▶ 0:26:03>> good morning, committee on commerce, science and transportation will come to order. College sports is one of the few institutions in america that brings entire communities together. Families, planned saturdays around kickoff. Students pack arenas on cold winter nights.
▶ 0:26:31Alumni come back to campus every fall to see friends, sing old fight songs and cheer for the same colors that they wore decades ago. Rivalries are handed down through generations. They become part of lore and stories that span decades.
▶ 0:27:32The next year fight to keep pach out of control nil spending. Coaches have to recruit their own locker room each off-season. Eligibility disputes are decided by lawsuits and emergency injunctions. Historic rivalries go away.
▶ 0:27:58Pro athletes are returning to play in college. The richest conferences keep pulling further and further away in the mid-major programs become farm teams for the bluebloods. In 2020 four, marshall withdrew from the independence bowl after its coach left. 25 players entered the transfer portal.
▶ 0:28:30Unlv fans watch their 3-0 team lose it starting quarterback midseason after nil dispute. The pack 12, 1 of the most historic conferences collapsed under realignment. To be clear, this problem wasn't caused by student athletes profiting.
▶ 0:29:00The problem is the old system was dismantled without a durable replacement. College athletics is being torn apart from every direction. State laws compete against each other. Agents, collectives, boosters, media companies make decisions without care for the student athlete or the greater good.
▶ 0:29:25When national organizations try to create structure they are repeatedly sued, forced to change the rules again or blocked from enforcing them. It was not my intention to try to insert congress into college sports. College sports camp to congress because changing the law is the only way to fix the legal chaos we are seeing right now.
▶ 0:29:54Congress unfortunately helped create the legal environment that college sports now operates. Broadcasting in interstate commerce laws shape what schools and conferences could do. The laws that congress wrote. Congress has a responsibility to adjust. That is exactly what the protect college sports act does.
▶ 0:30:28Legislation that ranking member cantwell, senator schmitt, senator coons and I introduced, that is what it is designed to do. It creates a national rulebook that restores order to a system overwhelmed by transfer chaos, recruiting inducements, tampering, eligibility lawsuits.
▶ 0:30:54It preserves real legitimate nil opportunities that are better and more fair. It makes clear that college sports should not be a constant and unrestricted free agency. Where programs are rebuilt every off-season through payroll instead of coaching, player development, fair competition.
▶ 0:31:17It puts education back into college athletics. Most student athletes we know will never play professionally. The statistics are 99% of more than half a million student athletes will not play in the nfl, nba. College sports is an incredible avenue for opportunity.
▶ 0:31:45Those athletes they play to compete, to earn the degree, to become leaders and to build a foundation for life beyond the field or court. This bill is designed to put student athletes on a path to a degree. It protects their scholarships regardless of injury. Their scholarship is still there regardless of performance.
▶ 0:32:12The bill also brings accountability to nil and agent marketplace. It requires standard terms in nil contracts. It prevents agents from charging outrageous fees with right now is a problem. Young athletes and their families deserve clear contracts, honest representation, protection from people who made promises they cannot keep.
▶ 0:32:42It establishes strong health and safety protections and ensures clear eligibility standards. So rules are not written by local judges or a g league player coming back to swipe a roster spot from an 18-year-old kid fresh out of high school. The protect college sports act gives universities the options to pull media rights. The same authority given to professional leagues like the nfl.
▶ 0:33:11I want to make clear, this provision is entirely optional. It is also not a statement of the current use of the sports broadcasting act as I know many of my colleagues have expressed concerns the antitrust exceptions given to professional sports leagues is not serving consumers in today's landscape.
▶ 0:33:34This exists oak schools could make tv money work for college sports by helping to generate revenue, to support and preserve olympic sports and women's sports. To keep games accessible for all of those who love them. With everything going on in the world, why is congress focused on college sports? Let me explain.
▶ 0:34:03If we do nothing, the current trajectory will concentrate more power and fewer hands and will widen the gap between the richest programs. In a few years, if we do nothing we could lose dozens of historic football and basketball programs not to mention tens of thousands of olympic sports depending on the revenue for football and
▶ 0:34:34Basketball. Is that what our country wants? To allow federal law to kill off everyone but the sec. I'm from texas, I love the sec, the big ten, they are incredible institutions. I love the rest that make college sports so fantastic and fun to watch.
▶ 0:34:58A few years ago college football in texas could be reduced to the university of texas and texas a&m. Both incredible institutions. If those are the only football programs in texas, we have done something tragically wrong. As much as I love them, I want to see baylor, rice, tcu, smu, texas tech and all of the great institutions having a chance.
▶ 0:35:31Our system in college sports is unlike anything else in the world. Something to reflect on. There is no nation on planet earth that has anything remotely comparable to college sports in america. I have to admit before we get working on this, I never thought about this. You just take for granted that is what saturdays are about.
▶ 0:35:58There's no other country that has half a million kids at any given time, many from low income environments. Many have an avenue to get an education, learn sportsmanship, that is extraordinary. If we wake up in a few years and instead of a half million kids, we have half as many.
▶ 0:36:28That opportunity has been taken away. That will be a profound disservice to this nation. I believe all of us should prevent this. This is a time when both political parties are battling like crazy. We practically can't agree on anything.
▶ 0:36:53We wake up and say good morning and half the time they say no it's not. This is a moment where we could come together and I want to take a moment of praise. She and I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours negotiating this bill. It has been excruciating. I'm certain ranking member cantwell thought we will never get there. I thought multiple times we will never get there.
▶ 0:37:24There is a secret sauce, which is what we had moments when everything broke down I had my staff bring in cuban coffee. I am now the lone remaining cuban-american in the senate. Cuban coffee is full of caffeine and sugar and if nothing else works, it solves a lot of problems and we would knock down some cuban coffee and go back and keep negotiating. That gives me hope and optimism that we could get this done.
▶ 0:37:56I think the country will be shocked if they see congress get something done. I want to thank the witnesses for being here. We have a job to do.
▶ 0:38:06Sen. Cantwell: Thank you for that coffee. I'm from seattle. That is a way to get us going. I want to thank the witnesses especially for being here. Your thoughts and wisdom will be much appreciated. My colleagues probably know there are 25 things senator cruz and that I don't agree on. That is just in this committee.
▶ 0:38:36Sen. Cantwell: Saying that it is an accomplishment is saying something. We agree college athletics are in crisis and we agree the system is broken and unsustainable. Universities, athletes, fans are pleading with us to do something about this issue. Schools are cutting women's and olympic programs and dropping scholarships.
▶ 0:39:05Sen. Cantwell: We have a poster out here that shows that. You racing roster slots to keep pace with out-of-control spending in football and basketball. As coach sabin says, this has turned to pay for play. We cannot have pay for play system and continue to cut this many women and olympic athletes in various programs.
▶ 0:39:34Sen. Cantwell: Just since 2023 over 100 programs and 1000 athletic scholarships and rosters in women and olympic sports have been eliminated. It is going to get worse. In april, the university of arkansas and st. Louis both announced they would cut the women's and men's tennis team.
▶ 0:39:58Sen. Cantwell: Kansas, colorado, rutgers, washington state, beloved institutions with strong alumni bases and storied histories are getting hollowed out. Even if the universities are not cutting sports programs, they are taxing students who are not athletes and taking money out of their general funds to cover ballooning athletic program deficit.
▶ 0:40:23Sen. Cantwell: James madison now charges every student an extra $2400 per year for athletics whether or not they ever step on a field. What once felt like a shared national pastime has become a free-for-all with few guardrails, players and coaches constantly moving and schools struggling to keep pace.
▶ 0:40:47Sen. Cantwell: As coach sabin notes in his testimony, I thank you for emphasizing women and olympic athletes. I appreciate that coming from a football coach. The whole ecosystem is important. Coach saban says we will lose scholarships, olympic pipelines, chances for young people whose lives are changed by college sports.
▶ 0:41:15Sen. Cantwell: The pay for play and takes and this failed system are putting our future olympic athletes and future women sports participants at risk. When you ask the american public in a poll about this, it is not football that rises to the top. Only 54% say they really care about football. 87% say the most important thing they worry about is women and olympic sports.
▶ 0:41:47Sen. Cantwell: They understand how unique they are and how threatened they are by a system that cuts even one dollar from where we are investing today. Clearly both of these things, women and olympic sports need larger investments than we are doing today. Other countries like china and russia do this through dedicated programs and facilities. We rely on our college system instead to help train the best.
▶ 0:42:18Sen. Cantwell: Three out of four members of the 2024 olympic team in paris were current or former college athletes. It was the women olympians who took home the majority of the gold as notre dame athletic director who is here with us today said if we continue to go down this path of no legislative action, olympic and women sports around the united states will be at risk this year and years to
▶ 0:42:49Sen. Cantwell: Come. I believe the failure of us to act here will make us responsible for the outcome of future olympic teams if we don't come up with a solution. As my colleague, senator cruz said none of this is inevitable. We can and should put better rules that keep our institutions strong. That is what the college sport act does.
▶ 0:43:17Sen. Cantwell: It protects college athletes rights to be paid name, image, likeness and emphasizes revenue-sharing. It replaces the patchwork of weak state laws with strong federal laws and make sure an athlete cannot lose a scholarship because of an injury or a bad season.
▶ 0:43:39Sen. Cantwell: It requires division I schools to guarantee those scholarships even after they have graduated to make sure they complete that so they could complete their college education. It requires division I schools to have medical care while athletes play. We create a $60 million trust fund for athletes with long-term conditions like cte. That is landmark investment.
▶ 0:44:05Sen. Cantwell: Make sure it is independent so coaches could never overrule a doctor and ensures whistleblowers cannot be retaliated against. It puts real rules on unscrupulous agents exploiting our youngest athletes at the high school level. It does this by making sure they cap their fees and making sure they are registered in their states.
▶ 0:44:30Sen. Cantwell: It also ensures the ncaa and conferences cannot provide women with unequal facilities meaning travel, meals, women get to be treated equally as the men's team. If they are violated the athletes could have their day in court. It also gives institutions away to raise more money without having to raid endowments or new fees.
▶ 0:44:57Sen. Cantwell: I believe and I hope that they will emphasize on this today we cannot lose the innovation race with china because we are cutting university rnd and putting it in to sports and stead. These institutions have very important roles for our nation right now. Any school that chooses can pool its media rights and negotiate with them similar to what the nfl and nba due today.
▶ 0:45:28Sen. Cantwell: It lets them build smarter schedules or regional rivals could play closer to home. It requires every football or basketball game be required for fees -- free viewing in the home market. Every one of my colleagues will want to go home and talk about this. We are not letting content be put behind a pay wall so you can only access your favorite team if you buy a subscription. It brings in real revenue.
▶ 0:45:58Sen. Cantwell: Experts believe this could bring in an additional $408 billion. Money we would like to dedicate to women and olympic sports. The solution is to grow the pie, not shrink it. Senator o and I wrote the equal pay act now the law of the web that requires women representing this country received the same pay, medical care and travel expenses as men.
▶ 0:46:28Sen. Cantwell: It carries the same principle. We all remember the women's ncaa basketball players given a single rack of dumbbells while they were playing in a championship tournament and the men had a full weight room. This cannot be the standard. Mr. chairman, I want to thank you for the hard work this legislation represents. Many athletes have been hurt by us not having this legislation.
▶ 0:46:58Sen. Cantwell: As I mentioned, athletes who failed to get a scholarship or a team that did not stick up for them when they were hurt or should not be playing or someone whose program got canceled and then tried to go play golf at another school only to be told they could not play. This bill puts real athletes rights into federal law and I hope we could make it the law of the land very soon.
▶ 0:47:25Chair Cruz: I ask unanimous consent to admit the posters into the record and I will now introduce our witnesses. Our first witness is coach nick saban, in a hearing on college sports, it is hard to find someone that needs no introduction.
▶ 0:47:46Chair Cruz: Formerly the head coach of the university of alabama, a team under his leadership that was so good it was frustrating every team in the country, certainly frustrating every texas team. Throughout his career his team won a ridiculous seven national championships. One with lsu and six with alabama.
▶ 0:48:08Chair Cruz: 49 of his players went on to become first round draft picks in the nfl, even more importantly at the university of alabama under his leadership his players earned 656 college degrees.
▶ 0:48:27Chair Cruz: Our second witness, someone who has become a friend over time, people of aqua -- pete bevacqua, I will ask him not to break into the notre dame fight song as he does the introduction. >> thank you and welcome to our witnesses. Very few leaders are as familiar with the intersection of athletics and business as pete. It is a privilege to introduce him.
▶ 0:48:56Chair Cruz: Pete has been the athletic director for notre dame since 2024. This is not his first go around at the university. He is a fighting irish alum. He was a walk on punter for the legendary lou holtz.
▶ 0:49:15Chair Cruz: He arrived for his second stent with the and great success in sports business serving as chair of nbc sports, the pga of america in the first managing director of the U.S. open championship. He was global head of golf at the premier talent and sports agency in the world.
▶ 0:49:40Chair Cruz: Sports business journal named him one of the 125 most influential sports executives of the last 25 years. He and I have had productive conversations about the future of collegiate sports. We will continue those conversations and his experience will be instructive to all of us. Thank you for being here and contributing to this important conversation today.
▶ 0:50:07Chair Cruz: We will now turn it to our colleagues from west virginia to introduce our third witness.
▶ 0:50:16Sen. Cassidy: No -- Sen. capito: we have two great west virginians on the panel. One honorary and one born and raised. Thank you both for being here.
▶ 0:50:33Sen. Cassidy: I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to introduce a champion for college athletics who has made a profound impact on my state's trademark land grant west virginia in the university. -- west virginia university. Born in utah and attended the university of you top. He is a born-again west virginian.
▶ 0:50:58Sen. Cassidy: Having served twice as president and he always wears his signature gold and blue bow ties. He has experience having served as president of five different universities throughout his career, university of colorado, the ohio state university twice, bryant university, vanderbilt university. He has also signed more college diplomas than anybody else in the history of this country.
▶ 0:51:27Sen. Cassidy: A long list of academic accomplishments and achievements that he took into retirement last summer. We are here to talk about a topic that remain central to his focus and identity, that is college athletics. He has been quick to recognize on-field success translates to the overall well-being and health of an institution. Athletics is the from porch of the university. Where people look at us and decide whether or not they want to walk through that front door.
▶ 0:52:00Sen. Cassidy: He has served as representative to the college football playoff board of managers as well as chair of the board of directors executive committee. As he navigates through the challenges and complexities of covid-19 pandemic he was a leading voice in maintaining the 2020 college football season would go on. Saying that west virginia university will be playing football even if I have to suit about myself.
▶ 0:52:28Sen. Cassidy: Gordon's vast experience in this field will enhance the perspective as we discussed ways to protect college sports and support our athletes. He is battle tested and understands doctors have jeopardized the future of college athletics. In a recent op-ed gordon noted that when it comes to the current state of college athletics there is so much at stake.
▶ 0:52:56Sen. Cassidy: The future of the olympics, women sports, the opportunity for young people to earn a scholarship and compete for something greater than himself to become tomorrow's leaders. I look forward to hearing from him about how he could preserve this aspect of society. I thank him for his friendship.
