‘Get him off’
Page F5From§Eachthe milkman edition — 13 September 2026
$31 Million Already Spent Lobbying Cruz's College Sports Bill Before Fans Get One Boo In
As it ran on the front
Ted Cruz stood on the College GameDay set Saturday morning and asked a live stadium crowd to like a bill. They did not. The crowd booed him, some of them loud enough to make the broadcast, while he pitched the Protect College Sports Act, the measure he has championed with Senator Maria Cantwell since before the August recess delayed its closure vote. That much is theater, and theater is free. The filing is not.
Two days before Cruz walked onto that field, The Hill reported that interested parties have poured $31 million into lobbying Congress on that same bill in recent months. Thirty-one million dollars is not a sentiment. It is a budget line, spent by people who do not attend College GameDay and do not need to, because their business happens in committee rooms, not stadiums. The crowd's boo is a Saturday-morning event. The $31 million is a standing order.…
…(cont) Reconcile the two and the arithmetic gets interesting. A senator can be booed live by a stadium full of people who watched him for free, and courted by interest groups who have already spent enough money to matter in a congressional markup, and both of those things can be true about the same afternoon and the same bill. The crowd's opinion cost nothing and changes nothing on its own. The $31 million's opinion cost $31 million and is still working, recess or no recess.
After the Cruz appearance, Jemele Hill, a former ESPN host, said the network she used to work for functions as a political lobbying firm. Fox News answered that Hill has her own record of political commentary on that same network. That's true, and it isn't a rebuttal: a network can host a senator's pitch and take a hit for hosting it in the same week without either fact canceling the other. Both are just line items in how the segment got made.
What the receipts show, set side by side, is a bill running on two tracks. One track runs through a stadium microphone, is loud, and costs a fan nothing but the trip to the stands. The other runs through a lobbying disclosure, is quiet, and has already cost $31 million. Congress takes up the closure vote whenever it reconvenes to take it up. The stadium will not be in that room, hon. The $31 million will.
“They let the cameras catch a college crowd booing Cruz because that boo doesn't cost anybody a dime. The $31 million spent lobbying that same bill never has to walk into a stadium, it just walks into an office. That's the tell — the free speech gets on TV, the paid speech gets the vote.”
“$31 million spread across every interest group with a stake in college sports is a rounding error for an industry this size — did I say rounding error, that's not what I meant, disclosure is disclosure, it's all above board. And frankly, Jemele Hill criticizing ESPN for hosting politics is a little rich given her own commentary career on that same network, so maybe let's talk about that instead of the filing.”
The receipts
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) faced a raucous gathering at his appearance on ESPN’s College GameDay while pushing for the passage of the Protect College Sports Act, whose closure vote was delayed due to the congressional August recess. ESPN’s College GameDay hosted Cruz for an interview with Rece Davis, in which Cruz discussed the efforts for […]
Jemele Hill slammed ESPN for hosting Senator Ted Cruz on "College GameDay," but her own history of political commentary on the network reveals blatant hypocricy.
Interested parties in recent months have poured tens of millions of dollars into lobbying lawmakers on sweeping legislation regulating the big business of college sports. The Protect College Sports Act, championed by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), is the latest of these after a similar measure failed in the House…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.