Discussion · Senate
Christopher Murphy Democrat
“I oppose this bill. College sports is not in a crisis. It makes more money and has more fans than ever. The Supreme Court already ruled that schools cannot ban together to stop players from getting paid. This bill tries to make that illegal system legal again. It caps what players can earn and limits when they can switch schools, but it does nothing to stop huge coach salaries and buyouts. It lets schools make billions more from TV deals while sharing very little with the athletes. If we pass this, talented players will leave college sports entirely. Congress should vote no and let schools negotiate directly with the players instead.”
“Mr. President, the legislation that we’re going to be voting on tonight is predicated on a simple idea, the idea that college sports is in crisis and that it requires a fairly extraordinary act of legislative intervention to address this crisis. I am speaking in opposition to this bill, and I think it is important to start by answering the question: Is college sports in crisis? Is it in chaos, as Senator Cruz is fond of saying? Well, the facts don’t back up that characterization of college sports. I am a huge college sports fan. I watch a lot of college basketball, a little bit less but still a lot of college football, and I know that there are more people than ever showing up to these games and watching the games. The Big Ten just signed a $13 billion contract to broadcast its games. The revenue of the NCAA, broadly, is at an alltime high. The SEC and the Big Ten are both making over a billion dollars. Women’s sports is growing--92,000 people recently filled the stadium to watch a women’s volleyball match. Schools are adding, not subtracting, women’s programs. In fact, more people are paying attention to college sports than ever before. College sports is growing both on the men’s and the women’s side. And so, what is this crisis? Well, the crisis, it appears to me, is pretty simple. Young athletes who perform a service that would be worth billions in the free market are finally getting what they lawfully deserve. A system of exploitation--an illegal system of exploitation--in which the colleges and their industry allies colluded to keep as much of the $13 billion that the college sports industry generates for themselves, that system started to crumble because courts--as high as the Supreme Court--came to the inevitable conclusion that that system of exploitation was illegal. Justice Kavanaugh, in a 9 to 0 decision, says the current NCAA model is ``suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges [each] year.’’ Ruling 9 to 0, essentially, that that system was unlawful. And so this system of collusion by the colleges designed to keep the compensation of athletes as low as possible, it was ruled illegal is essentially what happened here. And the industry had two choices. They could either work out a new set of rules with the athletes. That is generally what has to happen if you want industry-wide rules that limit compensation, that limit that applicability of a free market. You have to negotiate with your employees--in this case the athletes--or you could come to Congress and get your illegal system deemed legal. And that is what we are essentially doing here today. We are taking a system that the Supreme Court said could not persist under our law, and we are changing the law to allow that illegal system to persist. How do we know that this bill is about solving that narrow crisis that I identified, that crisis of college athletes finally making money, and the adults in charge of the system not liking that the kids were making money? Well, the first way we know that is that the bill does really nothing to stop the runaway overall costs of college athletics, in particular, some of the biggest drivers of costs being facilities and the salaries of adults. Let us just take one example. And I see my friend from Louisiana is on the floor, currently. Just last week, LSU’s president said the school’s sports program is projected to carry a $26 million deficit, and the president said ``We have got to stop that bleeding.’’ A $26 million deficit. But LSU just agreed to pay their new coach Lane Kiffin $91 million over 7 years, along with other bonuses to him like 65 hours of private jet travel, temporary housing, courtesy vehicles. LSU also just paid a buyout of over $53 million to the coach they fired. In fact, last year, the buyouts for just three coaches at LSU totaled over $169 million, six times the annual operating deficit of the entire athletics program. So if you want to know what is driving the deficit at these big schools, it is not simply the amount of money they are paying the students. Those numbers are dwarfed by the amount of money that is going to coaches and the facilities. But yet, this bill constricts only--only caps--the money going to the players. It does nothing to cap the money going to the coaches. It does nothing to stop the continued billions of dollars going in to feed this facilities’ arms race. Second, what about the antitrust exemption? Why is that in the bill? Well, certainly not to help athletes. This antitrust exemption will allow schools in some cases to continue their practices that compromise athlete safety because now they have a broad antitrust exemption to do that. Perhaps we will pass an amendment that will help with that later today. What it primarily is in the bill for is to allow the schools to be able to bargain collectively in order to get a better TV deal. If the schools don’t have to worry about antitrust law, one of the things they can do is join together across conferences to bargain for additional TV revenue. And in this bill, only one-fifth of the revenue that comes in will have to be shared with the athletes. Whereas, in the professional leagues, about 50 percent of the revenue, including TV revenue, goes to the athletes. So, the antitrust exemption allows the schools to make a whole lot more money, and other provisions in the bill allow the schools to keep that money for themselves rather than share it in the same way that professional leagues might share it with the athletes. And then what about the transfer restrictions in the bill? Why do those only apply to players? I admit that the current system in which players can move from one school to the next every year is probably not in the best long-term interests of the sport. But if the goal is really to control costs, that provision would apply to coaches as well because one of the ways costs go up is that coaches can freely move after every season from one program to