Ted Cruz booed by UT Austin crowd during ESPN College GameDay appearance

Cruz appeared alongside sports commentator Rece Davis for a nearly 10-minute conversation about the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act, which Cruz co-authored. As David introduced Cruz and began to discuss his role in advancing the legislation, the crowd continued loudly booing, at times drowning out the conversation.

At one point, members of the audience could be heard chanting “Ted, you suck!”

It wasn’t clear what the exact reason was that students chose to boo Cruz. Human Events host Jack Posobiec weighed in, writing on X, “Young people are extremely anti-war. This isn’t a surprising response," referring to Cruz's general support of interventionism.

Cruz used the appearance to promote the Protect College Sports Act, which would establish national rules governing various aspects of college athletics, such as name, image, and likeness compensation.

“The current situation is nuts. ... The reason Congress is acting is because Congress created this problem,” Cruz said. "The bill is very simple. It brings order to chaos; it protects the students and their ability to be compensated… but it also puts reasonable rules in place.”

“Most college athletic programs are losing tens of millions of dollars, and as a result, they’re canceling women’s programs and non–revenue sports and Olympics sports,” Cruz added. “If we don’t act, in three to five years we’re going to see 40 to 50 schools that have competitive football programs and everyone else goes under. That would be a tragedy.”

Cruz has made progress on the legislation with a bipartisan group of senators that includes Democrat Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington and Chris Coons of Delaware. He said that he expects the bill to see a vote this week.