets or media rights of another qualifying conference or “covered institution” unless the resulting conference encompassed at least 75% of FBS institutions. A high-revenue conference acquiring a school that is not a covered institution generally could not exceed 19 members.

The definition is where things get particularly important.

A “covered institution” includes a school that, at least once during the previous five years, played football in a covered conference reporting more than $700 million in revenue.

In practical terms, that five-year lookback could substantially complicate a direct move by a school from one qualifying high-revenue conference to another. A departing school would not immediately shed its status as a “covered institution” simply because it left its old league.

That makes Section 205 potentially consequential for schools such as Florida State and Clemson, whose long-running disputes with the ACC have centered in part on their ability eventually to pursue different conference arrangements.

And that makes the drafting process commercially important.

Conference membership determines far more than scheduling. It can determine media-rights revenue, distribution, competitive access, institutional visibility and long-term enterprise value.

Congress is therefore considering legislation that could alter the rules governing one of the most valuable strategic decisions a university athletic department can make.

Federal lobbying disclosures add another detail.

DLA Piper reported lobbying for the ACC on federal college-sports legislation in 2026. The newly released records further show the firm participating alongside conference personnel in the PCSA effort. According to the records and lobbying disclosures reviewed by Tomahawk Nation, Duke, North Carolina and Wake Forest also retained DLA Piper to lobby on S. 4668. The publication reported that it found no comparable PCSA-related conference-and-member-school overlap among the other Power Four conferences.

That does not establish that those schools or the ACC shared identical positions. In fact, the records show member institutions raising different questions and concerns.

One Virginia official, for example, asked how the bill would interact with Title IX. The current bill expressly includes a savings clause providing that nothing in the relevant title overrides or modifies Title IX’s applicability.

The larger point is that the legislative process was not simply Congress handing college sports a finished product.

The regulated institutions were actively providing input while the product was being assembled.

There is an important line between influence and authorship.

The documents establish substantial ACC engagement with Senate offices. They do not establish that the ACC wrote Section 205, proposed the final realignment framework or caused Congress to adopt any particular provision.

That distinction matters because Senate staff reportedly told stakeholders on July 30 that the final draft contained a different conference-movement framework supplied through the negotiating process—but did not identify which conference or institution had proposed it.

The ACC also told Tomahawk Nation that it did not control or determine specific statutory language. The conference said its feedback was provided on behalf of its 18 members and that individual institutions remained free to submit their own views directly.

Nor do the records establish unanimous support inside the conference. Prior reporting cited in the newly released materials said the ACC did not take a formal vote on its support and that a small group of members opposed parts of the legislation, while the conference overall was described as overwhelmingly supportive.

And most importantly, none of these provisions is law yet.

The Commerce Committee advanced S. 4668 by a 19–9 vote in June, and senators released revised language on August 4 after further negotiations and conference endorsements. The Senate has not yet passed the bill.

The timing is hard to miss.

The Senate returns to regular business on September 14, the same day these records became public. PCSA supporters have scheduled a Capitol press conference this afternoon, and Senate procedure already contemplates a cloture vote on the motion to proceed later this month.

So the disclosure arrives just as the bill enters another potentially decisive stage.

The immediate question is not whether conference lobbying somehow invalidates the legislation. It does not.

The more useful question is whose interests Congress is balancing as it writes the national framework.

Athletes care about compensation and mobility. Schools care about costs, competitive balance and roster management. Conferences care about media value, membership stability and governance. Broadcasters care about inventory and distribution. Federal lawmakers are attempting to reconcile all of those interests in one statute.

The newly released ACC records make that process unusually visible.

College sports has spent years asking Washington for certainty.

The emails show that the industry is not merely waiting for Congress to provide it. The industry is helping Congress decide what that certainty should look like.

The first thing to watch is the Senate floor. The bill still must clear the Senate, then survive whatever further congressional process is necessary before it could become law.

The second is Section 205. Any amendment affecting its $700 million threshold, 19-member limitation, five-year “covered institution” definition or treatment of conference media rights could materially change its realignment consequences.

And the third is disclosure. The ACC records raise an obvious question about what communications may exist among other conferences, individual universities, the NCAA and congressional offices during the same drafting period.

That may ultimately be the larger story: not simply what Congress puts into college sports’ new rulebook, but how the people who will live under that rulebook helped write it.