▶ 0:53:17Chair Cruz: I think my friend. In defense of our witness I will note he may not be big but I'm confident he's really quick. Our next witness is teresa gold, commissioner of the pac 12. She has sought to build upon the 100 year legacy of the pac 12. By launching in 2026.
▶ 0:53:50Chair Cruz: Uc davis, uc berkeley, the west coast conference, in the midwestern collegiate conference. He is a student athlete, welcome playing defensive end for the utah utes football team. He played football for the university of washington before transferring to utah in 2024. You are recognized for your opening statement. Could you make sure to turn your microphone on?
▶ 0:54:22Coach Saban: I didn't sleep much last night thinking about this testimony. Ranking member cantwell, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. I want everybody here to know that I'm not here to represent a conference or team but to preserve college athletics as a whole.
▶ 0:54:46Coach Saban: I think we all have to ask ourselves a question, what is our guiding principle for the future of college athletics including olympic, women's, nonrevenue sports. I spent my adult life in college athletics. I have seen young people need structure, discipline, coaching, academic support, need accountability.
▶ 0:55:12Coach Saban: I have seen them have a degree, career, a family to be successful in life. It makes it more and more difficult to do these things. We moved away from development to focusing on money and not life skills.
▶ 0:55:32Coach Saban: To put this in perspective, if you had the baddest for our you could ever have and it was going 150 miles per hour towards the grand canyon, somebody needs to tap the brakes. That is what we all need to do. I will go a little bit away from my testimony and give you some examples. Things people may not know happening in college football that are huge problems.
▶ 0:55:59Coach Saban: I think student athletes should profit from name, image, likeness as long as they are authentic endorsements. They create branding for themselves, they signed with a company, do promotions. I think these things are all healthy for their education as well as quality of life. I think name, image, likeness has become pay for play.
▶ 0:56:24Coach Saban: I said when a school I'm not going to mention who didn't do anything wrong had what was called a collective. A collective is an organization that raises money basically from alumni to be able to pay players and disguise it as marketing opportunities. The first school that did that, I said is this what we want college football to become? I got really criticized.
▶ 0:56:56Coach Saban: It has become that. It has become pay for play. We extended the opportunities to funnel money from operations which come to the universities as marketing opportunities from the university standpoint to funnel that money out of operations it into paying players. If you take that $20 million, they could fund five or six olympic and women's sports.
▶ 0:57:26Coach Saban: These are things who need to be addressed. They take a big step forward. This bill also creates a competitive balance. Major league baseball, the nfl, nba, they all have some kind of rules that govern how they compete.
▶ 0:57:50Coach Saban: It creates parity, it creates something that gives you the opportunity to have a framework to build a fairplay system which I think is really important. Right now in college football we have no rules. We have state laws, different in every state, litigation. The ncaa cannot enforce their own rules because every time they try they lost it.
▶ 0:58:21Coach Saban: An example would be ole miss quarterback, they say he cannot play next year, he's playing next year because of litigation. This is just the way it is. The arms race, who spends the most. It is a race to the bottom because if you don't spend to win you lose your fan base and you don't have any revenue. How do you manage the other sports?
▶ 0:58:48Coach Saban: The one thing I think this bill does, sort of enhance the enforcement of a house settlement, which to me as a start that sort of creates a revenue share kind of cap and also controls some of the name, image, likeness things that this bill tries to control. I think transferring is a good thing. I don't think a player should be trapped in a bad situation.
▶ 0:59:18Coach Saban: I think multiple transfers have a negative effect. I think there could be legitimate circumstances where you could transfer more than once. If you graduate you should be able to transfer again. You could have a 50 year where you could have more success someplace else. Unlimited transfers creates free agency. Free agency with a collective, now you are talking about a bidding war for players.
▶ 0:59:45Coach Saban: You have agents that are not certified, that are enhancing players or encouraging players to get in the portal, I could get you more money. Now you have this unbelievable number of players that get in the portal every year and we have nothing but control agents to control tampering. Clemson had a player on campus a whole week and they came and got him off the campus and took him someplace else.
▶ 1:00:14Coach Saban: These kinds of things going on in college football are not what any of us signed up for relative to the education that we all tried to represent. What is the cause and effect of transferring? I think every time you transfer you have less and less of an opportunity to graduate. This hits home for me because I coached 50 years ago when people did not graduate.
▶ 1:00:44Coach Saban: We saw 30 for 30 on what happen. I'm proud that we had 668 or whatever the number is graduates at alabama over 17 years. We need to get back to that kind of atmosphere in college athletics. We had players transfer that were in business.
▶ 1:01:14Coach Saban: They couldn't get business school so they got in general studies so they could be eligible. They minimize the importance of their degree because they transferred. Also could they graduate. You have guys transferring, playing seven or eight years of college football, which is ridiculous. We had 50 players in the draft that were over 25 years old competing against 17 and 18-year-olds.
▶ 1:01:44Coach Saban: Because we have no structure in terms of what is eligibility? The eligibility rule is a really good thing. I think we should protect prep schools. They should still have five years after that. Defining who is a pro, and I know a guy that came from the g league, that is a pro. There are guys from europe that are not under the same rules and regulations.
▶ 1:02:13Coach Saban: All of those things need to be controlled. The collective, what if we invested more and more in football and basketball. My first year we had a collective at alabama, $2.7 million. Next year $17 million, the next year, $24 million. You have close to $40 million rosters.
▶ 1:02:40Coach Saban: As we continue to do that we will lose olympic sports, nonrevenue sports, scholarships, basically what will happen is we will have football and basketball succeed in club sports for everything else. That is horrible. We can't let that happen. We have to continue to figure out ways to raise revenue so we can keep all sports and all opportunities for young people intact.
▶ 1:03:08Coach Saban: We have to protect scholarships, injury, roster decisions, athletic performance should not be reasons to get rid of a player. What we created now with the portal which we think is a good thing, all a coach has to say to a player is get in the portal, I don't want you on the team. Maybe he doesn't get an opportunity. 30% of people who get in the portal don't get the opportunity.
▶ 1:03:37Coach Saban: It minimizes because everybody recruits out of the portal up how many young people get the opportunity to get a scholarship to play college football. I think it is something really important. Congress does not need to micromanage college athletics.
▶ 1:03:59Coach Saban: Congress does need to fix the mess in the courts create a national framework so people inside college sports could enforce fair rules. Every role becomes another lawsuit. Every standard becomes another risk and the system keeps drifting towards the professional model. We want to compensate athletes fairly and still preserves the development, competition opportunity and tradition.
▶ 1:04:29Coach Saban: That is what this bill is trying to do. I'm sure many adjustments need to be made. I'm sure there is a lot of people who could add to that. This is a serious, bipartisan effort to bring order to a system that badly needs fixing. I don't think this is bipartisan. I think this should be nonpartisan. It is that important in terms of the future for young people.
▶ 1:04:59Coach Saban: It protects athletes, opportunity, competitive balance. It protects the sport that do not always generate revenue but still matter. It gives college athletes the chance to move forward with rules that are clear and enforceable. For these reasons I support the protect college sports act and urge congress to act. Thank you.
▶ 1:05:23Chair Cruz: Thank you.
▶ 1:05:28Mr. Bevacqua: It is an honor to be here with my fellow witnesses to represent notre dame. I also want to thank senator young for a very nice introduction and everything he does for our stay in indiana and notre dame. This is a major milestone to have this bipartisan support to do something for college sports.
▶ 1:05:56Mr. Bevacqua: I think this bill is an enormous step in the right direction. We have to act now. There is a tremendous sense of urgency. Women's and olympic sports will be deemphasized or cut as you showed. We need to act now to protect athletic departments. We need to act now to make sure the student athlete experience and these are student athletes, they are not just athletes.
▶ 1:06:27Mr. Bevacqua: That it is preserved and maintained and reinforced around the country. We need sand in and stored to the transfer portal. To what it means to be a college student athlete around eligibility. I love the fact that we are talking about protecting scholarships. That we are talking about extending medical insurance. Some real regulation around agents that are out there representing these young men and women.
▶ 1:06:57Mr. Bevacqua: The concept of a cap emanating from a house settlement is a fallacy. It is an equation. It is x plus y equals e. X being the cap dollars, why being nil being littered with abuse and uncertainty. The more money that could come from the cap will go a long way.
▶ 1:07:24Mr. Bevacqua: At notre dame, our northstar and the athletic department is preserving that student athlete experience. We spend so much time in this country talking about the superstars. The jeremiah love, hannah hidalgo, caitlin clark, cooper flag.
▶ 1:07:45Mr. Bevacqua: There will be thousands of stories of young men and women, particularly in football and men's and women's basketball that bounce around to three or four schools. When you are going to three or four schools the educational aspect becomes a total farce.
▶ 1:08:04Mr. Bevacqua: Maybe they are earning money along the way and at a young age you feel that money will cure all of your monetary woes, these are not the type of kids that have the talent to make it in the nfl, nba, wnba. You have thousands of cases that are finishing their college journey without a college degree . With money fleeting so by the time they are 25 they have torn through that money.
▶ 1:08:33Mr. Bevacqua: It is kind of like good luck with the rest of your life. Your four years at notre dame, at any university, whether it is the university of alabama, west virginia, universities in the pack 12, that is who owes student athletes the skills, student athlete, to make it in life. I applaud this bipartisan effort. Coach sabin said it is not perfect.
▶ 1:09:05Mr. Bevacqua: It is tremendous progress. If we don't act now I fear for the future of college sports. We need a realistic clap -- cap. If we have these continuing runaway roster fees primarily around football and men's basketball I think there will be two inevitable outcomes. You will have a super league.
▶ 1:09:29Mr. Bevacqua: There's only a small number of universities waking up saying we could still invest this type of money to field a nationally competitive football team. I don't think a super league is good for college football and I don't think it is good for college sports. I think we have all said it. Even the strongest universities, the healthiest universities, if you continue to have these runaway roster fees.
▶ 1:09:57Mr. Bevacqua: If you continue to have a failed house settlement with a cap that is not realistic and a continued motivation that moves into that gray space of third-party and il -- nil you will see the continuation of the slide that you put up. That will be a very sad day.
▶ 1:10:22Mr. Bevacqua: An unbelievably negative thing taking away all of those amazing opportunities for hundreds of thousands of young men and women who get their life started in a great direction by participating as a student athlete. I thank you for the efforts you have made so far. I thank you for this bipartisan bill that you put there. I know you want to work with all of us and leaders in the college space to get this bill and as good of shape as possible.
▶ 1:10:51Mr. Bevacqua: I think it's a wonderful step in the right direction.
▶ 1:10:53Chair Cruz: Thank you. >> thank you very much. Certainly ranking member cantwell, I am really honored to be here today. I feel a little bit out of place. I am five foot five and 140 pounds. I can hardly get out of bed in the morning. It is very difficult for me to think about hanging around with these folks.
▶ 1:11:23Chair Cruz: I am grateful to do so. I thank you, madame senator, my dear friend from west virginia who does a great job. She's just a great person. Her husband is a member of the board of governors. Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here.
▶ 1:11:44Chair Cruz: If I could just say amen to what coach sabab said and to what my good friend pete said, I will do so. Yes, I have an unstable employment pattern. I have been president at five universities for 45 years. Most of the time I have left voluntarily. A couple of times I left just ahead of the sheriff.
▶ 1:12:14Chair Cruz: Sometimes that happens in politics. >> I must just say woodrow wilson lets the presidency of princeton to become the governor of new jersey. That is why he left princeton. He said he wanted to get out of politics. I think we are in the same business.
▶ 1:12:41Chair Cruz: During that time I have been privileged to serve these great universities. I have been privileged to serve the people in the states in which I find myself. These are wonderful people who care deeply about their institutions and care deeply about the opportunities for young people. I get so much joy from fulfilling those expectations. I do have my name on about half a million diplomas.
▶ 1:13:12Chair Cruz: I was in the hotel today writing down a guy said I was at vanderbilt with you. He was about 6'10". He was a football player. He's now working for goldman sachs. He said without that football opportunity at vanderbilt he would have been distressed. I thought that was really driving the point home today.
▶ 1:13:46Chair Cruz: I have chaired the big ten conference, the big 12, the ivy league. That was the most difficult I might add. I have been heavily involved in the college football playoff. All of this is just to say I have seen it. I have experienced it. I do believe there is an existential crisis in college athletics.
▶ 1:14:14Chair Cruz: You are lookingyou are looking r boy for some of those problems. President and chancellors are not free from blame but certainly having been at this for a long time, I am probably at the head of that pack. We have agreed to outrageous salary contracts, reduced the admission of a student athlete, and negated too much power to conference commissioners. Some, by the way, who seem more aligned with media companies than their own universities.
▶ 1:14:44Chair Cruz: The end result is we now have an unsustainable system. As the coach said, as pete said, we have an unsustainable system unless we take bold action. It is that simple. The ncaa and conferences lost in the courts because we failed to allow student athletes to funk and as true students with talents who earned the rights to monetize those talents. So saying that, I can hear the chorus now.
▶ 1:15:09Chair Cruz: There are people out there in the back saying morale, this is -- saying, well, this is just a fuzzy headed at fuzzy headed academic. I plead not guilty, and the reason for that is I fully understand the power of college athletics and its impact on university. For example, I have yet to be able to persuade 110,000 people to show up for a chemistry lecture.
▶ 1:15:38Chair Cruz: Athletics -- I also point out that coach, to me, it was my budget running up and down the field. I had to keep track of that too. But athletics play an incredibly important part of the culture and spirit of universities. It is absolutely unmatched. What both of you said, but what you said, senator, is so true. I have traveled the world. I have been to so many different institutions around the world.
▶ 1:16:08Chair Cruz: This is a unique part of the american culture. And it really is so unique that no one has been able to replicate it. This legislation solves the governance crisis in college sports with sensible consensus rules, which balance and respect both long-term stability and student athletic rights. It also solves the financial crisis, which there is a huge financial crisis. Not only caused by athletics, but we have a substantial financial crisis among universities in this country.
▶ 1:16:36Chair Cruz: If we don't address it as part of that overall structure, we are going to have considerable problems in terms of just sustaining our education system. Let me give you an example. College sports will lose over $5 billion this year alone. Think about that. The system must capture the billions in media revenue that colored sports leaves on the table each year. College football already has twice the viewership of the nba but half the media revenue.
▶ 1:17:06Chair Cruz: Now that just seems to be unsustainable. It is something we cannot really be able to even understand. So I know that firsthand from my time in the conferences, etc., that this is a serious problem. This bill provides the option to pool our rights where the conferences and schools decide.
▶ 1:17:31Chair Cruz: This is optional, whether to sell the rights together, but the very fact that we have addressed this is enormously important. With this legislation, we bring common sense to a very intractable problem. And I am grateful that this is bipartisan. And I love what the coach said. It should be nonpartisan. College athletics should be nonpartisan. It should be about joy, achievements, and a variety of other things.
▶ 1:18:01Chair Cruz: So making sure there are sufficient resources to support sports is incredible. Senator cantwell and I talked about that so many times. I feel strongly about that. Today we have an opportunity. And I believe that window will close quickly. And there are those who don't want that window to remain open. We have to run through it. And I have some pretty good fullbacks here, including my guy right here who said he would be my fullback too, right?
