U.S. senators are going back to school to try to rein in the Wild West that has become the college landscape.

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) introduced a bipartisan bill Wednesday that tackles some of the more pressing issues that have seen student athletes extend their eligibility past the norm and puts limitations on the transfer portal.

Among the issues addressed in the Protect College Sports Act are:

• Giving the NCAA an antitrust exemption to enforce rules that have been challenged in the courts.
• Limiting athletes to one “free” transfer during their collegiate careers.
• Limiting coach movement during the season.
•  Limiting student-athlete eligibility to a max of five years.
• Prohibiting former pro athletes from returning to play in college.
• Allowing the NCAA and the College Sports Commission to enforce a cap on how much schools can pay their athletes.

Cruz told the Associated Press that the proposed legislation is “a stability bill, not just an NIL bill,” and both Cruz and Cantwell said they “believe the college sports system is in a bit of chaos.”

Attempts to rein in the Wild West-type situation in college sports have been met with pushback, with two previous attempts by lawmakers, the SCORE Act and SAFE Act, failing to gain any traction.

The new bill takes pieces from previous attempts to try to bring stability to the college sports landscape, which has been dramatically changed since the introduction of NIL in 2021, following a landmark Supreme Court ruling.

NIL has been reportedly used to circumvent an agreement between the NCAA and its major conferences last year that they would abide by a spending cap as part of a legal settlement, but wealthier programs have used business partners to get around the agreement to pay players through NIL agreements.

The Protect College Sports Act would provide the legal cover for the College Sports Commission to close the loopholes schools have been exploiting. Cantwell told ESPN that the idea wasn’t to curtail players from earning money.

“If the parties want to come back to the table and say let’s raise the cap to 50 percent of revenue, the bill allows them to do that,” she said. “We’re not curtailing the opportunity for more revenue sharing. … It’s important not to let this be a runaway arms race.”

As a trade-off for providing the NCAA antitrust protections, the bill gives athletes “public-facing protections” that include health insurance and scholarship guarantees and stricter regulations for NIL deals from third parties and agents that put the deals together.

The terms of the bill would also prohibit midseason coaching changes, like the situation involving Lane Kiffin’s jump from Ole Miss to LSU while Ole Miss was in the College Football Playoff last year, and would allow conferences to pool their TV rights.

Leagues would not be required to join the media pooling, and those that do would be required to set aside a percentage of any financial increase to support women’s and Olympic sports.

Sens. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., and Chris Coons, D-Del., are co-sponsoring the bill, which will need 60 votes to pass the Senate.