Emails Reveal Powerful Network Behind Protect College Sports Act
Over the summer, Dary Stone—a Dallas real estate executive and former Baylor University board chair—sent a flurry of emails on behalf of Saving College Sports, the advocacy group that natural gas billionaire and Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell set up last year to push federal college sports legislation.
The emails, aimed at passing the Protect College Sports Act in the Senate, reached a wide range of powerful people. They include major conservative political figures, a DraftKings executive, university leaders, and conference commissioners.
David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth and a co-founder of the Federalist Society, and Malcolm Turner, DraftKings’ head of corporate development and strategy, were among those invited by Stone to an Aug. 4 SCS strategy call with Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.
The involvement of McIntosh and Turner in the effort to pass college sports legislation has not been previously reported.
Front Office Sports obtained the emails through public records requests to the University of North Carolina, Florida State University, and the University of Louisville. They offer a rare look at how the organization operated and reveal a network with deeper political ties than previously known.
The call came at the peak of SCS’s summer effort to coordinate lobbying by university officials and conference executives for the bill. SCS has not publicly disclosed its donor list because it is legally exempt from disclosure requirements.
The bill would establish nationwide rules governing college athletes’ compensation, eligibility, and transfers while granting the NCAA, conferences, and schools antitrust protections; supporters say it would add much-needed stability to a chaotic college sports landscape.
Critics argue that the legislation would restrict athletes’ earning potential and legal rights while shielding the NCAA from lawsuits, without giving players a meaningful role in negotiating those rules.
The lobbying effort also extended into sports media. As previously reported by Awful Announcing, ESPN and Fox Sports executives participated in discussions about the legislation, while ESPN aired on-air advocacy for the bill, including the College GameDay interview where Sen. Ted Cruz pushed the bill.
Spokespeople for McIntosh, Sen. Schmitt’s office, and Saving College Sports did not respond to requests for comment.
Political Connections
McIntosh’s invitation to the Aug. 4 call was part of a longer run of correspondence. He appears as a recipient on SCS communications throughout the summer. McIntosh, a major player in conservative politics, had not previously been involved with college sports. He has led the Club for Growth, a powerful conservative political advocacy group, since 2015, and its super PAC aims to spend $175 million this cycle supporting Republican candidates for Congress.
McIntosh has maintained a direct relationship with President Trump dating back to his first presidency. In January 2026, for example, Trump posted on his Truth Social account, “I was with David McIntosh of the Club for Growth, and we agreed that we will both work tirelessly together to take out Indiana Senate Majority Leader Rod Bray”
Stone provided recipients with lobbying templates to send to senators, sent numerous campaign updates, and repeatedly pleaded with the mailing list recipients to contact university leaders and senators.
A June 1 letter, drafted internally at Saving College Sports and signed by 85 university leaders, went to the bill’s four Senate sponsors. The letter praised the senators for pursuing a “bipartisan” framework.
But the messages obtained by FOS show a campaign that ran primarily through some of the biggest names and checkbooks in Republican politics.
At least six people on Stone’s core distribution list have each given more than $500,000 to Republican candidates and committees since 2017, according to an FOS review of Federal Election Commission records.
In late June, as Stone was rallying university leaders behind the bill, he and Campbell gave a combined $30,000 to Winning For America Fund, a joint fundraising committee for Schmitt. FEC records show Campbell gave $25,000 on June 22, and Stone gave $5,000 on June 30. Five weeks later, Schmitt headlined a strategy call to rally support for the bill.
Campbell has given more than $2.2 million to Republican candidates and committees since January 2025, including $500,000 to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc., FEC records show.
Stone himself has given more than $180,000 to federal Republican candidates and committees since 2017.
SCS also has close ties to Cruz, who pushed his legislation in a notorious College GameDay appearance. Its executive director, David Polyansky, previously served as Cruz’s chief of staff. In 2023, Polyansky joined Never Back Down, the super PAC behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid.
SCS’s mailing list recipients have given more than $800,000 since 2017 to support Cruz, FEC records show. That includes $500,000 that Paul Foster, a former chair of the University of Texas System Board of Regents, gave in October 2024 to Truth and Courage PAC, the super PAC backing Cruz’s re-election.
Penn State trustee Jay Paterno, son of the late football coach Joe Paterno, appears regularly on the lists as a recipient. He told FOS that he joked on one SCS call: “I may be the only Democrat on here.” Paterno ran for Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania in 2014 as a Democrat.
A DraftKings Address On The Chain
Turner, the DraftKings executive, also appears as a recipient often in the emails obtained by Front Office Sports.
His dual roles with DraftKings and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have drawn criticism from the start. At an April 2021 committee meeting of the UNC System Board of Governors, which appointed him to the Chapel Hill board, member Art Pope objected.
“The fact of the matter is that DraftKings is promoting sports betting on college sports, and I just do not think that’s appropriate,” Pope said.
Steve Long, another UNC board member, said “The reality is that these Boards of Trustees do get involved with college athletics.”
Turner was ultimately approved to join the board by a vote of 17–6. The Daily Tar Heel noted his appointment came with a promise that he would recuse himself from athletics-related matters.
Brianna Paciorka-USA TODAY Network via Imagn Images
The June 1 letter SCS sent to the bill’s sponsors listed Turner as chair of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill board. Private SCS correspondence reached him at his DraftKings email address.
Turner
Source: frontofficesports.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.