Maria Cantwell

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Mr. President, there is a lot to say in a short period of time, but we will be having a vote soon to move to proceed to the Protect College Sports Act, a bill that does deserve the attention of this institution. There are lots of things I would like to focus on. I didn't necessarily call the shot that we were having this vote, but, I will tell you, it is definitely worth proceeding to. The importance of protecting college sports is about us working in a bipartisan basis with a variety of Members on both sides of the aisle and working with universities across the United States in every conference and thousands of athletes who want to have a better system. I think the best thing I can do is to read from a business sports article by a key individual, and so I am going to do that. This is Lamell McMorris, a graduate of Morehouse College and, for two decades, he worked at the intersection of sports and politics, entertainment, community engagement, and business. He serves as the vice chair of the National Urban League board of trustees, a board member of the National Action Network, and a former board member of the NAACP. But these views that he is expressing here--it was published yesterday--are his own. So I am quoting from him in his letter: Mr. President, this letter that I just read from Lamell McMorris I think is a representative of all the issues combined in this legislation. I can just tell you that the unsustainable 300-percent increase in recruiting student-athletes without the proper rules and regulations is bankrupting our higher education system. Taxpayers are asked to foot the bill in higher tuition fees that students pay who are not even athletes. They are going to State legislatures and asking for bailouts, and they are using university funds that should go to research and putting them, instead, into what is an arms race. This bill brings order to this, it helps women's and Olympic sports, and it sets up a commission to look at the real future, which I think should include collective bargaining, for what college sports can be organized in the future. But none of that can happen, and the 500,000 athletes that are at risk--because thousands of them have already been cut from the system-- are just going to continue to see failure. The other night, I talked to the Pac-12 commissioner, who said: I just met with all the student-athletes in the Pac-12. She said: You know what the No. 1 question I got from those student- athletes was? I said: No. What? They wanted to know whether their sport was still going to be there. There is going to be a moment when the United States is standing at the Olympics, and we are not going to be winning gold or silver or bronze because we are not going to have the athletes because the collegiate system will have collapsed, and people won't be funding them because they will be in an arms race over football. Let's bring some sanity, recognize that athletes do deserve revenue sharing, and that this bill will put that into law for the first time-- the first-time athletes will get a Federal preemption on NIL rights and revenue sharing that will be historic. Let's move forward. I yield the floor.