Ted Cruz took 's College GameDay on Saturday and got nearly 10 minutes to pitch the Protect College Sports Act, only to be drowned out by boos in Austin before the Ohio State-Texas showdown. The Texas senator used the segment to press for the bill he co-sponsored with Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, hoping to move it as soon as this week.
Rece Davis conducted the interview, and Cruz used the airtime to repeat his case that college sports are broken. He said, “Right now, college sports is in chaos,” and blamed the transfer portal for players moving “two, three, four, five times,” arguing that it was hurting the game, the players, the schools and the fans. He made that case with no pushback on the show.
That was part of why the segment drew blowback. An source told The Athletic that Cruz asked to come on and that it was an “easy decision” to say yes, adding that College GameDay had not received any request from a guest opposed to the legislation but would “obviously do the same” if one came in. Yet the show gave Cruz a long, uninterrupted stretch to sell a bill that already had public opponents in Chris Murphy and Cory Booker, along with the Congressional Black Caucus and NAACP leaders.
The timing made the choice harder to miss. A week earlier, Nick Saban had openly lobbied for the bill during a segment tied to LSU's attempt to add NFL players, and analyst Deion Sanders appears in TV commercials for the measure. Disney has also mentioned the bill in its lobbying disclosures, according to OpenSecrets, which only sharpened the sense that College GameDay had become part of the debate rather than a stage above it.
Cruz wanted the Protect College Sports Act moving now, and gave him the audience to try. What remains unanswered is whether that same platform will give comparable time to an opponent if one asks.
