WASHINGTON — The Big Ten Conference has hired BGR Group, one of Washington’s largest lobbying firms, to work on college sports issues, with a seven-person team that includes Sean Cooksey, the former Federal Election Commission chairman who until February was counsel to Vice President JD Vance, according to a registration filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.
The filing, posted Nov. 11 by BGR Government Affairs, says the firm will “provide strategic counsel and advocate on issues related to intercollegiate sports” for the conference. BGR is the sixth firm to file lobbying registrations or reports for the conference since January 2025, as Congress and the administration weigh how to regulate athlete pay, transfers and eligibility.
The hire comes as the main House bill on the subject has stalled. The SCORE Act, H.R. 4312, cleared two House committees in July 2025, and the Rules Committee reported a rule for floor debate on Dec. 1, 2025, its latest recorded action, but the bill has not received a House vote, according to Congress.gov.
President Trump has moved on his own. His April 3 executive order, “Urgent National Action to Save College Sports,” directs the NCAA to set five-year eligibility limits, restrict transfers, prohibit pay-for-play payments and preserve scholarships in women’s and Olympic sports, and ties compliance to federal grants and contracts, according to a Knight Commission summary of the order. The order urges Congress to pass legislation but says “further delay is not an option given what is at stake.”
Who is on the team
The registration lists seven BGR lobbyists, each marked as new to the account. The covered positions below are the government jobs each lobbyist disclosed, as the law requires; the list is abbreviated.
| Lobbyist | Covered positions listed |
|---|---|
| Sean Cooksey | Counsel to Vice President JD Vance; FEC commissioner; general counsel to Sen. Josh Hawley; deputy chief counsel to Sen. Ted Cruz |
| Syd Terry | Chief of staff and legislative director to Rep. Jan Schakowsky; Energy and Commerce policy coordinator; aide to Rep. Mark Pocan |
| Steven Pfrang | Chief of staff to Rep. LaHood; deputy chief of staff and legislative director to Rep. Reed |
| Kellie Adesina | Chief counsel, House Agriculture Committee; senior counselor, USDA Office of the General Counsel; aide to Reps. Marcia Fudge and Judy Chu |
| Robert Wood | Chief of staff to the HHS secretary |
| Patrick Ames | Senior policy adviser and counselor, CFTC |
| Justin Rzepka | Legislative aide to Sen. Ensign |
BGR announced in February that Cooksey had joined its commerce and infrastructure practice as a managing director. The firm said he had served as Vance’s “chief legal adviser and a senior policy staffer within the White House,” and as FEC chairman during the 2024 election year. “Sean is a proven leader and has been a widely recognized policy and legal expert both in the administration and on Capitol Hill,” BGR chairman and CEO Bob Wood said in the firm’s announcement. NBC News reported at the time that Cooksey had been Vance’s point person on the TikTok agreement and had planned to stay in the job for about a year.
Federal ethics law, 18 U.S.C. § 207, places post-employment limits on some former senior executive-branch officials, including a one-year restriction on contacting their former office on behalf of others. The registration does not address how those rules apply, and it lists no specific bill or agency.
What the Big Ten has spent
The conference already pays three other outside firms. Their reports show $730,000 in lobbying fees from the Big Ten in the first nine months of 2026, up from $600,000 for all of 2025. These are payments to the firms as reported by each firm, not the pay of any lobbyist.
| Firm | 2025 | 2026, Jan.–Sept. | Issue as described |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cassidy & Associates | $360,000 (Q2–Q4) | $390,000 | “a national solution to preserve the unique model” of college athletics |
| Michael Best Strategies | — | $190,000 | Intercollegiate athletes; H.R. 4312, the SCORE Act |
| OnMessage Public Strategies | $80,000 (Q3–Q4) | $150,000 | Intercollegiate athletics and name, image and likeness rights |
| FGS Global | $160,000 (Q1; account ended in Q2) | — | Same issue language as Cassidy |
| Total | $600,000 | $730,000 |
A fifth firm, Marshall & Popp, has filed quarterly reports for the conference in both years showing no lobbying activity. BGR’s first report on the account, covering October through December, is due Jan. 20.
The firm
BGR reported $65.2 million in lobbying revenue in the first nine months of 2026, up from $51.4 million in the same period of 2025, second only to Ballard Partners among the major firms in an Inquisitor tally of its LDA reports. Those figures are firm revenue, not any individual’s pay.
The Big Ten was one of five new clients BGR registered on the morning of Nov. 11, according to the registrations. The others were the blood supplier Vitalant, the gene therapy company Regenxbio, the school nutrition nonprofit FoodCorps and Hood Companies, a private holding company, on trade and tariffs.
Lobbying for a client is legal, and the filings describe only the general issues the firm will work on. Nothing in them suggests any wrongdoing.
Featured photo: Iowa and Michigan in the Big Ten Championship game, Dec. 4, 2021. (Zoey Holmstrom / Maize & Blue Nation via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0; cropped)
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