▶ 1:18:31Chair Cruz: As a matter of fact. Thank you very much, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:18:34Chair Cruz: He is a defensive end so he is used to tackling.
▶ 1:18:38Mr. Gee: I know.
▶ 1:18:40Chair Cruz: Miss gould, you are recognized for your opening statement.
▶ 1:18:44Commissioner Gould: Good morning members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to share my perspective on your vital work regarding colored sports. An industry I have proudly served for more than 36 years. While college sports is now a massive business, its core purpose remains unchanged despite recent seismic shifts.
▶ 1:19:12Commissioner Gould: College athletics has always offered and continues to offer transformational opportunities for young people while serving as an anchor for alumni and communities nationwide to connect to the institutions they love. A cornerstone of american life that is uniquely ours. Today, however, a combination of both internal and external pressures has brought us to a concerning crossroads.
▶ 1:19:39Commissioner Gould: Without immediate intervention, we risk significant damage to our colleges and universities and even more importantly to the student athletes who are caught in the middle. Yet despite the challenges facing the current system, college athletics continues to thrive. Expanding its audience, producing future olympians and leaders, and delivering meaningful value to higher education.
▶ 1:20:06Commissioner Gould: Like much of college athletics, the pack 12 has faced unprecedented disruptions. Yet through periods of adversity, we have remained relentless, creative, resilient, and willing to challenge convention.
▶ 1:20:22Commissioner Gould: From securing national representation in governance at both the ncaa and conference level, securing student athlete benefits, providing national exposure for women's sports, the pac-12 has consistently challenged the status quo and remains committed to meaningful reform through this process. All of the challenges facing colored sports cannot beef fixed in a single bill. There are just too many complexities.
▶ 1:20:53Commissioner Gould: Yet we must act immediately on the most pressing needs that are in front of us. Codifying critical student athlete benefits and protections, providing a limited antitrust safe harbor, enforcing the house settlement as originally agreed upon and intended, ensuring that the implementation remains true to that intent, establishing strict safeguards against bad actor agents who prey on our student
▶ 1:21:25Commissioner Gould: Athletes, and creating new mechanisms including pooled media rights to generate incremental revenue to help preserve women and olympic sports and two from the growing costs of our model. These items all included in the protect colored sports act will help secure our model of future generations can pursue the same impactful experience our country and the pac-12 conference I represent has provided for more than a
▶ 1:21:55Commissioner Gould: Century. Because many important issues cannot be resolved this year, the proposed commission provides the framework to evaluate the complex changes that require more time and broader collaboration. Leadership of this effort must come from a diverse balanced body that includes student athletes, represents the broad-spectrum of division I membership, and is grounded in both accountability and transparency.
▶ 1:22:26Commissioner Gould: Our future model must encourage fair opportunities for all institutions to invest in student athletes, ensuring reasonable access to the very highest levels of competition. Every program and every student athlete deserves a world where they have a fair shot. Through the commission framework, we must honestly engage in a conversation around student athlete employment status and collective bargaining.
▶ 1:22:54Commissioner Gould: Student athletes deserve a meaningful voice in decisions that affect them, and our future model must reflect that partnership. It should recognize the diverse perspectives and aspirations of all student athletes, from those in revenue-generating sports with significant economic upside to those in on the impact and women's sports who may be seeking a different collegiate experience. They all matter and they all deserve a voice.
▶ 1:23:25Commissioner Gould: The commission should evaluate innovative structures for the future that reduce travel limit time away from campus, and support student athlete well-being while preserving competitive opportunities. And any future governance model also represent the diverse realities of 300 plus very differently situated division I institutions. The clock is ticking.
▶ 1:23:49Commissioner Gould: We must act now to modernize our system and address the complex challenges facing college sports. While no solution is perfect, we have a pivotal opportunity to make meaningful progress. Doing nothing is simply not an option. The pac-12 is committed to being part of the solution.
▶ 1:24:09Commissioner Gould: If we come together at this critical moment, we can protect the traditions we love while recognizing the rights, offering the experiences, and delivering the protections that our student athletes truly deserve. Thank you.
▶ 1:24:22Chair Cruz: Thank you, miss gould. Mr. holtzclaw, you are recognized for your opening statement.
▶ 1:24:29Mr. Holtzclaw: Thank you to chairman cruz, ranking member cantwell, and all distinguished members of the committee. I thank you again for this opportunity to appear before you today, available to me through being in college athletics.
▶ 1:24:43Mr. Holtzclaw: Introducing myself to you all as I am probably the least recognizable space on this witness tampering I am this witness tamper base.my jouy this people begin in my hometown in massachusetts but during my sophomore year of high school, I moved to mesa, arizona.
▶ 1:25:09Mr. Holtzclaw: Sports have become a major part of my life at an early age and have helped teach me discipline, resilience, accountability, teamwork, and what true brotherhood looks like. I have dreamed of competing at the collegiate level while pursuing an education that would prepare me for life after sports. Also, I would like to thank my parents, whose unwavering support, guidance, and sacrifices made my journey possible. At high school, I was recruited during the covid-19 pandemic.
▶ 1:25:40Mr. Holtzclaw: Recruiting was limited. Evaluation periods were limited. Many of us were forced to make life-changing decisions that no others had experienced. Following high school, I attended the university of washington where I begin my comment career. During that team, our team captured the final pac-12 championship, went on to win the sugar bowl and advanced to the national championship game.
▶ 1:26:07Mr. Holtzclaw: I then transferred to the university of utah, where I earned my degree in sociology, and still have one season of eligibility remaining. Throughout my college career, I have experienced college athletics across the pac-12, big ten, and big 12 conferences, giving me a first-hand view of how conference realignment has shaped the student athlete experience. I want to thank the committee for the importance of including student athletes in this conversation about the future of college sports.
▶ 1:26:35Mr. Holtzclaw: While I may not have the title x experience of others testifying today, I bring the perspective of a student athlete living through these changes in real-time. I have experienced the impact of n.I.l., the transfer portal, conference realignment, evolving eligibility rules, and the many changes shaping college athletics.
▶ 1:26:56Mr. Holtzclaw: These are often discussed through policy, governance, and politics, but behind every decision are real student balancing academics, athletics, personal development, and preparation for life. That is why student athlete wishes must remain a part of these conversations. Decisions about college athletics should not be made solely for student athletes but with student athletes. College athletics provided me with incredible opportunities, relationships, and experiences that have helped me elevate my life in tremendous ways.
▶ 1:27:27Mr. Holtzclaw: I believe strongly in preserving these opportunities for future generations while continuing to improve a system that serves the student athletes at its center. Again, I thank you all for the opportunity to be here today, and I am honored to represent the student athlete community, and I look forward to sharing my perspective with the committee.
▶ 1:27:43Chair Cruz: Thank you very much. I appreciate each of the witnesses being here this morning and appreciate your testimony. I think we have heard broad agreement from very different perspectives that college sports is in crisis. Driven by chaos, court cases, and evasion of rules. If this continues, we will be left with 30 to 50 teams and essentially a mini nfl.
▶ 1:28:12Chair Cruz: And the victims will be the fans who see their favorite teams, storied teams and programs disappear. And hundreds of thousands of student athletes who will lose scholarship opportunities. Some might disagree. I will say I have been gratified since we introduced this bill last week. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. But there have been some critics who say they don't want congress involved.
▶ 1:28:44Chair Cruz: They think things are fine. They think the powers that be can fix whatever ails college sports. And if you want the status quo, if you think college sports can fix itself, then you need to defend the alternatives to passage of this bill.the house of representatives tried multiple times to pass a bill. Unfortunately, it failed repeatedly. The protect college sports act is the only bipartisan bill out there.
▶ 1:29:13Chair Cruz: It is the last best hope we have two save college sports. So my first question to the panel is, what happens if we do nothing? There is a lot of expertise on this witness panel. Help us look into the future.
▶ 1:29:35Chair Cruz: If congress fails to act, if we get locked up in partisan gridlock and yell at each other, which sadly we are good at, what happens to college sports 3, 4, 5 years from now? And I opened it up to anyone who wants to enter.
▶ 1:29:52Mr. Gee: Senator, I will start by simply saying by looking at the trends going on, if we think about the micro trends, which are higher education itself, higher education has lost the trust of the american people in many ways. Not as many students are going into universities.
▶ 1:30:14Mr. Gee: We have a demographic cliff with all of these issues on the macro level and all of the issues concerning that our research is really what sustains us in terms of competition at an international level.
▶ 1:30:33Mr. Gee: Without solving this problem, many of those issues are going to be also at large because athletics represent such an important way for us to tell our story. I don't think of athletics as being simply games being played.
▶ 1:30:50Mr. Gee: I do enjoy them, but I think about it in a way for a university to tell its story about the quality of its institution, about its research, about an students, about the things going on and at the moment the chaos will simply prevent all of that from happening. It will be a significant blow to the higher education system, let alone to college athletics.
▶ 1:31:15Mr. Bevacqua: I would add, and I certainly agree with gordon, if it continues to go down this path, as I like to reference a financial train, like everybody up here, we adamantly believe that student athletes ought to be compensated and should have legitimate n.I.l. Compensation, of course. But you are going to see certain schools invest may be almost singularly in certain sports.
▶ 1:31:41Mr. Bevacqua: If you take football, for instance, no matter what if you continue to have all of your resources pulled into football with escalating roster fees and not knowing where that ends, I believe the inevitable outcome is just going to be a small handful of schools that will differentiate themselves from others and play football at a super league level. I don't think it is good for college football to be a mini nfl. That is not what college football is about.
▶ 1:32:12Mr. Bevacqua: I think it would look far more like a jv professional league. This certain schools will all of their resources into football or men's basketball or women's basketball, what I said in my opening has to happen, even at very well-positioned schools. You are going to have to deemphasize olympic sports and women's sports.
▶ 1:32:34Mr. Bevacqua: We have to kind of right this road, put some regulations around it, restore some sanity to preserve the student athlete experience, and make sure we can chart a healthy sustainable future.
▶ 1:32:47Chair Cruz: You talk about the virtues of college athletics. As you know, I had the great joy of going to notre dame last year for the a and m and notre dame game. You did come to college station and whipped them the year before, but I will say seeing touchdown jesus, and was a bucket list.
▶ 1:33:10Chair Cruz: And the culture at notre dame and alabama and so many schools is incredible. Your institution does have one of the iconic sports movies to ever be made, "rudy," which is not about an nfl player. It is not about a guy that is an all-time great. It is about someone with heart that can through sports achieve something extraordinary. Miss gould, the pac-12 has had a tough few years.
▶ 1:33:45Chair Cruz: What did the pac-12 learn about conference realignment and the greater college sports ecosystem from your experience leading the pac-12 during what has been a very turbulent time?
▶ 1:33:58Commissioner Gould: Thank you for the question. It has been a challenging few years, but we are launching a new league on july 1 and are really excited about that on behalf of our student athletes. Look, I think in part what I learned, and lance mentioned this in his testimony, was what can happen when you don't keep the well-being of student athletes at the center of your decisions.
▶ 1:34:25Commissioner Gould: And what has transpired not just with the pac-12 but across a lot of conference realignment and a lot of change that has happened in our system is the well-being of student athletes is no longer at the center because of the economic pressures that we are dealing with. We now have olympic student athletes traveling coast-to-coast for contests.
▶ 1:34:49Commissioner Gould: We have student athletes that never show up at an in person class on their campus anymore and are completely missing out on campus life. So I think for me, when I look back on all of it and how everything transpired, I think we need to make sure that we always remember we are here to serve and that the decisions we make, while there are business ramifications, are decisions about the lives of the young people on our campuses.
▶ 1:35:18Chair Cruz: Thank you. Ranking member cantwell.
▶ 1:35:20Sen. Cantwell: Thank you, Mr. chairman. I want to start with you, Mr. holtzclaw. I know you are no longer a husky, but thank you for the championship game and season in 2024. I think you told my staff one of the reasons why you transferred if you had three different coaches in three years. Is that right?
▶ 1:35:40Mr. Holtzclaw: Yes, that is correct.
▶ 1:35:42Sen. Cantwell: I think miss gould just said the effect on students, people do not realize in this arms race of money and coaches transferring, the students, how can you learn any system or coach or synchronicity if you have three different coaches in three years?
▶ 1:36:01Mr. Holtzclaw: Well, like you said, it is definitely a difficult task. I would like to explain a little bit. My first year, I got recruited by one coaching staff, and when I got there, that coaching staff is no longer there. Coaching staff comes in. Lead with that staff, and a new staff comes in after that. I then transfer, have another staff there, one year there. Another staff leaves.
▶ 1:36:29Mr. Holtzclaw: So again, it just ties back into people staying and leaving and kind of the leadership portion that is really important when it comes to the team. That leadership portion is so important. It drives the team. It keeps the team together. It holds them tight together and creates that real family bond that comes in when you are playing college athletics.
▶ 1:36:51Mr. Holtzclaw: It is extremely important to how the careers of these young men and women go out and how they are developed in their time in college athletics. There is so much that goes on with life development, college education, life experiences, and I feel like the leadership portion being strong in a system and program is extremely important. So when pieces move around a lot, it can alter that sometimes.
▶ 1:37:17Sen. Cantwell: It seems to me this is one of the centerpieces we are losing. I think all of us up here believe in competition, real competition. But I think we love the fact that college athletics has put so much focus on developing teams who are successful because they build a team and not because they have a billionaire in their back pocket. And I think that is what we are facing here right now. Are we going to create some rules here that puts people on some level of equity and parity?
▶ 1:37:45Sen. Cantwell: I want to bring this up with you, miss gould, because you have been very polite about this. The bottom line is wsu had a $35 billion hole blown in their college budget. Basically, that is the revenue taken out of the pac-12. I think the reason why senator cruz and I have a letter from the big ten and the big 12 and the acc is because they think that that is what is going to happen to them next.
▶ 1:38:11Sen. Cantwell: That somebody is going to come in and rearrange the deck chairs of those conferences, steal the eyeball schools, and basically leave everybody with everything else. I believe in the rivalry of the pac-12. I believe in the historic rose ball competitions and the unbelievable rivalries between all of the west coast schools, and it has been phenomenal, but now wsu instead of having a $35 million media budget has I think a $10 million or $12 million
▶ 1:38:42Sen. Cantwell: Media budget. So are we just going to let this continue to be this arms race? What do you think we should do to make sure that we are saving this? For you, Mr. gee, I have a question because you were very clear about where you think the alignment is. The alignment is with the new media companies. Even though we are losing 5 billion dollars, there are people that do not want to look at an option for new revenue so I want to hear from you on that point. But miss gould?
▶ 1:39:11Commissioner Gould: I appreciate that the act has some conversations in there about what the future models should look like relative to scheduling and relative to conference alignment and relative to the future model.
▶ 1:39:27Commissioner Gould: I think we are at a crossroads where the history that we have in our industry of everybody just poaching some other league based on media rights dollars or whatever the driver might be, I think we have to take a step back and really think broadly and creatively about what the future model should look like.
▶ 1:39:45Commissioner Gould: As I referenced earlier, because it has impacts on other institutions in these states and because it has practical impacts on student athletes, I really look forward to the work that the commission will do around this and to be creative and innovative. Maybe we look at regional lysing olympic sports to try to keep student athletes at home. But now is the time for us to think about the role of conferences and what the structure looks like moving forward.
