Two of the most influential college sports conferences— the Big Ten and the SEC—signaled they do not support the current version of federal legislation aimed at regulating college athletics in the era of NIL and the transfer portal. In a joint statement, they said the bill leaves “critical issues unresolved,” including concerns about whether it meaningfully preempts state laws. The statement landed ahead of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz, with Sen. Maria Cantwell as the ranking Democrat. Cruz has said the draft is designed to preempt state laws that conflict with its provisions, but the SEC-Big Ten announcement indicates the strategy is not winning enough conference buy-in. A core flashpoint is how the bill would handle conference media-rights pooling, an approach the Big Ten and SEC have argued would not produce the financial outcomes suggested by bill proponents. The conferences’ statement did not address that point directly. The legislative effort now faces a higher likelihood of continued gridlock, with the two conferences controlling major leverage points in the sport’s ecosystem and the College Football Playoff.