WASHINGTON — Prospects for federal legislation on college sports have focused on the Senate in recent years, but a Republican-controlled House committee took its first substantive step Thursday, approving a single-purpose bill that would ban college athletes from being employees of their schools, conferences or national governing bodies.
But the Senate is controlled by Democrats, and Sens. Cory Booker (D-Jersey) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have been negotiating for months with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on a more comprehensive bill that would address issues in college sports, so they will undoubtedly remain key players in whether the bill makes it through Congress this year.
In separate interviews with USA Today Sports ahead of Thursday’s House committee amendments and votes, Booker and Blumenthal, who have teamed up with Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) on a debate draft of the bill, said they remain interested in passing the bill this year.
“Our goal is to get that done as soon as possible,” Blumenthal said. “We’re in very active discussions with Cruz.”
Booker said this is still achievable, even with the election looming.
“We’re getting closer and closer to the election and the season for idiocy,” Booker said, “but I’m hopeful that there’s actually an opportunity to get something done right before the election or especially after the election.”
Blumenthal said the need for action is compounded by the recent approval by the NCAA and the current Power Five conferences of settlements in three antitrust lawsuits over player compensation.
The proposed settlement includes $2.8 billion in damages and billions more in future revenue-sharing payments to athletes, including sponsorship revenue shares, but it does not address a range of issues, including athletes’ employment status (which is also the subject of a federal lawsuit and two lawsuits with the National Labor Relations Board), and does not fully address the legal risks the NCAA currently faces.
“This settlement makes the legislation even more urgent,” Blumenthal said. “This is really a priority. We need to ensure more equity through (the practice of making money off players’ names, images and likenesses) and other means. And Senator Booker and I have proposed what is essentially a players’ bill of rights that would give players all the guarantees they get in an employment context without having to be employees.”
Shortly after the settlement was announced, Cruz released a statement saying, “This marks a major change for a college sports system that still faces significant legal uncertainty without congressional action. … Overall, I believe this agreement demonstrates that Congress must act quickly to provide more than 500,000 student-athletes across the nation with a path to continue to gain an education and build future life skills through sports.”
Booker and Blumenthal continued to support the bill Thursday, which would address multiple issues.
“What we really need to do in Congress, reflecting on a bipartisan bill, is look at college sports holistically and do everything we can to bring some kind of justice and reason to a sport that is in crisis with all these different issues coming up,” Booker said.
“As a former college athlete, I’m still concerned about health and safety issues, whether people will be able to get their degrees, and that men and women who have years after they’ve retired from sports and brought millions of dollars to their schools still have to pay out of their own pockets for their own health and safety. So to not address these issues that still plague college athletes is just unacceptable to me.”