▶ 1:40:13Sen. Cantwell: Mr. gee, has the current system failed?
▶ 1:40:18Mr. Gee: Absolutely. That is the reason we are here today. We would not be having this hearing if the system was working.
▶ 1:40:25Sen. Cantwell: So what do you think on this notion of why university presidents did not understand that ad's and conferences were taking us down a different direction that was going to be so painful?
▶ 1:40:40Mr. Gee: I think that I have always said there are three rails for university presidents. One is the university, athletics, and hospitals. So many presidents want to stay somewhat distant from college athletics because there are a lot of athletics lot of athl issues that surround that.
▶ 1:41:01Sen. Cantwell: But hasn't that cost us a lot of money? It has cost us $5 billion.
▶ 1:41:06Mr. Gee: It has cost a lot of money.
▶ 1:41:09Sen. Cantwell: He wants an experience that coach saban said. That is why he coaches, because he wants to build that, and he cannot get that because he is getting a new coach every other year.
▶ 1:41:19Mr. Gee: You are absolutely right. And that is the reason I am here today. I should be playing canasta on a beach at 82 years of age. But instead, I am a convert. Having been university president for so long, I realized what we really have to do is we really have to think about universities having an obligation to each other rather than this approach we are taking. I will be very honest.
▶ 1:41:51Mr. Gee: I think we have turned over to much power to commissioners. They have a very limited notion of what it should be about. The word student is not in their lexicon where athlete is and the word money. This is an issue we have to get at. I don't mean to throw them under a bus, although I just did. What I do mean to say is the fact that I think university presidents need to take charge of this issue.
▶ 1:42:21Mr. Gee: They will. I think about my friends in the pac-12. Not in the pac-12. You are really good. I think about the big ten and the sec. I know most of those presidents. They are really smart people. They are wonderful people. Half of them worked for me. But we need to have an opportunity to really have those presidential discussions because this is so simple. We have a revenue problem.
▶ 1:42:51Mr. Gee: Either we grow the pie or you destroy everything that we are about. It is pretty simple.
▶ 1:42:56Sen. Cantwell: I don't care anything about your pie because you just packed a punch. Thank you.
▶ 1:43:02Chair Cruz: Thank you. I will now recognize my friend and partner in this bill, senator schmitt, who I will note is the single best baseball player in the U.S. senate. Although, to be fair, the senate is not a high bar.
▶ 1:43:18Sen. Schmitt: That is a lobar. It is a lobar. They be basketball too, senator cruz.
▶ 1:43:25Chair Cruz: Ok, your time has expired.
▶ 1:43:28Sen. Schmitt: Thank you. I want to thank senator cruz and senator cantwell. My journey working with both of them on the sports broadcasting act started six months ago, and I think all of you being here today letting your voice to the challenges and opportunities ahead are very important. People ask me why I have gotten so involved in this, and I have thought about it. More recently, the why.
▶ 1:43:55Sen. Schmitt: I think sports in general has provided me so many opportunities with whether it is relationship building or a sense of community. As a former college athlete myself, I think about the lessons learned about character and determination, gripped, and teamwork --grit, and teamwork. It did not matter where it came from, race, religion. That was your teammate. You had a goal. You wanted to accomplish something.
▶ 1:44:22Sen. Schmitt: There are so many great lessons to be learned in life through college athletics, and I truly believe we are on the precipice of that going away in large part, not altogether, but as you heard to gay maybe for a much more limited number of people. You certainly will not have 500,000 student athletes being able to learn those lessons every year. It will be something very different, something we have not grown accustomed to. College sports, college football in particular is such a uniquely american institution. It really is worth fighting for.
▶ 1:44:54Sen. Schmitt: It is worth preserving, but that will not happen by itself anymore. The system now as coach saban said is a ferrari going 100 miles per hour and somebody needs to tap the brakes. People asked me, why is congress getting involved in this? It is a legitimate question. If you asked me this three or five years ago, I would have said the same thing. Why in the world with the federal government have anything to do with college sports?
▶ 1:45:18Sen. Schmitt: The truth is congress is the only entity on the planet that can provide the antitrust exemption status to empower a governing body to set the rules and to enforce the rules and to have a five-year eligibility standard, to have a one-time order to time whenever the transfer portal looks like. No one else can do it. It is up to us.
▶ 1:45:40Sen. Schmitt: If we don't do it, I think if we are having a hearing two years from now, shame on us because it is going to look a lot different. It will not be better. What I heard from the testimony, the way I do this, you have two buckets. You have the governance issue and the revenue issue. The governance issue is grinning the authority to have the rules to protect student athletes, the enforcement.
▶ 1:46:06Sen. Schmitt: On the revenue side, look, the business model of college sports forever has basically been you make money on your football program and subsidize all the other nonrevenue sports, the women's sports, olympic sports. We will lose out. We will not have the same level of athletes competing in the olympics. My daughter's -- I think about the things that matter when you go back on. We are in a bubble but when you go back home, this is what people talk about.
▶ 1:46:35Sen. Schmitt: They don't talk about some cra we just voted on. They say, what is going on in college sports? They asked about aliens too to be honest. They ask about this. At my daughter's volleyball games, they ask about this. And they may not have an opportunity to play college volleyball but for women, the olympic sports, this is critical. If that model is busted, if you are losing money in your college football program, you will not be able to do those things.
▶ 1:47:06Sen. Schmitt: Or if you are spinning all of your money on your college football program, you will not be able to do those things. I love miss you -- I love mizzou. I watch other football much to my wife's dismay and into the evenings. But I want there to be an opportunity for other schools to be able to compete. You have the governance piece and the revenue side. I think it is very important. This is totally voluntary for the conferences to opt in. Nobody has to do it.
▶ 1:47:34Sen. Schmitt: I would not want the sec or big ten to do it if it did not make sense for them. This is totally voluntarily. It sets a process up and creates a lane by which conferences could pool their media rights to get a better deal. If you have like right now the nba is half the eyeballs of college football, $8 billion in revenue. College football all in is $4 billion in revenue. You can do the math and argue maybe it will be $10 billion, $12 billion but more than they have now.
▶ 1:48:04Sen. Schmitt: That is the revenue that can subsidize the nonrevenue sports for the future. There are protections in place in this legislation to do that. So I just want to have an opportunity for these universities and the student athletes to continue to participate in something that again is very american. We do so much partisan stuff here. It is like thunder domain times. You have your red jersey on and blue jersey on. This should not be one of those things. I appreciate you all being here.
▶ 1:48:33Sen. Schmitt: I wish I had time for questions but I have run out of time now. You guys have touched on a lot of issues, particularly on the collective. There are a lot of challenges that need to be fixed with the collectives. The capital and no doubt about that, there need to be safeguards there. And on the sports broadcasting, having the unified rights deals and growing the pie. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:48:59Chair Cruz: Thank you, senator. I will ask now unanimous consent to enter into the record 14 letters of support for senator cantwell's and my legislation.
▶ 1:49:11Chair Cruz: These letters consists of 130 signatures representing over 65 universities, submitted by the atlantic coast conference, the american conference, the big 12 conference, conference usa, college sports, the president's roundtable, fixing college sports, duke university, kansas state university, university of louisville, university of nebraska, syracuse university, virginia tech university, university of texas at senator tony and, university of texas at el paso, the chairman of the regions of the university of
▶ 1:49:43Chair Cruz: Texas at austin. Without objection, so ordered. Senator blunt rochester, you are recognized.
▶ 1:49:49Sen. Blunt Rochester: Thank you Mr. chairman and making memory cantwell and the panelists. I noticed a strong emphasis on heavy revenue football programs. Mr. chairman, as the committee continues its work on and continues its work on a n.I.l. Legislation, I think it is important the committee hear from experts that I representing female athletes the sports, athletes at nonrevenue generating institutions, and hbcu's like delaware state university.
▶ 1:50:20Sen. Blunt Rochester: I also want to note that I have been hearing a lot of serious concerns about the bill from student athletes and their families, labor unions, and civil-rights organizations. As the daughter of a former student athlete, my dad played basketball at winston-salem state university. He had to balance being a dad, his classes, as well as sports. He did not have to balance some of the things students have to balance today like n.I.l.
▶ 1:50:49Sen. Blunt Rochester: And transfer portals and things like that. But as the daughter of a former athlete, as a member of the congressional black caucus, a former ceo of the metropolitan wilmington urban league, and a lifelong member of the naacp, I am taking all of these concerns very seriously. My first question is to Mr. holtzclaw. I want to thank you for being here.
▶ 1:51:19Sen. Blunt Rochester: As you said, you are literally represented students of today and students of the future. Thank you for representing and also for being on a panel. You come from dorchester to the united states senate, so thank you for being before us. As I looked at this -- also thank you to your family. One of the things I heard a lot from our families are very concerned in this moment.
▶ 1:51:44Sen. Blunt Rochester: This bill places no enforcement responsibilities with the federal trade commission or state attorneys general's as I understand it. Instead, it largely leaves enforcement to student athletes themselves. Student athletes should be empowered to pursue legal options if they believe their rights were violated. I think we can all agree to that. But they cannot shoulder this burden alone. My question to you, Mr.
▶ 1:52:14Sen. Blunt Rochester: Holtzclaw, are you aware of bill allows for attorney fees and litigation costs to be awarded to the prevailing party, meaning the student athlete who sues, if they lose, they can end up on the hook for the school's legal fees? Do you think other student athletes and families are aware of this or feel prepared or supported?
▶ 1:52:37Mr. Holtzclaw: Thank you. I appreciate that. The take that I would take on this is it is a huge part of educating our student athletes and letting them know what rights and what resources they do have to use in these types of situations when they happen. I fear the issue we run into a lot of times is they don't get educated, nor understand and know the resources that they do have or the rights they have until it is too late.
▶ 1:53:06Mr. Holtzclaw: They never know where to go to, who to reach out to, or what rights they have to themselves until they have to be in those types of situations and use them. So the issue I see is we need to educate our student athletes more about what resources are available to them so they can use them and be aware of them before we even get into those situations. And then also educate our student athletes on the rights that they have before they get into these situations so they are not walking into these rooms blindly.
▶ 1:53:34Mr. Holtzclaw: And I fear that is probably our biggest issue when we come into those situations.
▶ 1:53:38Sen. Blunt Rochester: Yeah, I can totally agree. I think as a student athlete, there are already responsibilities like classes as well as other obligations. And that takes up time and attention. One of the questions really is, do you feel confident that most student athletes like yourself or your teammates have the experience or time or resources to protect themselves from these violations?
▶ 1:54:08Sen. Blunt Rochester: You mentioned it is necessary to have that education. Speaking to some of the parents who reached out to me, one parent shared that they were able to take their child to different schools, but they had to do it on their own dime. A lot of folks don't have that kind of support. Do you think the majority of student athletes that you talk to have expertise or the time to protect themselves?
▶ 1:54:31Mr. Holtzclaw: The expertise part, definitely not. That is what I speak to a lot when I say we need to educate our student athletes on again their rights and resources they have. Again, when you talk about families not having the means to be able to travel and get to all of these different prices on their own, it is definitely a very difficult situation to be in. I have experienced that on my own.
▶ 1:55:00Mr. Holtzclaw: We were limited to only a certain amount of visits that could be paid for by university. Any other school you wanted to see, you had to carry out on your own dime. In order to do that, your vision on all of these different schools and your perspective on these different universities gets limited to a very small window.
▶ 1:55:21Mr. Holtzclaw: Again, that is going to be solely on yourself and your team and your family to have to coordinate where you want to go to and what details and research. It is educating yourself on different universities you can work within these limitations. It is hard to get there on your own dime but you have to be able to work with intricate standards and rules and regulations and be able to figure out where you want to go through your previous and personal research.
▶ 1:55:44Sen. Blunt Rochester: Thank you. Mr. chairman, if you could indulge if I ask one question to Mr. gee. I will ask the question and if we don't have time, he can submit for the record. Congress rarely grants antitrust exemptions and only when we believe the beneficiary will exercise it was possibly and an exemption is necessary.
▶ 1:56:09Sen. Blunt Rochester: Given the losses in antitrust lawsuits, any antitrust exemption warrants scrutiny, so what ncaa activities do you believe truly require antitrust protections?
▶ 1:56:19Mr. Gee: Well, I think -- first of all, thank you. It is wonderful to meet you. We have not met before. It is great to be with you. You know, I think the real issue for antitrust exemption is the ability to collectively have our rights put together.
▶ 1:56:43Mr. Gee: The whole issue of course is as I said earlier, growing the pie, and by that we have to do what has frankly happened to the nba and nfl and others. That is the exemption that I think is the most important part of the antitrust act.
▶ 1:57:03Sen. Blunt Rochester: Thank you. I yield back, and I understand the congressional black caucus sent letters to the chair and ranking member. This is just a really important issue at a very tough time, so I hope we take our time and get this right. Thank you, and I yield back.
▶ 1:57:21Chair Cruz: Thank you. Senator blackburn.
▶ 1:57:25Sen. Blackman: Thank you, Mr. chairman. Thank you to each of you for being here. As you can see, there is a lot of bipartisan interest in doing something to correct the situation that seems to be running off the rails. Quite frankly, I think congress is late to the game on this. I think the ncaa has really dropped the ball on this. They should have done something years ago.
▶ 1:57:52Sen. Blackman: As you can see from the audience behind you, I think every intern, college intern that is up here has tried to get in this room today. So that they can see this. I know that some from tennessee are saying, go vols and go vanderbilt. Mr. gee, they have had quite a season. We loved having you in nashville at vanderbilt. Coach saban, I want to come to you. We heard a lot about navigating this marketplace.
▶ 1:58:22Sen. Blackman: We are talking about a $1 billion marketplace right now that basically has no framework, no constraints. Senator cantwell and I had introduced the hussle act, which put in place some baseline transparency standards by requiring these agents to be registered, and we have heard that sometimes you don't know what you don't know until you are too far into this, and I really appreciated your opening testimony.
▶ 1:58:55Sen. Blackman: So I am glad that provision is in the protect college sports act, but I would like for you to talk a little bit about why there should be registration, why there should be transparency, why there should be disclosure requirements that would help protect the student athlete from exploitation.
▶ 1:59:17Coach Saban: We mentioned this before earlier in our testimony that I think it is imperative that student athletes, their families have protection from agents. Right now, you don't have to be registered to be an agent for a college player so anybody on the street can do it. We don't have any recondition on how much they can charge.
▶ 1:59:42Sen. Blackburn: But there fees are kept?
▶ 1:59:45Coach Saban: No question. If you look at the nfl, they are 3% to 5%. We have college players paying 20% we have agents that encourage players to get in the portal when it is really not in their best interest in the portal, only to try to get to stimulate more revenue for them but really for themselves. No guarantee they are going to get them more revenue. So I think there should be regulation. I think there should be rules.
▶ 2:00:15Coach Saban: I do think they should be registered. Look at the nfl has a lot of really good rules and you have to be a registered agent with the players association and the nfl to be able to represent players. And I think families and student athletes have the same -- should have the same protection in terms of the framework that we put around agents for college kids.
