Former Alabama football coach Nick Saban and others testified Wednesday in support of a bipartisan bill aimed at overhauling a college sports system where players can increasingly earn millions of dollars while moving freely between schools.
The leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee held the hearing as they push legislation unveiled last week that supporters hope can break the congressional gridlock over how to regulate college athletics. But it’s already facing criticism from some senators and the two most influential conferences in college sports.
The bill, introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., would regulate payments to athletes, limit them to one “free” transfer during their careers and create a “Lane Kiffin Rule” restricting coaches from leaving programs during the season. Cruz touted the proposal as “the last, best hope we have to save college sports.”
“If you had the biggest, baddest Ferrari that you could ever have and it was going 150 miles an hour toward the Grand Canyon, somebody needs to tap the brakes. And I think that’s what we all need to do here,” Saban said in his opening remarks.
Notably absent from the the witness list, which included Notre Dame’s athletic director and the commissioner of the newly reconstructed Pac-12 conference, were any representatives from either the Big Ten or Southeastern Conferences. Saban won seven national championships at SEC schools Alabama and LSU but said he was not in Washington to represent any conference or team.
The SEC and the Big Ten, the two most powerful conferences in college sports, oppose the bill, arguing it “leaves critical issues unresolved.”
Asked after the hearing about opposition from the SEC and Big Ten, Cruz told the Associated Press he remains confident the bill can pass Congress.
“We’re going to get the votes,” Cruz said. “If we do nothing, there is no alternative. As every witness testified, college sports is facing a crisis.”
Cantwell said at Wednesday’s hearing that the legislation is intended to restore competition to college athletics by ensuring success is determined by how universities “build a team, and not because they have a billionaire in their back pocket.”
She also addressed the conferences’ opposition directly, suggesting they fear a more level playing field and the idea “that somebody’s going to come in and rearrange the deck chairs of those conferences, steal the eyeball schools, and then basically leave everybody with everything else.”
While Cruz and Cantwell, the two top-ranked lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee, support the bill, passage through the Senate is far from certain. President Donald Trump has yet to comment on the bill publicly.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, an ally of Trump’s, said he had “grave concerns” about the bill. He said his most important concern was “it does nothing about protecting, biological women from competing with men and sports” — an issue that Trump has dealt with via executive orders but that has not come up in any version of these bills.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., a former college football coach at Auburn, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that “there’s going to have to be some changes” to the bill in order for him to support it.
House Republican leadership had been working toward a vote on its own college sports bill, known as the SCORE Act, before the Congressional Black Caucus announced its unanimous opposition.
The CBC said the legislation should not move forward in the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling that effectively disabled a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. They say athletic leaders are failing to address concerns about the decision’s impact on Black political representation.
On Wednesday, the Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter to Cruz and Cantwell urging the committee to pause consideration of their bill as well.
“Meaningful engagement and action by college athletics leadership should be viewed as a necessary first step,” the letter stated.