​White House phone calls. Talks with NCAA leadership and every major member conference.A day that started with bill co-sponsors and their staffs already working the phones shortly after 7 a.m. Friday, July 31, ended with arguably the most significant step to date for the Protect College Sports Act.Facing stiff headwinds to keep alive hope of a U.S. Senate floor vote before recess on Friday, August 7, Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Eric Schmitt (R-MO), specifically, held a litany of conversations with college athletics’ top powerbrokers — most notably Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, as well as the SEC’s Greg Sankey.Schmitt, who late Friday night spoke exclusively to USA TODAY Sports, peeled back the layers of the day — and how the past two weeks helped resuscitate a Protect College Sports Act that had nearly been left in the dustbin.“I mean we’ve spent the entirety of the week before (July 20-24) negotiating this with Senator Cantwell, Cruz, and myself and staff; it was pretty intense,” said Schmitt, a former NCAA student-athlete during his football career at Truman State. “Seven to eight hours a day on it a day, kind of in the middle of all the other stuff we were doing in the Senate.“Then (Friday) started probably about 7:30 (a.m.) on the phone with the commissioners and the White House. I talked to the president (late Friday night) after we got with the SEC and Big Ten. He’s very happy; it’s a priority for him. But yeah, it started pretty early and it was nonstop.”Here’s how it unfolded.Early-week, USA TODAY Sports obtained a copy of the 12 “major concessions” being workshopped to garner Big Ten and SEC support. Eight of the 12, per three people with direct knowledge of the Senate Commerce Committee’s work on the Protect College Sports Act who were granted anonymity due to the sensitive nature of deliberations, were deemed “full concessions.”By Wednesday, in continued conversations with people on Capitol Hill, USA TODAY Sports learned more revisions had been made but optimism had dwindled.“Major concessions were made overnight,” a person directly involved with the drafting of the bill told USA TODAY Sports. “At this point, with every passing minute, odds are slimmer that we can move the bill (to the Senate floor vote) before the August recess.“We’ve been working night and day to make the revisions they (Big Ten, SEC) said that they needed (to publicly support the bill). We need an answer. This wasn’t a superficial deadline.”Schmitt echoed those sentiments.“Coming out of committee, my feeling was that that was not going to be a finished product, that this was … we needed to have more voices at the table,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “And clearly, the conferences in the breadth of interests that they spoke to, it was going to be important in trying to get as much support as we could. And, they had issues. We tried to address those. I felt like we got to a good place (Thursday)