▶ 2:00:39Sen. Blackburn: Ok, that is great. Mr. holtzclaw, do you agree with what he said? I want you also to talk -- pardon me -- about the financial literacy. Should that be a requirement?
▶ 2:00:54Mr. Holtzclaw: I do agree to part of what Mr. saban is over there saying. He is definitely speaking truth to what happens in the lives of our student athletes when they have to deal with agents. Agents do encourage a lot of decisions for student athletes that they have signed to their agency. And again come agents do get paid through what college athletes get paid, so them trying to influence the decisions of student athletes will influence their pay.
▶ 2:01:24Mr. Holtzclaw: Again, I think this goes back to the education piece of educating a lot of student athletes on the fact that your agent works for you and that you don't work for your agent. Your agent is supposed to be helping you. To get the ridiculous amounts of money being taken from a lot of these student athletes is a disservice to the game. I have had great experiences when it comes to me and an agent.
▶ 2:01:51Mr. Holtzclaw: I have also seen the bad side of other teammates I have had that have had to deal with bad agents. This agent has not done anything for me. They are taking too much money. They are this. They are that. There is an issue with anybody being able to get agent without regulations. I agree.
▶ 2:02:09Sen. Blackburn: That's great. Miss gould, I want to come to you on the transfer portal, and talk for a minute about the damaged not only done to the school and the program but the athlete with this constant transferring.
▶ 2:02:23Commissioner Gould: Yes. Thank you for that question. Certainly while I think everybody at this table supports freedom of movement and freedom of choice for student athletes with guardrails in place, there are so many consequent is what is happening right now. Lance talked a little bit about how it feels to jump from program to program and have lots of transition.
▶ 2:02:48Commissioner Gould: What it does academically, I think we are going to start to see with graduation rates around transfer student athletes that our core purpose is being lost because of this hopping around from institution to institution. It really does undermine the foundational team culture and team atmosphere when you do not know year-to-year, month-to-month who your teammates are going to be.
▶ 2:03:13Commissioner Gould: And really, these relationships that happen in these locker rooms are some of the richest and most transformational relationships that a student athlete can have in their life. So I think their academic impacts, their culture impacts to teams, and I think there are mental health pressures too when you have agents in your ear kind of pressuring you to consider other options when maybe it is not in your best interest or maybe you are happy where you are.
▶ 2:03:38Sen. Blackburn: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 2:03:41Chair Cruz: Thank you, senator blackburn. I will know one of the most import a part of senator cantwell's and my legislation is a registry and important protections for student athletes dealing with agents and capping agent fees at 5%. Because I think particularly when you are dealing with 17, 18, 19-year-old student athletes, there is right now pervasive exploitation of those student athletes. And one of the really important things we need to do is provide protections for those athletes.
▶ 2:04:11Chair Cruz: Senator hickenlooper.
▶ 2:04:13Sen. Hickenlooper: Not sure this --
▶ 2:04:26Chair Cruz: I will say for the record that is the fastest I have seen anyone ascend the dais.
▶ 2:04:33Sen. Hickenlooper: These are difficult times. One has to take opportunities when they come. Mr. chair, madam ranking member, thank you. You guys have worked I know hundreds of hours, thousands of hours on this. I recognize full well the enormity of the challenge and the differences of opinion that you have both really done remarkable work to get to this point.
▶ 2:05:03Sen. Hickenlooper: I think most of us would agree. I think everybody here would agree that college sports are at their best when they create opportunities for as many young people as possible. If you step back and look at it, capturing young men and women at a young age, engaging them in all variety of sports is critical.
▶ 2:05:29Sen. Hickenlooper: I have been amazed at the power of olympics to do that as a seabed by which kids get engaged. Obviously olympic and paralympic pipelines run primarily through college sports and they play a really integral role in ensuring the U.S. -- well, the U.S. leads the world in medal counts.
▶ 2:05:54Sen. Hickenlooper: Sounds we declare this but it is part of our international brand, what differentiates us is our success as an olympic you know,, a source of olympic talent. The protect college sports act clearly creates protections for non-revenue-generating sports. But it does make them conditional on participation in a commercial arrangement.
▶ 2:06:19Sen. Hickenlooper: This means there is no guarantee that every division I school will be required to maintain their current scholarship slots and rosters for that great diversity of sports that is represented by the olympics. Again, these are olympic sports and women's sports I am most concerned about. Miss gould, I will direct my question to you.
▶ 2:06:44Sen. Hickenlooper: From your perspective, is the risk of cuts and diminished opportunities for college nonrevenue and olympic sports across division I sports a real concern that needs to be addressed?
▶ 2:06:53Commissioner Gould: Thank you for that question. It absolutely is a real concern. You saw some of the data on the poster that senator cantwell shared. Look. There have been incredible amount of cuts already to a limp exports, women's sports.
▶ 2:07:10Commissioner Gould: And if we don't start to put some expense controls in place, and there is more and more pressure to fund football and men's basketball, the revenue-generating sports at a higher level, that money has to come from somewhere. So it is either going to come from the central campus and take funds away from general students and other campus initiatives, or it is going to be taken away from other programs within the athletic department.
▶ 2:07:38Commissioner Gould: So I think we have seen the data. I think the threats are real, and I certainly appreciate that the bill addresses this because it is an important issue for our country and the student athletes competing in those sports.
▶ 2:07:51Sen. Hickenlooper: I appreciate that. Thank you. The statistics are amazing when you actually look at the relevance that american people see for supporting the olympics. This is one of those opportunities where if we do not act now, we might lose an opportunity that puts us on a road to a place we don't want to be. So I look forward to working with senator cantwell and senator cruz on this going forward. I can sneak in one more question.
▶ 2:08:22Sen. Hickenlooper: Mr. holtzclaw, we all want student athletes to have the opportunity to benefit for their hard-working talent and want to make sure they don't get taken advantage of. A number of people described this a little bit as this project college sports act requires disclosure of n.I.l. Competition over $600 per year while making sure to protect student privacy and creates an n.I.l.
▶ 2:08:48Sen. Hickenlooper: Disclosure databased of anonymized data to make sure that families and student athletes can assess fair market value, know what a fair decision is. Do you think greater transparency around n.I.l. Competition would help athletes negotiate on a more level playing field, particularly those who may not have access to the same level of advisors or resources as some of the athletes at other programs?
▶ 2:09:18Mr. Holtzclaw: Thank you. Again, I take this back to educating our student athletes. And I think that is really the forefront of what we need to do. And that is going to help us a lot. Student athletes are going to be able to publicly be able to go out there and see different values and see if -- comparing and contrasting to see what they are getting and what their deals's details are going along with what they think they should be getting or what the fair market value is out there for themselves.
▶ 2:09:49Mr. Holtzclaw: So that just goes in and educate our student athletes and gives them a public platform to be able to see that visually.
▶ 2:09:53Sen. Hickenlooper: Great. Thank you very much. I am out of time. Mr. bevacqua, you are spread my questions, as are all of you. Thank you for taking time out of your busy lives and being here. I yield back to the chair.
▶ 2:10:09Chair Cruz: Thank you, senator hickenlooper. I will recognize that olympic sport I know are particular important in your home state of colorado in one of the important parts of this bill is protecting on the exports and women's sports and nonrevenue sports.
▶ 2:10:26Chair Cruz: One of the tragedies we are seeing right now under the status quo is it seems like every single week a different college is canceling women's sports, olympic sports, nonrevenue sports. If we don't act, we are going to continue to see devastation.
▶ 2:10:44Chair Cruz: And I for one do not want to see an olympics where every gold medal to russia and china and americans are not able to compete because we have devastated the preparation of our olympic athletes, which is in college sports. I think that is one of the really compelling reasons for congress to act and act in a bipartisan way so we can all cheer on a ton of american golds in the next olympics. Senator young.
▶ 2:11:11Sen. Young: Thank you, chairman, for holding this hearing. Thank you to you and the ranking member for your incredible hard work, members of your staff. It is a really challenging issue. It is just great to be here today and be part of this. The future of college sports is at a crossroads right now. We understand that. Congressional action is necessary to ensure that the n.I.l.
▶ 2:11:38Sen. Young: Landscape is built on clear rules, fear rules, rules that lead to a measure of predictability moving forward. We need to provide protections for our student athletes and our universities alike and ensure the longevity of not only collect football and men's basketball, but our own up exports and our women sports as well.
▶ 2:12:06Sen. Young: Without a federal framework, the legal and operational uncertainty around this space will only cause our academic institutions and our student athletes to suffer. However, with any legislation congress contemplates, we need to do our due diligence to ensure it is going to work as intended.
▶ 2:12:27Sen. Young: In addition, the many hoosiers that are or will become student athletes, I have a diverse group of engaged stakeholders on this issue based in my home state including the ncaa, U.S. track and field, usa gymnastics, usa diving, and just a host of top-tier universities, one of which I am glad is represented today at the witness table.
▶ 2:12:55Sen. Young: While the stakeholders continue to review the legislation and consider how it will be effectuated and its impact on their own activities, I am hopeful this hearing will help clarify many of these considerations. Mr. bevacqua, thank you again for your testimony here today.
▶ 2:13:15Sen. Young: Last year, when we are calling the house settlement was approved in the northern district of california, establishing a new revenue-sharing structure to allow schools to provide direct financial benefits to athletes. The cap under this new structure was set at $20.5 million per school for this past school year.
▶ 2:13:37Sen. Young: Sir, can you speak to the revenue caps under the house settlement, whether you believe they are adequate, or if they need some sort of adjustment to reflect the current reality when it comes to the revenue-sharing landscape?
▶ 2:13:49Mr. Bevacqua: Thanks, senator young. I have been vocal, and you and I have had conversations over the course of the last few years, but on this particular issue of course in the last year. I think the house settlement did many good things. I believe that the cap number in the house settlement is too low. I believe we need to fix a more realistic cap. And I go back to my opening where there is this misnomer that there is a cap. There is.
▶ 2:14:23Mr. Bevacqua: Mp mno cap. So again, I view it as an occasion of x being the cap, y being the n.I.l. Space, equaling the total spend on compensation. I think the more dollars that can be transferred into the cap and paid directly by universities in an incredibly transparent way is going to help clean up the system.
▶ 2:14:50Sen. Young: So just to interject, respectfully, because our time is limited, what is the risk of maintaining artificially low revenue caps, and could there be risks of fraud or other deceptive means of obtaining a competitive advantage?
▶ 2:15:08Mr. Bevacqua: I think the college sports commission is doing as good a job as it can but pushing money into the gray space of third-party collectives and n.I.l., that is in my opinion where most of the uncertainty and abuse is. I would have to see happen is establishing a realistic cap.
▶ 2:15:26Mr. Bevacqua: If universities there cap, tying in some form of subsidy on a certain percentage of the dollars, maybe it is $.20 to $.25 to the dollar over the cap, that you have to invest in olympic and women's sports. I think that would create not only some certainty and sustainability, but it would create a future for women's sports. I believe that cap is too low right now.
▶ 2:15:55Mr. Bevacqua: I think the amount of $600 is too low, unrealistic, and clogging the system.
▶ 2:15:59Sen. Young: Just very briefly, Mr. bevacqua, I was encouraged but not surprised because we have spoken at length about this, but in your written testimony, you talked about preserving the student athlete experience, how important to remember that they are students. Give me a very quick answer about how notre dame does that, mixture we preserve the educational experience for student athletes, and maybe how to congress to tackle this question.
▶ 2:16:30Mr. Bevacqua: Our student athletes are truly that, student athletes. They go to in person classes at notre dame. They are integrated with the student body. When I talk to student athletes regardless of the sport, whether football, rowing, softball, I always try to convey to them that even if you make it and play professionally, and there is such a small percentage of young men and women that can play professionally, but even if you make it, if you are one of those chosen few, you will still be done at a young age.
▶ 2:16:59Mr. Bevacqua: If you don't have that education, if you don't have that degree, you are going to have a very tough road ahead of you. Take advantage of this time on campus to get an education, to meet people outside of your team, outside of sports. Build those connections. Become part of the greater community of your university because it is those relationships, that education, that academic curriculum that is going to help you lead a better life from the moment your sports career is over for the rest of your life because sports ends for everybody.
▶ 2:17:28Sen. Young: Such an important message. Thank you, chairman.
▶ 2:17:32Chair Cruz: Thank you, senator young. I will note one of the important things I think of this bipartisan legislation is that it provides authority for enforcing the house settlement, but it also expressly provides that the limitation in that settlement can be modified. It can be raised as the parties decide. That was something important senator cantwell and I wanted to include. It is not limited. Let the parties raise it.
▶ 2:17:59Chair Cruz: So that is very sparsely in the legislation. Senator lujan.
▶ 2:18:04Sen. Lujan: Thank you. Mr. gee, I want to take a minute to brag about some of the women's teams at the university of new mexico. Golf, soccer, cross-country won titles. Softball, six regular-season conference titles, volleyball, eight regular-season conference titles.
▶ 2:18:31Sen. Lujan: After years of absence on any tv platform, we are starting to see when he women's sports get more coverage on television. My understanding is much of that coverage started because the conference leveraged college football rights to ensure networks also carried these nonrevenue sports. The bill we are discussing today seems to focus on getting more revenue from college football. Mr.
▶ 2:18:50Sen. Lujan: Gee, if a negotiator is only focused on maximizing revenue for college football, are you concerned that women's and other nonrevenue sports within the mexico and other states will fall back to where we were 20 years ago where very few games were available on television?
▶ 2:19:05Mr. Gee: Thank you, senator. Absolutely. This is one of the reasons I am here again. Unless we grow the pie, and this is the whole point, unless we grow the pie will be will not be able to sustain really positive support for women's and for olympic sports. That is the ultimate centerpiece in my view of this legislation. In products student athletes. It provides a structure.
▶ 2:19:39Mr. Gee: Most importantly, we have lots of these cases so we have no choice but to either diminish a sport for any of these programs or we have to grow the pie. That is what this does. It will, in my view, be very positive for women's sports and for olympic sports particularly.
▶ 2:19:59Sen. Lujan: Appreciate that. Mr. holtzclaw, prior to transferring to utah, it is my understanding you played three seasons at the university of washington and during that time, you played under three coaches. That is correct?
▶ 2:20:16Mr. Holtzclaw: I played under two coaches and was recruited by a different staff out of high school.
▶ 2:20:21Sen. Lujan: Appreciate that. What impact did playing under different coaches have with your years of playing experience?
▶ 2:20:29Mr. Holtzclaw: From my experience, it changed leadership and the culture of a program. Culture of a program is a big toll on the success of a program and the success of the relationships built throughout that program. My first two years in there, the culture was set for a while.
▶ 2:20:52Mr. Holtzclaw: We had a lot of players that played with each other and played under the same leadership and played under the same coaching staff and culture for a long time, so coming in there, the culture was set already. Things rolled the same way. I would say the effect of changing that often does change the trajectory and changing the leadership and culture of a program, I would say it changes how things are in the locker room. I would say it changes people's values.
▶ 2:21:20Mr. Holtzclaw: It changes how people move around a lot. It can disrupt the consistency of how things are run in a program.