the other, bidding schools against each other. This bill says that a coach can’t leave in the middle of the season, but that almost never happens. The reality is this bill only says players can only transfer once without penalty. It doesn’t say anything about coaches. Now, as I said, I think that there are rules inside college athletics that don’t make a lot of sense right now: unlimited transfers; the potential ability for pro players to come back to college. These agent fees look ridiculous to me. But you don’t need a bill of this sweeping scope to address what are a set of minor but important practices in college athletics that have gotten out of control. We could have either passed a very narrow bill here to address the aging issue and the transfer issue, or we could have done what happens in most industries which is just say to the NCAA and to the colleges: Tough luck. Congress isn’t going to come in here and micromanage your relationship with the athletes. If you want to work something out, sit down and talk to the athletes about it. If you want rules that apply across the industry, then do what every other industry does, which is have a dialogue with the workers. Now, whether you want to admit that the athletes are workers or not, the Supreme Court has basically ruled that they need to be treated as such for compensation purposes. And so we have two other options besides this sweeping bill that, in my belief, preserves this system of exploitation. We could have either passed a much more narrow bill that I think would have gotten even broader consensus here, would have had an easier time passing the House, or we could have just said: You know what? Congress doesn’t want to get involved in litigating the details of the arrangement between players and coaches and schools. You guys work that out, just like we require every other industry to do this. I think in the end, this bill, if it passes and becomes law, is actually going to be a long-term threat to college athletics. And I will just end here. In the short run, I get it. It makes coaches’ lives easier. They don’t have to worry about players leaving if they are treated badly, if they are not compensated adequately. By Congress stepping in, dictating the terms with which students can play college athletics, it empowers coaches. But especially in football, where every single additional year you play, you are doing more damage to your brain, more damage to your ability to make money once you get into the pros, students are not dumb. They are not going to sit in college sports with a cap on their earnings and currently an inability to get to the pros until they have played 3 years of amateur athletics. They will find a way around college sports. That will be the primary impact of this artificial cap on compensation, this massive antitrust exemption for colleges. I think it may well, in the end, be the unwinding of college sports. The way to save college sports is to admit that these kids provide an incredibly valuable service, as the Supreme Court has judged as well, and they deserve to be fairly compensated. That, in the long run, would have been the best way to have made sure that we preserve college sports, which I agree with my colleagues is worth preserving. One of the most basic, fundamental American pastimes is the ability for us to come together, no matter our religion, our race, or our political affiliation, to root for our State’s team. That binds us together as Americans. In the end, I think this bill--maybe not in the first few years but in the long run--will be a greater threat to the stability of college sports than doing nothing. I yield the floor.”
Mr. President, the legislation that we’re going to be voting on tonight is predicated on a simple idea, the idea that college sports is in crisis and that it requires a fairly extraordinary act of legislative intervention to address this crisis. I am speaking in opposition to this bill, and I think it is important to start by answering the question: Is college sports in crisis? Is it in chaos, as Senator Cruz is fond of saying? Well, the facts don’t back up that characterization of college sports. I am a huge college sports fan. I watch a lot of college basketball, a little bit less but still a lot of college football, and I know that there are more people than ever showing up to these games and watching the games. The Big Ten just signed a $13 billion contract to broadcast its games. The revenue of the NCAA, broadly, is at an alltime high. The SEC and the Big Ten are both making over a billion dollars. Women’s sports is growing--92,000 people recently filled the stadium to watch a women’s volleyball match. Schools are adding, not subtracting, women’s programs. In fact, more people are paying attention to college sports than ever before. College sports is growing both on the men’s and the women’s side. And so, what is this crisis? Well, the crisis, it appears to me, is pretty simple. Young athletes who perform a service that would be worth billions in the free market are finally getting what they lawfully deserve. A system of exploitation--an illegal system of exploitation--in which the colleges and their industry allies colluded to keep as much of the $13 billion that the college sports industry generates for themselves, that system started to crumble because courts--as high as the Supreme Court--came to the inevitable conclusion that that system of exploitation was illegal. Justice Kavanaugh, in a 9 to 0 decision, says the current NCAA model is ``suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges [each] year.’’ Ruling 9 to 0, essentially, that that system was unlawful. And so this system of collusion by the colleges designed to keep the compensation of athletes as low as possible, it was ruled illegal is essentially what happened here. And the industry had two choices. They could either work out a new set of rules with the athletes. That is generally what has to happen if you want industry-wide rules that limit compensation, that limit that applicability of a free market. You have to negotiate with your employees--in this case the athletes--or you could come to Congress and get your illegal system deemed legal. And that is what we are essentially doing here today. We are taking a system that the Supreme Court said could not persist under our law, and we are changing the law to allow that illegal system to persist. How do we know that this bill is about solving that narrow crisis that I identified, that crisis of college athletes finally making money, and the adults in charge of the system not liking that the kids were making money? Well, the first way we know that is that the bill does really nothing to stop the runaway overall costs of college athletics, in particular, some of the biggest drivers of costs being facilities and the salaries of adults. Let us just take one example. And I see my friend from Louisiana is on the floor, currently. Just last week, LSU’s president said the school’s sports program is projected to carry a $26 million deficit, and the president said ``We have got to stop that bleeding.’’ A $26 million deficit. But LSU just agreed to pay their new coach Lane Kiffin $91 million over 7 years, along with other bonuses to him like 65 hours of private jet travel, temporary housing, courtesy vehicles. LSU also just paid a buyout of over $53 million to the coach they fired. In fact, last year, the buyouts for just three coaches at LSU totaled over $169 million, six times the annual operating deficit of the entire athletics program. So if you want to know what is driving the deficit at these big schools, it is not simply the amount of money they are paying the students. Those numbers are dwarfed by the amount of money that is going to coaches and the facilities. But yet, this bill constricts only--only caps--the money going to the players. It does nothing to cap the money going to the coaches. It does nothing to stop the continued billions of dollars going in to feed this facilities’ arms race. Second, what about the antitrust exemption? Why is that in the bill? Well, certainly not to help athletes. This antitrust exemption will allow schools in some cases to continue their practices that compromise athlete safety because now they have a broad antitrust exemption to do that. Perhaps we will pass an amendment that will help with that later today. What it primarily is in the bill for is to allow the schools to be able to bargain collectively in order to get a better TV deal. If the schools don’t have to worry about antitrust law, one of the things they can do is join together across conferences to bargain for additional TV revenue. And in this bill, only one-fifth of the revenue that comes in will have to be shared with the athletes. Whereas, in the professional leagues, about 50 percent of the revenue, including TV revenue, goes to the athletes. So, the antitrust exemption allows the schools to make a whole lot more money, and other provisions in the bill allow the schools to keep that money for themselves rather than share it in the same way that professional leagues might share it with the athletes. And then what about the transfer restrictions in the bill? Why do those only apply to players? I admit that the current system in which players can move from one school to the next every year is probably not in the best long-term interests of the sport. But if the goal is really to control costs, that provision would apply to coaches as well because one of the ways costs go up is that coaches can freely move after every season from one program to the other, bidding schools against each other. This bill says that a coach can’t leave in the middle of the season, but that almost never happens. The reality is this bill only says players can only transfer once without penalty. It doesn’t say anything about coaches. Now, as I said, I think that there are rules inside college athletics that don’t make a lot of sense right now: unlimited transfers; the potential ability for pro players to come back to college. These agent fees look ridiculous to me. But you don’t need a bill of this sweeping scope to address what are a set of minor but important practices in college athletics that have gotten out of control. We could have either passed a very narrow bill here to address the aging issue and the transfer issue, or we could have done what happens in most industries which is just say to the NCAA and to the colleges: Tough luck. Congress isn’t going to come in here and micromanage your relationship with the athletes. If you want to work something out, sit down and talk to the athletes about it. If you want rules that apply across the industry, then do what every other industry does, which is have a dialogue with the workers. Now, whether you want to admit that the athletes are workers or not, the Supreme Court has basically ruled that they need to be treated as such for compensation purposes. And so we have two other options besides this sweeping bill that, in my belief, preserves this system of exploitation. We could have either passed a much more narrow bill that I think would have gotten even broader consensus here, would have had an easier time passing the House, or we could have just said: You know what? Congress doesn’t want to get involved in litigating the details of the arrangement between players and coaches and schools. You guys work that out, just like we require every other industry to do this. I think in the end, this bill, if it passes and becomes law, is actually going to be a long-term threat to college athletics. And I will just end here. In the short run, I get it. It makes coaches’ lives easier. They don’t have to worry about players leaving if they are treated badly, if they are not compensated adequately. By Congress stepping in, dictating the terms with which students can play college athletics, it empowers coaches. But especially in football, where every single additional year you play, you are doing more damage to your brain, more damage to your ability to make money once you get into the pros, students are not dumb. They are not going to sit in college sports with a cap on their earnings and currently an inability to get to the pros until they have played 3 years of amateur athletics. They will find a way around college sports. That will be the primary impact of this artificial cap on compensation, this massive antitrust exemption for colleges. I think it may well, in the end, be the unwinding of college sports. The way to save college sports is to admit that these kids provide an incredibly valuable service, as the Supreme Court has judged as well, and they deserve to be fairly compensated. That, in the long run, would have been the best way to have made sure that we preserve college sports, which I agree with my colleagues is worth preserving. One of the most basic, fundamental American pastimes is the ability for us to come together, no matter our religion, our race, or our political affiliation, to root for our State’s team. That binds us together as Americans. In the end, I think this bill--maybe not in the first few years but in the long run--will be a greater threat to the stability of college sports than doing nothing. I yield the floor.