The PCSA Targeting Memo:
Data & Methods

Every senator, every documented conference position, every threshold I chose — the full apparatus behind the consulting memo nobody commissioned.

Kyle L. Saunders · June 2026 · Companion to the Sacred Cow BBQ essay · Data current as of June 10, 2026

Read the essay Download the spreadsheet

The figures

Right-click any figure to save it; the spreadsheet behind all of them is in the downloads below. Color logic throughout: blue Democratic caucus, red Republican, gray = documented SEC/Big Ten opposition money, pale fills = the weaker documented-support tier, white diamonds = net pressure.

Every U.S. senator, support and opposition athletics money shown separately, both parties — **Where the PCSA votes actually live.** Every senator, sorted by net documented home-state conference pressure; support and opposition shown separately because netting hides the fights. Download PNG

Scatterplot of DW-NOMINATE ideology versus net home-state conference pressure — **The consultant's scatter.** Ideology (Voteview DW-NOMINATE) against home-state money. Outlined dots are the bill's sponsors; rings mark Senate Commerce members; the × marks senators publicly committed against for reasons the money doesn't measure, and the key warns where more of those are likely hiding. Download PNG

Table of every faction with a stake in the PCSA, their price, and conflicts — **The markup price list.** Every faction, what each one wants, and which purchases are mutually exclusive. Download PNG

Senate Commerce Committee members with inline pressure bars and what to watch for each — **The markup watch list.** All 28 Commerce members plus the off-committee names the floor fight runs through, each with PVI, ideology, labeled net-pressure bars, and the signal they carry. Note how safe most of these seats are: the election-year risk is the caucus frame, not anyone's own race. Download PNG

The 53 Republicans, standalone version — **The PCSA map: 53 Republicans** (the party-by-party cut, as appended to the essay). Download PNG

The 47 Democratic caucus members, standalone version — **The PCSA map: 47 Democrats** (the party-by-party cut, as appended to the essay). Download PNG

Downloads

pcsa-path-to-60-v3-full-evidence.xlsx — the main dataset: 100 senators × 18 indicators, 131 schools with evidence tiers, whip-count sheet, README with every choice documented.

Athletics revenue and conference affiliation come from the athletics finance map (The Whole D1 tab; institutions v6.3, with thanks to Dr. Greg Chick), and reflect the last completed reporting year. Positions are as of June 10, 2026; the July 2026 realignment is not reflected. That's the trade you make when you insist on receipts.

Methods, briefly

The evidence tiers

Tier	What counts	Who's in it
T1 SUPPORT	Formal post-introduction letters to Senate Commerce; institutional letters trump conference positions	ACC (5/31), Big 12 (5/31), American (6/3), Sun Belt (6/9); institutional: Nebraska (5/27), UTEP (6/2), LSU (6/1, over its own conference's objection)
T2 SUPPORT	The May 15 letter signed by 26 of 32 D1 commissioners (pre-text, hence the weaker tier) and documented testimony	MWC, MAC, CUSA; Pac-12 (Gould testimony, 6/3)
OPPOSE	Joint statement, oppose as written (6/2)	SEC, Big Ten

Vibes don't score. Conference-office positions are imputed to member schools' revenue, with the caveat the essay names: offices aren't schools, and LSU proves it.

Senator-level variables

Pressure: sum of home-state FBS athletics revenue by tier; net = support − oppose. Categories cut at ±$100M net, a threshold that sits in a natural gap in the distribution (nothing between −$150M and −$62M), so the defection tail is robust to any cut from −65 to −150.
Ideology: DW-NOMINATE (both dimensions), Voteview S119.
Electoral exposure: Cook PVI 2025 (state values via the Wikipedia mirror, validated by recomputation from official 2020/2024 returns: 48 of 50 exact at a ~70/30 recency weighting, the other two off by rounding); Trump 2024 two-party margin from official returns; ballot status, retirements, and gubernatorial runs flagged.
Flags: Senate Commerce membership; SAFE Act (S.2932) sponsorship; CBC membership; sponsor status.

Robustness

Built on athletics money, checked against whole-institution revenues: the two only correlate moderately at the school level (r = 0.59; hospital systems), but the senator-level nets correlate at r = 0.89 and agree on the support-or-oppose sign in every state except net-zero Kentucky. The map is robust to that choice. Senator roster verified against the three 119th-Congress vacancies (OH, FL, OK, all filled by appointment).

The public grading sheet

The memo gets graded against reality. These are the falsifiable predictions on file as of June 10, 2026; this table gets updated, not rewritten, after markup.

#	Prediction	Confidence	Check at	Result
1	PCSA is reported out of Commerce	High	Markup	—
2	No more than 2 of the five watch-list Commerce Democrats (Markey, Rosen, Luján, Hickenlooper, pool-adjacent Schatz) vote aye in committee	Medium	Markup	—
3	At least one tail Republican on Commerce (Blackburn, Young, Wicker) offers or cosponsors an SEC-aligned amendment	Medium-High	Markup	—
4	NCAA ask #7 (narrowed private right of action / exclusive federal jurisdiction) is offered as an amendment	Medium	Markup	—
5	The media-pooling provision survives markup substantially intact	Medium	Markup	—
6	Paul publicly opposes, demands a sunset, or files a sunset amendment before any floor vote	Medium-High	Floor	—
7	None of the 18 pool Democrats publicly endorses before markup	High	Markup	—
8	No standalone Senate floor passage before the August recess	Medium	Aug 2026	—
9	If enacted in 2026 at all, via attachment to a must-pass vehicle rather than standalone passage	Low-Medium	Dec 2026	—

The PCSA Targeting Memo:Data & Methods