▶ 2:21:27Sen. Lujan: I appreciate that. Mr. chairman, ranking member, I raised this issue because it seems to mean the market for coaches is a bit of a mess as well. Salaries keep going up. If a coach finds a better offer somewhere, they can take a buyout from the school, or if they get fired, they get a golden parachute. All of a sudden, taxpayers across the country are on the hook for this stuff. No offense to the coaches here. Accomplished.
▶ 2:21:56Sen. Lujan: The coach that is here does not leave programs. He just keeps winning championships. I want to encourage more of that. I certainly hope that when there is language in here that seems to restrict the movement of student athletes but coaches can leave midseason, parity is parity, fair is fair, treatment is treatment and I hope that is something we can chat about and work together to make sure we can do something in that space.
▶ 2:22:21Sen. Lujan: I am tired of buying new jerseys for coaches in mexico because it is only good for a season and then I start washing cars with it. I want to stop doing that. I want to keep wearing them. Mr. bevacqua, a major problem in college sports, unregulated agents. I did not realize they existed and have been learning about this. The so-called agents are exporting college athletes and their families because they get paid for every transaction, whether you are in or out or whatever it may be.
▶ 2:22:52Sen. Lujan: There are dollars flowing but restrictions on everyone else. I don't understand that, why the student athletes are getting bumped around, but I see a challenge here. Why is it important to have a system in place to ensure college sports agents are registered?
▶ 2:23:04Mr. Bevacqua: Yeah, I think it is a key provision in this bill. Coach saban said it well. There are good agents, and there are bad agents. But young men and women, 17, 18 years old who are not used to negotiating with agents or not used to what it means to pay a fair and reasonable commission are being taken advantage of around the country.
▶ 2:23:28Mr. Bevacqua: We need a database, a registry for these agents, a cap on their commission to make sure these young student athletes are not being taken advantage of. Coach saban also mentioned it is often the agent who starts talking about putting a particular student athlete into the portal. Test your market value.
▶ 2:23:49Mr. Bevacqua: You can get more money if you go to that school or this school, with no regard for the culture of a team, with no regard for where that young man or woman might be on their academic journey. So we need to clean up that area and have a registry and rules and regulations and that cap on their commission to make sure we are protecting our student athletes. I feel incredibly strongly about that.
▶ 2:24:13Sen. Lujan: Appreciate that. Thank you for the time. >> Mr. chairman, if I could come in since senator lujan asked, there is a section on media rights that these nonrevenue sports should be let out contracts where fox or a yes. Buys the media rights but does not do anything to promote the women's golf or any of these. So it allows for those entities.
▶ 2:24:45Sen. Lujan: You either use those rights and promote them, or you get to have them back as an institution. That I believe would really foster in this world. Do I think some volleyball team or a golf team or some of these teams -- look, that is an impressive record, right? Do I think they are going to make hundreds of millions of dollars? No. But do I think they can make millions of dollars if someone lets them promote themselves? Yes.
▶ 2:25:13Sen. Lujan: We definitely want to free, if you will these individual teams within an institution to go pursue making their program more successful in this way.
▶ 2:25:22Mr. Gee: Senator, I would respond by saying when I was chairman of the big ten when we created the big ten network that was the whole purpose, to create an opportunity for all of these ports to be shown. Now, I am not contending that is what we ought to do right now, but I do believe that started the ball rolling of many people interested in volleyball and golf and a variety of other things that had not been shown for a long time.
▶ 2:25:48Sen. Cantwell: I think the problem is the big ten and the sec having that brand on the channel does not do anything, and the networks are looking for the big moment about looking for the saturday big game of the week, and that is what they are putting their money in. But I guarantee you the success of the new mexico programs like we have a couple of world record holders at track, I would love to see these girls and the fact that they are world record athletes.
▶ 2:26:17Sen. Cantwell: So I think freeing schools to go, these nonrevenue sports --
▶ 2:26:31Mr. Gee: And I agree with that.
▶ 2:26:33Chair Cruz: This provision saying if there is a comprehensive median deal and if there is a particular sport not being utilized, that is not being put out to the public, that the rights revert back, this was I think a very clever idea. It was entirely senator cantwell's idea, but I thought it was clever to expand the ability. As the father of two daughters come I want to see women's sports get as many eyeballs, as much support as possible. It is a really important piece.
▶ 2:27:03Chair Cruz: I will say additionally, senator lujan, on your very good questions, you talked about the problem of coaches leaving and leaving during the season. One of the provisions of this bill that has gotten a lot of attention is been widely referred to as the lane kiffin rule. It says that a school cannot recruit a coaching staff or hire a coaching staff during the season or during the playoffs.
▶ 2:27:27Chair Cruz: I have to say it is not fair to players if you are heading into the playoffs and suddenly right before you go into a game your coach leaves and goes to a rival. That is not fair. What senator cantwell and I did is adopted the rule the nfl has, which is you can recruit coaches. Just do it in the off-season. Don't do it while kids are playing for them. Don't pull the rug out from them in the middle of the season. I think it is a much more fair way to do it.
▶ 2:27:54Chair Cruz: That is a lot of what we tried to do in this bill, find common sense rules that would protect athletes and protect the system. And let's see. Senator curtis.
▶ 2:28:07Sen. Curtis: Thank you. Mr. holtzclaw, as my colleague alluded to, you played for a lot of different teams and this would not be a good sports hearing without some good banter. I am curious, what is your favorite team? Just in case you need some help.
▶ 2:28:24Mr. Holtzclaw: I would not call any my favorite, but I do represent who I currently play for, the university of utah.
▶ 2:28:31Sen. Curtis: You should be in politics.
▶ 2:28:33Chair Cruz: That is diplomatic. Senator curtis, you better be worried he may file for elections.
▶ 2:28:39Sen. Curtis: He looks far more comfortable in a uniform than he does in that suit, I will tell you that. Let me start with you and follow up on this question. In the different frameworks, you have seen different state laws, institution rules, constant legal authority changes.
▶ 2:29:00Sen. Curtis: From your perspective as a student athlete, what would be the benefit of having one clear national framework for transfers, eligibility, protection, rather than asking athletes to figure out a different system depending on where they play?
▶ 2:29:15Mr. Holtzclaw: I think what it does is it creates standardization, and it creates regulation and kind of keeps everybody in a set standpoint of what we can and cannot do. I feel like it makes things a little bit easier in some senses. The way I would look at it is to look at things in a situation of eliminating the gray area a lot of times.
▶ 2:29:43Mr. Holtzclaw: That is a big part of the things we should do what we are looking at a lot of people that do not really have the knowledge always of what they can and cannot do and don't really know the legal frameworks and everything all the time.
▶ 2:29:55Sen. Curtis: Thank you. Mr. bevacqua, utah will host the 2034 olympic games. I am sure you are aware of that. Many athletes that represent team usa in those games are being developed right now through college sports in utah. That pipe and include skiers, runners, a host of other athletes that rely on college programs to help them achieve their dreams.
▶ 2:30:18Sen. Curtis: As an director responsible for making real budget decisions, what signals from congress would incentivize schools to not only preserve nonrevenue sports but expand opportunities for these athletes?
▶ 2:30:29Mr. Bevacqua: Well, thank you for that question. I am a tremendous fan of the olympic movement. I go back to my days at nbc sports, which has been the home of the olympics for so long, and I have been fortunate enough to go to many olympic games. Some of our proudest moments on campus are one student athletes represent our country in the olympics. That is a moment of pride for notre dame. Obviously a moment of pride for their friends and families.
▶ 2:30:58Mr. Bevacqua: I think there does need to be real teeth in the bill where you are going to protect olympic sports and the olympic movement because without universities, maintaining and investing in their olympic sports, the U.S. olympic movement will take a major step backwards. And I think you really quite frankly need to hold our feet to the fire.
▶ 2:31:20Mr. Bevacqua: If you are a university that is going to invest so heavily in sports like football and minsk agreement basketball, I do believe there needs to be a quid pro quo where we are now also going to demand you not take your foot off your gas -- off the gas, you continue to keep the other pick programs because the overwhelming majority of young student athletes, young men and women student athletes in this country are involved in olympic sports.
▶ 2:31:47Sen. Curtis: Do you think this bill we are looking at does that and sends those signals?
▶ 2:31:52Mr. Bevacqua: I think it sends those signals. As senator cruz and senator cantwell said, the bill is a work in progress. I think you could do a stronger job, a more straightforward job, a clearer job of protecting olympic sports depending on where the remainder of the bill heads.
▶ 2:32:09Sen. Curtis: Thank you. Coach saban, I was moved by something you said in your written testimony. You talked about young people coming to the program meeting structure, discipline and the coaching, academic support, and accountability among leaving with a degree, career, family, and a better chance to be successful in life. It reminds me of a comment by the byu football coach where he said the best part of the job is to coach great leaders. That is exactly what college athletes should be about.
▶ 2:32:40Sen. Curtis: Those life-changing experiences are not limited to football. They also occur in everyday sports that generate no revenue and have few fans. And yet they transform the lives of young people. As congress looks at the future framework of college athletics, what do we need to get right to ensure we not only protect but help grow nonrevenue sports?
▶ 2:33:00Coach Saban: I think a lot of the things we have discussed here today are certainly imperative. In the future, I think if we keep going in the direction we are going and making these huge investments in football and basketball in terms of paying players, which is going up and up and up, that we should change the comment from student athlete to athlete that is a student because we will have professional sports teams that are sponsored by colleges and
▶ 2:33:30Coach Saban: Universities. That is what is going to happen. Because we will be paying the players so much. I think the only way to remedy this is we have competitive conferences, we have competitive teams, we have competitors involved trying to create an advantage for themselves in every way that we can.
▶ 2:33:54Coach Saban: In college athletics, we have no legislative branch of government that says this is what the rules are. I am the commissioner of the nfl, and this is what you are allowed to do. This is the salary cap. This is how we drive players. It is how we create parity. This is how we create revenue so we can maintain a level of competition in all sports. We don't have that in college.
▶ 2:34:22Coach Saban: So we talked about conferences getting dismantled and all of that. That would never happen if you have somebody that was the head of all of this.
▶ 2:34:28Sen. Curtis: Thank you.
▶ 2:34:30Coach Saban: Right now, like they say back in west virginia, it is not about the money. It is about how much. Now everything is about how much money we can create, and are we actually deploying that money in the right places to maintain student athletes's well-being.
▶ 2:34:48Sen. Curtis: Regrettably, I am out of time, but thank you very much.
▶ 2:34:52Coach Saban: I thing I have been out of time all day.
▶ 2:34:55Chair Cruz: Thank you, senator curtis. Senator kim.
▶ 2:34:59Sen. Kim: Thank you, chairman, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have the witnesses here. As we talk about this hearing, talking about protecting college sports, but the title says supporting our student athletes. We have talked about that a number of ways, but when I want to focus on is on injuries and recoveries in that way and what is provided when it comes to our student athletes. Mr. bevacqua, I guess I want to start with you just to give you a sense.
▶ 2:35:28Sen. Kim: What are some of these sports in particular that have the highest injury burden that you see in your program?
▶ 2:35:34Mr. Bevacqua: All sports have the ability to be injured for a young man or a young woman. Obviously, you think about contact sports. You think about a.c.l. Tears. That seems to be prevalent in so many women's sports around the country. But I think it is a combination of what we really need to focus on and one of the things I was incredibly encouraged about in the bill is this emphasis on extended medical insurance.
▶ 2:36:02Mr. Bevacqua: So there has to be an emphasis on strength and conditioning that is so important, that transition from high school to college, nutrition, the use of data analytics, diet, rest, all of that. It is not only injuries, but it is injury prevention. You have to be focused on injury prevention and when there are injuries because inevitably there will be, how do you get that student athlete healthy again? Not just to play a sport but healthy again to live their lives.
▶ 2:36:33Mr. Bevacqua: One of the negative consequences in my opinion of the transfer portal is there is not that consistency of the maturation of a young student athlete at a particular school with particular doctors and staffs and trainers to know that young person's journey from an 18-year-old to a 23-year-old. That also helps the prevention of injuries. You are surrounded by your doctors. You are surrounded by your trainers. You are surrounded by her counselors.
▶ 2:37:02Mr. Bevacqua: If you are just jumping around from school to school every year --
▶ 2:37:05Sen. Kim: Continuity.
▶ 2:37:08Mr. Bevacqua: Coach saban is one of the best football coaches in the history of the country, on the mount rushmore of football coaches. One of the reasons he was successful is there was such consistency at alabama for so many years. Not just who is your head coach but who are your trainers, who is your strength coach, you can go to for an opinion for doctors.
▶ 2:37:31Sen. Kim: We are looking at injury prevention and strength training, looking at the immediate response to injuries, as well as the extended medical care beyond their time.
▶ 2:37:43Mr. Bevacqua: Senator kim, just getting to know the person. Whether you are his or her academic advisor or trainer or nutrition coach, getting to know the person, building a relationship with the person leads to a healthy life and a healthy time period for them at the university.
▶ 2:37:59Sen. Kim: I hope all of us can agree that is what we would want. What I would like to ask you bluntly here is, is that being provided equally across all college sports? Are some of the higher revenue generating sports getting more resources when it comes to injury prevention committee care, the extended medical?
▶ 2:38:19Mr. Bevacqua: We say at notre dame, listen, if you are the starting quarterback at notre dame or the third string outfielder, right fielder on the baseball team or softball team, your life is going to be different. Whether that is the amount of attention you get, your visibility, your n.I.l. Opportunities, but there are certain things that should be nonnegotiable. One of those is health, nutrition, safety, injury prevention, mental health resources, academic resources.
▶ 2:38:51Mr. Bevacqua: Whether you are a superstar or never going to see the field, those things need to be nonnegotiable.
▶ 2:38:58Sen. Kim: I appreciate that about your institution. Miss gould, I want to ask you. You see a wider lens here. Is that something that is a guarantee everywhere? Just what is it we should be thinking about? I know in this bill, I believe there is $60 million for a fund in terms of being able to do that. I am trying to get a sense of what we need to do to make sure our student athletes across the board get fairness in terms of how they are treated when it comes to injuries and their health.
▶ 2:39:29Commissioner Gould: I appreciate the emphasis in this bill around student athlete health and well-being. I agree with pete. I think sports medicine services and kind of holistic wellness support for student athletes is a priority across all of division I. I would hope that all of our leaders on our campuses make that a consistent application across all of the student athletes.
▶ 2:39:55Commissioner Gould: I think the protections that are defined in this bill are really, really important both in terms of the time on the campus and what happens post eligibility when they leave our campuses. I would say that as the spending and the arms race continues to spiral out of control but this becomes harder and harder for institutions that don't have resources. So I appreciate that this issue has been brought to the fore through this act, and I think it is an important one we protect for all student athletes and all sports at all levels.
▶ 2:40:24Sen. Kim: Thank you permit I yield back.
▶ 2:40:28Chair Cruz: I think senator kim for his very good questions. I will say one of the important parts of this bill that senator cantwell and I worked hard on is providing what I think will be landmark protections for athletes, both health and safety standards so you don't have a kid with a concussion being forced to play, providing health insurance coverage for injuries across the board, men and women, for injuries or diseases that come from playing sports. Not just while they are playing, but for five years after they play.
