'Never Flinched': Ted Cruz Posted the Clip of Fans Booing Him

The Texas senator spent nine minutes pitching the Protect College Sports Act while the crowd behind him chanted.

Senator Ted Cruz was booed through a nine-minute interview on ESPN's College GameDay on Saturday, September 12, 2026, and then he posted the video himself. The Texas Republican came on the show to sell the Protect College Sports Act while fans behind the set chanted “Ted, you suck,” TheWrap reported. The segment was broadcast from Austin ahead of the University of Texas–Ohio State University football game.

The bill underneath all that noise would give the National Collegiate Athletic Association an antitrust exemption, letting it enforce eligibility rules and the rules covering what athletes can make from their name, image and likeness. It would also let conferences pool their broadcast rights when they sit down with networks. The people whose paydays those rules govern are the ones on the field.

Cruz's on-air pitch was financial. Athletic departments at most schools are tens of millions of dollars in the red, he told host Rece Davis, per TheWrap. The casualties, he said, are women's teams and the sports that don't bring money in. Without the bill, he said, in three to five years only 40 to 50 schools would still have competitive football programs.

He stayed for all nine minutes.

Then came his own version of the morning, on X: “Whole crowd came on a blitz this morning, I stayed in the pocket. Never flinched.” He attached video of the interview with the crowd audible behind him, joked that he could end up playing for the reader's favorite team if the bill fails, and told people to call their senators.

Not everyone in the chamber is with him. Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, has scheduled a press conference to argue against the bill, and the event's own description frames it as stripping college athletes of what they're owed as workers, TheWrap reported. That description also says the measure would shut down the players' ability to speak up for themselves while the NCAA, the conferences and the schools consolidate money and power, the outlet reported.

ESPN hasn't put a critic of the bill on air, per TheWrap. The network's corporate sibling had its own week: ABC, which Disney also owns, didn't air late-night host Jimmy Kimmel's interview with James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas. Kimmel said on air that the interview would go straight to YouTube because of regulatory threats from the Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission.

So the bipartisan bill got nine minutes of network television and no on-air opposition, and the loudest dissent of the morning came from a crowd that wasn't miked.

A Senate vote is expected in the coming weeks, the outlet reported, though no date has been set for it or for Murphy's press conference. Until then, the clip is still up on Cruz's own account, boos included.

Source: thewrap.com, retrieved September 13, 2026.