HBCU leaders have spent most of 2026 watching two separate fights in Washington. One was over money: the federal dollars that reach their campuses every year through spending bills. The other was over the Protect College Sports Act, the bill that would rewrite the rules for college athletics and set aside new grant money for HBCU sports media. Tuesday’s midterm elections pulled those two fights into the same room.

Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate. When the new Congress is sworn in, they will chair the committees that write the federal budget and the committees that would have to revive the college sports bill if it does not pass this year. Until then, the outgoing Republican majorities have a short window to settle both questions themselves.

Two Deadlines, Eight Weeks Apart

The first deadline is Dec. 11. The federal government is running on a stopgap bill that holds spending at last year’s levels through that date. Congress has to pass full-year spending bills for fiscal 2027, pass another stopgap, or let the government shut down.

The second is Jan. 3, 2027, when the current Congress ends. The Protect College Sports Act cleared the Senate 77-22 in September, and the House returns Nov. 9. If the House does not pass it by Jan. 3, the bill dies, and any new version has to start over in both chambers.

The two deadlines compete for the same floor time. Every week the House spends on the budget is a week it does not spend on college sports. And whatever passes still needs President Trump’s signature. He said before the election that he would become “Mr. Veto” if Democrats took Congress, and that deals would probably follow later.

The Spending Bills Are Where Both Stories Meet

The budget fight and the college sports bill look like separate issues until you get to Title III.

Title III is the part of federal law that directly funds HBCUs. Congress approved $406 million for HBCUs through it this year. The House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal 2027 education bill, approved 34-28 on June 9, kept that $406 million in place, along with $103 million for historically Black graduate institutions and $20 million for HBCU master’s programs. The Senate Appropriations Committee had not marked up its version as of September.

The Protect College Sports Act adds its own Title III grant program for HBCU sports media and connectivity, which the final Senate text authorizes at up to $900 million over five years. That money is an authorization, not an appropriation. Even if the bill becomes law, the grants exist only if Congress funds them each year through the same spending bills that fund the $406 million.

That gap is exactly what the bill’s critics pointed to. After Senate passage, the Congressional Black Caucus listed the bill’s failure “to guarantee funding for HBCUs” as one of its three objections. Starting in January, the appropriators who decide whether that money ever shows up will be Democrats, and the caucus that raised the objection will be part of their majority.

The spending bills also carry the student aid programs that follow students with financial need to campus. Here is where those stand in the House committee bill and the White House budget request:

• Pell Grant maximum award: $7,395 now. The House bill raises it to $7,445, and the White House request keeps it at $7,395.
• Federal Work-Study: $1.23 billion now. The House bill cuts it to $908 million, and the White House request cuts it to $123 million.
• Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants: $910 million now. The House bill cuts it to $546 million, and the White House request eliminates it.
• TRIO: $1.191 billion now. The House bill raises it to $1.197 billion, and the White House request eliminates it.
• GEAR UP: $388 million now. The House bill raises it to $394 million, and the White House request eliminates it.

The White House request also proposed $254 million for Howard University, a $50 million cut to its direct federal appropriation. The same House bill gave no money to several other minority-serving institution programs, including the Predominantly Black Institutions program and the Strengthening Institutions program.

If Congress finishes these bills in December, the outgoing Republican majorities write them. If it passes another short stopgap, the unfinished bills go to a Democratic House and Senate, which would inherit negotiations that started from a Republican House bill and a White House request that both cut student aid, by very different amounts.

Why Campus Budgets Reach the Locker Room

None of these federal dollars go directly to athletic departments. They still matter to HBCU sports. The May breakdown of Division I HBCU athletic finances found that 73.9 percent of total athletic revenue across the 16 schools with 2024-25 financial filings came from university-wide support and student fees. When a campus budget tightens or loosens, athletics feels it, whatever Congress decides about NIL and transfer rules.

Some of the recent HBCU money never went through Congress at all. The Education Department added $438 million in one-time funding for HBCUs in 2025 and another $174 million in September, both moved over by the department from other education programs. Combined funding fell from $844 million last year to $580 million this year.

The election does not put those decisions in Congress’s hands. It does change who asks the questions. Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House education committee, told Education Week in October that he would seek the gavel if Democrats won the House, and that a Democratic majority would examine the department’s interagency agreements, which he said “don’t make sense, waste money, and are inefficient.”

A Short Window for the Senate’s Version

The lame duck is the Senate bill’s last chance in its current form, and early post-election reporting is not optimistic. For The Win wrote Wednesday that there is little expectation the House votes on it before January and called it “effectively dead.” Kyle Saunders, who has tracked the bill’s odds on his Substack, cut his estimate from about 25 to 30 percent to 5 to 10 percent. He pointed to a narrow Republican House majority, an open dispute among House Republicans over the text, and the same Dec. 11 budget deadline competing for floor time.

If the bill dies Jan. 3, two things this site has tracked for HBCUs die with it: the Title III grant program, and Section 122, the language that keeps the bill neutral on whether athletes are employees.

Next Year, the Same Majority Writes Both

If the bill comes back in the new Congress, it returns to a Capitol where the same party controls the rules and the money.

In the Senate, Ted Cruz of Texas, the bill’s lead author, gives up the Commerce Committee gavel. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the committee’s top Democrat, is in line to take it. Cantwell is the other name on the Cruz-Cantwell substitute the Senate passed in September, so the committee that wrote the bill would still be led by one of its authors.

The House is where the HBCU stakes shift the most. The Congressional Black Caucus, whose chair, Yvette Clarke of New York, said after Senate passage that the caucus “will continue to oppose this legislation in its current form,” will be part of the new majority. That changes the math on the one provision HBCU conferences asked for most. SWAC Commissioner Charles McClelland and MEAC Commissioner Sonja Stills have both asked Congress for an outright ban on classifying athletes as employees, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise wanted to add that ban to the Senate text. In a Democratic House, the ban would need support from a majority that includes the CBC, which has argued athletes need more leverage over their working conditions, not less.

The same majority would also decide whether a revived bill’s HBCU grant program ever gets funded. A Democratic Congress could rewrite the bill to address the CBC’s objection by guaranteeing that money, funding the program as written through the regular budget, or leaving it as an authorization on paper. Any of those paths still runs through a president with a veto.

One Room, One Calendar

For HBCUs, the federal budget and college sports reform are no longer separate stories. The $406 million baseline, the student aid programs the White House wants to cut or eliminate, and a sports media grant program of up to $900 million that so far exists only on paper all depend on the same spending bills, the same eight weeks, and after Jan. 3, the same Democratic committee chairs. The 2024-25 athletic finances behind it all are on the HBCU athletics finance dashboard.