▶ 2:40:59Chair Cruz: No out-of-pocket expenses for those athletes. That is provided in the bill. As you noted, there is also a $60 million medical trust fund that is provided in part four schools like hbcu's that have vibrant athletic programs but don't necessarily have the budget to provide the health insurance coverage.
▶ 2:41:19Chair Cruz: So that trust fund is created there to ensure we are protecting athletes, not just the superstars that are on tv every day but the student athletes across the board and that is something senator cantwell and I both worked hard on. I will note for the record that coach saban had a pre-existing commitment. Talking about health insurance, sorry. He had a pre-existing commitment, so he will have to leave in a couple moments.
▶ 2:41:49Chair Cruz: I have asked senators on both sides if they had any questions specifically for coach saban. I will recognize senator fischer and senator budd both and then after that I will recognize senator moreno, who is up next. Senator fischer, you are up next for this questioning.
▶ 2:42:07Sen. Fischer: Thank you, Mr. chairman, and think you coach for being here today. When you play nebraska, we were a member of the big 12. The act would propose major changes on influences. A prohibition on conferences expanding only applies to the big ten and the sec.
▶ 2:42:37Sen. Fischer: My hope this provision can continue to be discussed by this committee. Additionally, the bill would significantly influence the scheduling of football games towards historical rather than prevent opponents. And though nebraska has now been in the big ten over 15 years, we do have very few conference members who would constitute that historic component that is defined by the bill.
▶ 2:43:06Sen. Fischer: So, coach, can you share how else congress could go about preserving those historic matchups while better considering the significant conference realignment that we have seen take place over the last many decades?
▶ 2:43:21Coach Saban: Thanks for the question, but I have always had the opinion that conferences historically in the past have been regional in terms of how those conferences sort of operated. I think the southeast conference has been able to maintain that. Other conferences have not.
▶ 2:43:43Coach Saban: I think it is in the best interest of student athletes do have regional conferences -- athletes that we do have regional conferences. But I also think I was always a proponent of everyone having to play division I schools. I was always for having nine or 10 sec games and two out of conference games, a division I. We talk about driving revenue.
▶ 2:44:12Coach Saban: In creating more revenue, you have to create better inventory that is going to interest people to watch. So therefore, the more really good games that you have as inventory, the more people want to watch, the more revenue goes up, the more we can protect the olympic and nonrevenue sports. So I do think that conferences should be regional in nature, but I think we should play games of national interest.
▶ 2:44:38Coach Saban: I don't think it is really fair that to someone playing at usc they have to go to rutgers to play whether it is a field hockey game or a football game. I think that is crazy.
▶ 2:44:49Sen. Fischer: If I can have just one follow-up question, when you talk about historic matchups, could you explain to us your lack of wins against coach osborne's cornhuskers?
▶ 2:45:01Coach Saban: I will tell you a story about coach osborne.
▶ 2:45:05Sen. Fischer: He is the best, isn't he?
▶ 2:45:07Coach Saban: My first game at michigan state as a head coach, we played nebraska in one of the championships and he was coach since 1995. We got beat like 56-7. He put his arm around me after the game and said, you are not as bad as you think. We actually went 6-5, so he was right.
▶ 2:45:26Sen. Fischer: Thank you very much.
▶ 2:45:28Chair Cruz: Thank you. Senator budd, very quickly.
▶ 2:45:34Sen. Budd: Coach saban, I wanted to ask you about transfer and eligibility rules. If congress were to prescribe rules for any similar body to adapt for themselves, they can make the rulemaking needed to adapt to changes that are going to come in college sports that will make it more difficult in the future. How do you think coaches will adapt their approach to player development if the rules were hard to change? Would you be concerned about the reduced flexibility?
▶ 2:46:05Coach Saban: We talked about players transferring and having one opportunity. If they graduate, they have another opportunity. If there are extenuating circumstances, they can have an opportunity. We don't want to see student athletes get trapped in a bad situation. But we think multiple transfers affects a lot of things. If it's the ability to graduate. It affects development, what you can major in, what you can be eligible at at the next school.
▶ 2:46:33Coach Saban: I think multiple transfers have a lot of issues that are not necessarily in the best interest in terms of development, being part of a team. Somebody mentioned you are part of a different team. We keep asking the young man over here who is a player at utah, you had three different coaches. We have guys transferring three different times to three different schools. What is the problem with that? You have three different coaches then.
▶ 2:47:05Coach Saban: I think freedom of choice is important but the transfer portal and collectives and being able to have pay for play, that creates free agency all the time. It is putting 4000 guys in a portal, not healthy for college athletics. And I don't think at the end of the day it is in the best interest of young people in terms of their development.
▶ 2:47:30Chair Cruz: All right, thank you. I want to thank senator rosen for her indulgence, allowing tw senators to jump in front of her. Othat was very kind. Coach saban, I know you have the pre-existing commitment, so thank you for that.
▶ 2:47:46Coach Saban: Again, I want to say thank you to everybody here for giving me the opportunity to be here. It is a pleasure. College athletics is important to me. As a college coach, having the opportunity for years and years to help young people develop, I appreciate the interest here and the effort being made and continuing to be able to have young people benefit from college athletics.
▶ 2:48:11Chair Cruz: Thank you. Senator moreno.
▶ 2:48:15Sen. Moreno: Thank you for the
▶ 2:48:25Sen. Moreno: Thank you for to the witnesses for being here. I have concerns about the bill. It does not address the employment issue. 20,000 college athletes that I think would be left behind, so that gives me great concern. I think the bill needs to be narrowed and were targeted as a targeted antitrust exemption. Number three, most importantly, it does nothing about protecting biological women from competing with men in sports.
▶ 2:48:53Sen. Moreno: I believe my comments to that, but those are three grave concerns I have about the bill by five. Thank you.
▶ 2:48:58Chair Cruz: Thank you. Senator rosen.
▶ 2:49:02Sen. Rosen: Thank you.
▶ 2:49:06Sen. Cantwell: Thank you for your indulgence.
▶ 2:49:09Sen. Rosen: I am grateful for the commitment today. I will build upon a lot of questions that have already been asked. I think the main issue we are here today is we have to realize that our students are our kids, our future, whatever they do, and they are not a commodity. That is a really important message we have here today.
▶ 2:49:33Sen. Rosen: I have heard from my state's universities and their leadership including former governor sandoval, who sits in the mountain west conference and the ncaa board and has been leading on this issue, about how the current chaotic system is unworkable and how important it is to establish stability for universities and students.
▶ 2:49:56Sen. Rosen: From my understanding of the bill put forth by the chair and ranking member, the biggest challenges it takes on stem from issues today in college football for schools outside of the power for conferences like those in nevada, I am wondering what key problems you think the protect college sports act addresses. Mr.
▶ 2:50:14Sen. Rosen: Gee, as a former president of the non- -- a non-power four school, what do you see this software for schools that do not generate revenue from football on the skills of the schools in the big ten and the sec?
▶ 2:50:32Mr. Gee: I was the president of brown, which is not a power four. The ivy leagues are not now but they may become. Every part of intercollegiate athletics what I'm concerned about is what we need to do is we need to develop basic fare rules for everyone. I'm talking about everyone in all of the conferences.
▶ 2:51:03Mr. Gee: We need to have protection for student athletes and for the institutions themselves. Finally -- again, I come back to this because I have made this point ad nauseam -- this bill allows us to grow the pie so that all the schools, including those who are smaller, in smaller markets, so to speak, that they can continue to thrive. We found a lot of conversations about this.
▶ 2:51:30Mr. Gee: >> is president of unr to make myself clear. We still call him governor, too. >> I still call him governor. A good friend of mine. He is in total agreement with this bill. >> I want to stay with. New if they make the playoffs. It is a $1 billion at your revenue.
▶ 2:51:59Mr. Gee: 90 percent of that revenue goes to school in the power 4 and notre dame. I will always cheer for them, we love to watch football, my state's biggest schools have consistently missed the college football playoff and the revenue stream.
▶ 2:52:16Mr. Gee: I know the world is all about likes, influencers, revenue streams, the protect college sports act would help schools like unlv that do not receive revenue from the college football playoffs to receive more revenue. It is all about the number of lights and influencers. How does this work compared to the proposal to redistribute revenue to all fbs schools?
▶ 2:52:48Mr. Gee: >> this is an opportunity to grow the revenue for everyone. >> for everyone. >> but at the same time we have to recognize there are institutions that are going to be able to play for a national championship and they should be rewarded. We are not about leveling everything.
▶ 2:53:10Mr. Gee: We are about creating opportunities so every institution --every institution will be able to continue to be competitive. >> do our universities just become sports revenue producers, or are they still universities? >> remember, I am a university president. I think first of all about the academic integrity of what we are trying to solve.
▶ 2:53:40Mr. Gee: The coach talks about the fact you need to put the word "student" back into student athlete. This bill is the last great hope to bring some semblance of common sense to all of that, including the academic issues we are facing. >> my colleagues have talked about women's sports. When I was a young girl, they were not women's sports that were organized.
▶ 2:54:07Mr. Gee: This bill provides essential protections for women and broad-based sports. The protections are tied to voluntary participation. I'm concerned voluntary participation might not for women's sports. Are these bills' current protections durable enough to protect women's a sports from being cut in the long-term?
▶ 2:54:44Mr. Gee: We all love to still cheer them on. >> it is a great question. We have 26 programs -- 13 men's, 13 women's -- one of the most popular sports on our campus by four is our women's basketball. >> the aces, three-time wnba champions. Let's talk about women's basketball. [laughter] >> women's volleyball is growing.
▶ 2:55:14Mr. Gee: The excitement with women's softball. I go back to what I said earlier. There should be a give-and-take. If you as a university make the decision to continue to invest so heavily in sports like football, men's basketball and women's basketball, there has to be it agreement -- a contract, if you will -- that you will invest in olympic and women's a sports.
▶ 2:55:43Mr. Gee: That combined with title ix requirements will hopefully keep women sports at the college level going in the direction they are now, which I think is incredibly exciting. >> do you think you would consider requiring other requirements outside of the sports broadcasting act that could be redistributed to support broad-based sports or women's sports?
▶ 2:56:07Mr. Gee: >> the scholarship protections, the distribution of scholarships, roster limitations and the agreement that you have to continue to invest in the women's olympic sports. It gets back to, what is nil? Coach saban said it has become pay for play.
▶ 2:56:33Mr. Gee: You have to increase the cap to make it more of a revenue share and allow the universities to distribute that. Our main revenue sport is football. Men's and women's basketball. The bill starts to talk about ways to make sure you cannot go all in on just one sport at the expense of others. That would lead to the disintegration of opportunities for young men and women participating in those olympic sports. >> thank you.
▶ 2:57:04Mr. Gee: >> thank you, senator rosen. Senator fischer has been recognized for the remainder of the questions. Several fisher thank you. >> nebraska is proud of our women's volleyball program. We have won a total of five ncaa championships. We are regularly one of the top programs in that sport.
▶ 2:57:30Mr. Gee: Nebraska volleyball has sold out their home arena every match dating back to 2001, and even sold out memorial stadium for an event in 2023. As we continue to explore the nil legislation, it is important these athletes maintain their nil opportunities.
▶ 2:57:53Mr. Gee: Can you comment on how this specific piece of legit said olympic sports programs like nebraska's volleyball? How do you think it would help those programs without the federal government deciding who will win and lose if they will be dealing out funding?
▶ 2:58:19Mr. Gee: >> the success of women's basketball -- I .2 nebraska, you would know better than I do -- 81,000, 82,000 people to watch a women's volleyball game, it is exciting, it is astounding. I go back to I think there has to be a commitment. Schools will pick sports.
▶ 2:58:44Mr. Gee: You cannot be in this day and age a year in, you're out national championship competitor and all of your programs. It is just impossible. You have to go back to the basics. At notre dame, do we want to win national championships in football? Absolutely. Women's basketball? Absolutely. We start every season and that is our goal for those programs and others. The true student experience has to be more than just national championships.
▶ 2:59:14Mr. Gee: What are you learning? How are you developing? What is the opportunity you are provided? That is when I go back to my belief that you should tie in universities -- I will use the term again, "hold our feet to the fire" -- volleyball is a big emphasis for ours. We have a wonderful coach and we are going in a great direction. You cannot be all in at certain sports at the expense of others.
▶ 2:59:45Mr. Gee: One area of the bill can be improved is tightening that language, making it a bit more forceful. As you continue to put your foot on the gas on major revenue sports like football and men's and women's basketball, we will not allow you to take your foot off the gas of women sports and olympic sports.
▶ 3:00:03Sen. Fischer: Thank you. Nebraska is also home to the college world series, the men's college world series that is coming up in just a week or so now. The college world series brought nearly $150 million in economic benefit to the city of omaha.
▶ 3:00:27Sen. Fischer: As we consider this nil legislation, how can congress ensure that we are protecting some of these cherished traditions that we have, whether it is the college world series, or it is basketball's march madness? >> I have seen the stadium in omaha. The west virginia team will be there. Fingers crossed.
▶ 3:00:56Sen. Fischer: I gave the keynote address last year. I was in the neighborhood. I will tell you that this bill -- I will come back to this again. You would think I'm wearing a sandwich board that says "vote for this bill," -- I believe that without this bill we would have chaos. With the bill we will have the opportunity to address the issues you are talking about.
▶ 3:01:26Sen. Fischer: The bill, like everything else, is not perfect but it goes so much further to solving the problems, and giving us a structure to solve the problems and the traditions.
▶ 3:01:39Sen. Fischer: Are there structures within this bill that you can point to right now that would protect the college world series? >> yes. I'm just looking at -- I'm going to ask him. [laughter]
▶ 3:01:58Sen. Fischer: We are not going to let senator cruz participate in this session. I can talk to him anytime. I want to hear your thoughts. >> he is much more interesting than me.
▶ 3:02:13Sen. Fischer: Now we are getting off topic. Please, senator cruz, you are much more interesting.
▶ 3:02:21Chair Cruz: I will not take senator fischer's time other things that you are absolutely right, nebraska women's volleyball is as impressive as all get out. The massive crowd that came up to watch them play was groundbreaking and changed college sports.
▶ 3:02:38Chair Cruz: I will say in terms of your specific questions, one of the really important provisions here is we have tied the pooling of media rights to a mandate to protect roster spots and scholarships for women sports, nonrevenue sports, those two are intertwined -- olympic sports -- we want to keep all of that fully protected.
▶ 3:03:05Chair Cruz: Just to be a home state partisan for a minute, I'm particularly proud of that right now we are in the middle of the women's softball world series, which is between texas and texas tech, and in my view we win either way so I'm cheering for them both and am happy with that. That is an enormous part of that.
▶ 3:03:24Sen. Fischer: Thank you. >> he answered my question, thank you very much.
▶ 3:03:28Chair Cruz: Senator moran.
▶ 3:03:31Sen. Moran: As you know, I should be a significant supporter of this bill. It is an effort that began with senator blumenthal and I and senator booker. Many of the provisions come from a draft we introduced in 2023.
▶ 3:03:55Sen. Moran: I think you and senator cantwell closed the gap that we have been unable to accomplish for a long time. The longer this problem remains, the more damaging the circumstances will be to the things we are talking about today. I want to ask a couple of questions from these witnesses. One has to do with pooling rights under the agreement.
▶ 3:04:21Sen. Moran: That is, the sports broadcasting act has allowed professional leagues to pool media revenues and negotiate media deals with the intention of increasing access to viewing live sports. But since we, congress, enacted that act, streaming has fundamentally changed the media marketplace.
▶ 3:04:44Sen. Moran: In kansas, if a professional sport -- if we are trying to see the chiefs game, if you want to follow every cheapskate needed reliable broadband, a streaming device, multiple subscriptions and it is costly -- you need every. How do I watch a sports team play ball?
▶ 3:05:09Sen. Moran: We have a lot of places in our state that do not have broadband and access even if the game is there. The protect college sports act of 2026 would adopt this broadcasting model of 75% of the current fbs schools opted to pooling the media rights. I appreciate it is not mandatory. I'm worried about the consequences of adopting this broadcast framework.
▶ 3:05:40Sen. Moran: What safeguards are this legislation to prevent what I described being the case that we have with the chiefs, or what safeguards should be added? >> I was encouraged in reading the bill that the provisions that related to the sports broadcasting act were voluntary.
▶ 3:06:08Sen. Moran: Senator cruz made a point of reiterating that, that it is voluntary. Intellectually, I understand it, it makes sense. I go back to my former life at nbc sports. Combining my experience at nbc sports with my experience at notre dame, it could be difficult. That is why I like that it is voluntary.
▶ 3:06:32Sen. Moran: My concern with that area of the bill is, there are agreements in place, many long-term agreements, the longest of which extends into the mid-2030's. On this you interrupted the major media deals across the country, nothing could really be done for a decade. , independent in football, conferences, would have to agree.
▶ 3:07:04Sen. Moran: Putting on my former media executive pat, designed to I was negotiating for a limited amount of time, I would refer to that as a stub deal. The deal would go down. I fear that many conferences and universities would take a step backward before they could take a theoretical step forward with media rights.
▶ 3:07:30Sen. Moran: My second concern is, if you want to truly maximize the media value around the largest sport in terms of eyeballs, which is college football, I think the best way to do that is a super league. I do not want a super league and I do not think anyone necessarily wants a super league.
▶ 3:07:54Sen. Moran: Flooding the market, bringing it to an aggregate performance of major media companies, I'm not sure that will drive the value. If you wanted to maximize media value around college football, I think you would take 24-30 teams, create competitive scheduling were a team like notre dame would play ohio state, michigan, and get a number that would closely resemble an nfl number.
▶ 3:08:26Sen. Moran: I was encouraged it is a voluntary application and a lot more work could be done over the course of the next series of years the value could prove itself out.
▶ 3:08:35Sen. Moran: Let me see if I can summarize. This is a few years out so we have some time because the contracts already in place. It is voluntary. But there is still concern the outcome of those voluntary decisions may not end up with the best result. More needs to be done between now and the time you are shopping for the television market. >> correct.
▶ 3:09:05Sen. Moran: This topic has been raised. The subcommittee I used to chair at the responsibility for amateur sports. We got engaged in nil. It has authority over the U.S. olympics. I think there is a lot to be concerned about here.
▶ 3:09:26Sen. Moran: You can massage my concerns about what we do -- we mentioned a couple of sports -- there is a whole array of sports that I'm worried about, training the next generation of americans who compete on the global stage at the olympics.
▶ 3:09:50Sen. Moran: What priorities would you suggest, beyond what is in this bill, if I want to be a champion of the future of the U.S. olympics and their athletes? What provision should I be worried about that is in the bill or should be? I think most of you are here for advocates of this bill, I understand that. But what else could be done to protect what I'm concerned about? >> I will start.
▶ 3:10:19Sen. Moran: I do not necessarily in my reading of the bill think there are provisions in the current draft that are detrimental to the future of olympic sports. I do think working together with all of you and leaders in the colleges face, we can add provisions that are more adventitious to securing the future of olympic sports.
▶ 3:10:41Sen. Moran: Anyone else? >> I might just answer it on a macro level. Women's sports and olympic sports are not explicitly called out in every provision of this bill, what this bill provides is more certainty than we have today.
▶ 3:11:00Sen. Moran: If you are a university president trying to make decisions about funding for an athletic department, if you are an athletic director, a conference commissioner constantly getting reduced distributions because of litigation, this creates more certainty. To me, more certainty allows the leaders in our industry to make the appropriate decisions to fund broad-based programs.
▶ 3:11:26Sen. Moran: Let me summarize what I think he said. There are problems today with colleges and universities being a training ground for olympic athletes but if we have more certainty we may be able to do it better than we are doing it today. >> correct.
▶ 3:11:41Chair Cruz: Thank you. I will say senator moran's helpful questioning about sports broadcasting provisions they are entirely voluntary. Any school or conference can choose whether to participate or not. It creates a new avenue. It is our hope that will substantially grow the revenue available for all programs. If it does not they will not choose to do it.
▶ 3:12:10Chair Cruz: I will say on the question of straining -- I, too, am concerned about the fragmentation and how difficult it is to watch games. We took the same language from the sports broadcasting act about sponsored telecasts. There is ongoing litigation with the nfl about whether it covers streaming or not. We are deliberately neutral on that. We did not want to piss off the nfl, we did not want to engage in that.
▶ 3:12:42Chair Cruz: Whatever the standard is for the nfl will be the standard for college football. That seemed to be the most prudent decision not to poke a hornet's nest. We are saying nothing about that. Finally I will say on women's sports, another provision that is important is a requirement for championship facilities and training facilities and gyms for men and women. That is in the bill to require parity.
▶ 3:13:11Chair Cruz: >> there is a provision that says it has to be available locally.
▶ 3:13:15Chair Cruz: Yes. >> it will be available locally in your community.
▶ 3:13:24Sen. Moran: The professional sports act?
▶ 3:13:28Sen. Cantwell: We are seeing companies trying to put professional games behind a pay wall. That is frustrating. Even if you do that, that game has to be locally available to that community without being behind a pay wall.
▶ 3:13:51Sen. Moran: You were interested in being in the bill.
▶ 3:13:56Sen. Cantwell: Thank you for your past leadership on this issue. It has been a long time.
▶ 3:14:02Chair Cruz: I will likewise command that senator moran has been a leader on this issue for a long time. I am grateful. You have been integral in bringing together the bipartisan coalition to solve these problems. >> thank you for your efforts and dedication to supporting student athletes and programs. The bipartisan legislation we are here to discuss, it is a thoughtful compromise.
▶ 3:14:33Chair Cruz: It is incumbent on us to reach an agreement that ensures we do not have to come back to this committee room in a few years just to keep up with what will be an ever-changing landscape. My home state of north carolina, our institutions of higher learning prepare the next generation, gives them tools and skills to keep our state the number 1 workforce.
▶ 3:14:59Chair Cruz: There is no doubt that college athletics play a role in attracting and keeping students enrolled at school and making north carolina home after they graduate. I am married to a west virginia. In appreciate your service to the great state. She is a proud alum of the thundering herd. >> you are over toward huntington, I understand.
▶ 3:15:26Chair Cruz: You mentioned this legislation solves the financial crisis that a lot of universities are facing. I know institutions with aliphatic programs are struggling to stay afloat -- athletic programs are struggling to stay afloat. How would it help fulfill the mission in the face of a potential enrollment cliff? >> it is critical to the very issues you raise.
▶ 3:15:56Chair Cruz: First of all, we know most institutions in terms of athletics are already losing money. $5 million overall. By increasing the pie, we provided opportunity to at least have a chance to maintain their athletic program -- I have heard this from everyone here and we have heard it from a number of questions -- if we do not do this, it will start to really
▶ 3:16:28Chair Cruz: Have a choice of are they going to support athletics, or we are going to have to close them down to sustain the university. It is that simple. On top of it, universities themselves are having tremendous challenges with the enrollment cliff. We have 10% fewer students going to college.
▶ 3:16:54Chair Cruz: All of those issues mean this act helps us to stabilize something that is so enormously important to our institutions. At the same time it does not deteriorate what is happening on the academic side of the university. >> thank you, sir. You may have answered a piece of this.
▶ 3:17:15Chair Cruz: The bill's title I antitrust that allow for transfer rules and third-party pay for plate arrangements -- pay for play arrangements. In order to keep up with introduction of enforceable rules creating more stable revenue outlets? >> that is the whole purpose of the act, to create stability.
▶ 3:17:46Chair Cruz: As a former university president -- I now have my first amendment rights restored, which is kind of fun -- I think the universities also have to participate in this process. You cannot simply grow the pie and then spend that money. You have to make certain the universities themselves are making good choices so the pie is not simply being eaten up by growing needs.
▶ 3:18:20Chair Cruz: There are solid and appropriate choices being made. >> thank you.
▶ 3:18:23Chair Cruz: Thank you. Senator sullivan.
▶ 3:18:27Sen. Sullivan: Thank you for this very important hearing. I appreciate the witnesses being here. I will change direction a little bit and give you a specific issue but I'm not sure relates directly to the bill but I want your advice and I want to send a message to others in college football who are watching the hearing.
▶ 3:18:57Sen. Sullivan: I am the chairman of the board of visitors for the united states naval academy. I get to see these young men and women who inspire me, who are going on to serve as officers in the marines in the united states navy. Many americans look at the current landscape of multibillion-dollar bidding wars and see and s feel we are losing the very soul of amateur athletics.
▶ 3:19:26Sen. Sullivan: The second week of december every year, the american people get to watch the army-navy game. It stands much more than just for an important college football game. It is a powerful reminder of what college sports were always meant to be -- an area for character development, teamwork, leadership where young people play for the love of the game and a purpose far greater than themselves.
▶ 3:19:53Sen. Sullivan: The young men on the field are not looking for the highest bidder or looking for the transfer portal, they are preparing to lead american soldiers, marines and sailors, and maybe risk their lives for our great nation with a graduate. I do not know if any of you have been to the army-navy game? >> I have.
▶ 3:20:14Sen. Sullivan: It is one of the most inspiring things in the country and an incredibly powerful recruiting tool to get men and women to join our military. For almost two decades the ncaa agreed this should be the only college football game the second week of december. That was essentially a gentlemen's agreement with the naval academy and west point.
▶ 3:20:42Sen. Sullivan: However, the money driving college football started to erode on that. We started having games. Now there is even talk of playoffs to compete with the army-navy game. Mr. chairman, I would like to submit this for the record.
▶ 3:20:59Chair Cruz: Without objection.
▶ 3:21:01Sen. Sullivan: The head of college football said don't do that. That is bad for the country. I had dozens of senators in congressmen signed this letter. They were not listening pure to the president's credit, he issued an executive order a couple months ago saying, hey, hold off, ncaa, college football, quit encroaching on this great game, america's game.
▶ 3:21:31Sen. Sullivan: You cannot be that greedy and profit driven. This is the message -- the president of the united states is now staying in an executive order, stop it. My question to all of you is, just very importantly, from the vantage point as leaders in sports and education, how can the pure mission driven model of our service academies serve as a northstar as we write this
▶ 3:22:01Sen. Sullivan: Legislation to restore fair competition. How can we use the example of the army-navy game and members of west point and the naval academy to realign modern college sports with the classic american values of duty, loyalty, sportsmanship. People love watching college football in part because of these values and we are losing them. The one place that still has them is the service academies. The ncaa is trying to encroach on that. . I find it shameful.
▶ 3:22:32Sen. Sullivan: We are fighting back. We might have amendments to this legislation that preserves the army-navy game. Do any of you have views on this? Just to end more broadly, I think these players represent the truest definition of the student athlete.
▶ 3:22:57Sen. Sullivan: I am a big irish fan, but no offense even to notre dame, I think these are the true student athletes, at the service academies. They operate entirely outside of the nil. A great football player wants to join the naval academy, maybe he wants to go somewhere else to get money. It is not easy to recruit these guys now.
▶ 3:23:21Sen. Sullivan: I would love your thoughts on the national framework that can elevate these ideas of student athletes and amateurism that all americans want. That is why millions watch the army-navy game each year and I hope the ncaa or college football -- if you are watching, stop it. Quit encroaching on the game. >> sure.
▶ 3:23:43Sen. Sullivan: I would say the student athletes who play all varsity sports -- you mentioned football at navy, west point, air force -- they are more than student athletes. I marvel our student athletes can balance academics and athletics. I have good friends who played on those teams when I was growing up and they have another level of what they need to do each and every day.
▶ 3:24:06Sen. Sullivan: If you are an english major at west point or annapolis, you are not just an english major, your electrical engineer, weapons of system. They all have to and graduate with intense degrees with some of the hardest classes. >> it is amazing. Notre dame has a special relationship with the naval academy going back to a pledge that our legendary president made.
▶ 3:24:35Sen. Sullivan: It is a great story. >> coming out of world war ii, the naval academy did so much to keep notre dame healthy. We played the naval academy every single year. We will be applying them in boston this year on november 7.
▶ 3:24:50Sen. Sullivan: I guarantee you will sell out. I hope the devil academy wins, no offense. >> at the end of the game there is such a mutual respect. We go to their sideline first.
▶ 3:25:05Sen. Sullivan: -- I hope the naval academy wins. >> it is again we respect and admire. I have been to several army-navy games. They are wonderful. I think the window needs to be protected.
▶ 3:25:24Sen. Sullivan: For the army-navy game. Good. >> there is so much tension in the media space and so many available windows, particularly with the expansion of the cfp to 12 games. I think it is a larger conversation than just college football. What are other major sports, what are professional sports during that week? I am a huge fan of the nfl.
▶ 3:25:56Sen. Sullivan: The nfl is a remarkable sports entity. As they play more games on saturdays in december, the number of available windows major media partners can offer is condensed.
▶ 3:26:07Sen. Sullivan: My warning on the president's executive order, it goes to the nfl, too. Nobody should be encroaching on this game. >> I would love to see that dan protected. Whether the entire day can be protected, that is another topic of conversation. >> senator, I think the army-navy game is america's game.
▶ 3:26:37Sen. Sullivan: It is. >> the window should be preserved for that particular game, no matter what. I admire what the academies do. I spend a lot of time with the academies. The opportunity to see what they do this something that inspires all of us.
▶ 3:26:59Sen. Sullivan: It is often referred to as the only game in america where the players on the field are getting ready to commit their lives to the people in the stands watching. It is pretty powerful. Any other thoughts on this? Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 3:27:13Chair Cruz: Thank you, senator for your commitment and dedication to the service academies. It is inspirational. I want to thank each of the witnesses for being here today. I think this testimony was exceptionally helpful. I want to say, I think your testimony is a powerful illustration of why college sports is so important.
▶ 3:27:45Chair Cruz: The conversation senator cantwell and I had come we looked at each other and said you are a college student. This is a pretty intimidating place to be and I think your testimony was extraordinary. It might be because you are used to enormous men crashing into you and you are not scared by much. You did an exceptional job. I appreciate all the witnesses being here. I appreciate your testimony.
▶ 3:28:14Chair Cruz: Senators will have until the close of business on june 10 to submit questions for the record of the witnesses will have until the close of business on june 24 to respond to those questions. Thank you to the witnesses and the senators. With that, that concludes today's hearing. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap.org]