“I want the Senate to pass my amendment to this bill. College athletes often suffer serious, lifelong injuries, and $100 million is not enough to cover their medical care. My amendment raises this fund to $200 million and makes the NCAA and the biggest athletic conferences pay for it.”

“Mr. President, I would like to speak about my amendment Booker and Blumenthal 6805. To my colleagues, college athletes are putting their bodies out there on the line every day. And many of us who played, we know that some suffer serious, long-term injuries to their spines, their knees, their shoulders, and now what we are seeing is the explosion of CTE, traumatic brain injury. It is a crisis in our country. I know guys who have had to reach into their own pockets to pay for ongoing medical care literally for decades, and the cost of that care is going to continue to get higher and higher. And in some cases, these injuries athletes have, they are going to live with for the rest of their lives. Section 106 of this bill provides up to $100 million for a post- eligibility insurance and catastrophic injury fund. I am glad the bill recognizes college athletes need help covering the cost of injuries they sustained while playing, but I am skeptical that $100 million will be enough. There are roughly half a million college athletes competing at any given time. That money can go quickly when you are talking about serious, lifelong injuries. Our amendment would raise the cap on the fund from $100 million to $200 million. And, more importantly, it wouldn’t hurt small schools. It would be the NCAA and the Power Four conferences that would be responsible for covering the difference. These are the institutions that have built multibillion dollar industries around college sports. They should help ensure that athletes who suffer serious injuries have the resources to receive the care that they need. This amendment will provide greater resources to address athletes’ long-term injuries without placing additional financial burdens on schools--”

“Vote yes on this amendment. College athletes can have serious health problems years after they stop playing sports. We need to be responsible and fund their medical care, and this amendment provides the right amount of money to do that.”

“Mr. President, urging my colleagues to support this amendment. There is nothing in the bill that says that you have to take one from the other. What this bill is about is being responsible to athletes and responsible to their injuries. I think the Senator from New Jersey has articulated, as we know from anybody here who is on the Senate floor who is a physician, that this does happen to people much later in their lives, and they are dealing with it. This is the responsible thing to do, to set up this fund; and it is the responsible amount that the Senator from New Jersey is suggesting. I urge a ``yes’’ vote.”

“I want the Senate to pass my amendment. The bill puts strict rules and limits on what college athletes can earn, but it does nothing to control what coaches make. My amendment puts the same rules on coaches. It limits coach pay to $5 million a year and caps buyouts.”

“Mr. President, this is one of the hypocrisies in this bill. This bill targets athletes. It is subject to endorsement deals, redtape, scrutiny, and bureaucracy. It limits the amount of revenue that schools share with athletes, but there are no comparable restrictions on coaches or any other powerful actor in college sports. This strikes me as fundamentally unfair, especially when, during all these negotiations, college after college would whisper to me and say: There is a race to the bottom on these crazy coach salaries. On endorsement deals, the amendment subjects coaches’ endorsement deals to the same approval and disclosure requirements that would apply to athletes. On compensation, the amendment caps coaches’ salaries at $5 million a year and caps coaches’ contract buyouts at no more than 1 year’s salary, because in 2025 alone, just 15 college football coaches were owed almost a quarter of a billion dollars in buyouts to not coach. This amendment is about parity. This amendment is about fairness. If the bill’s supporters believe these rules are necessary for athletes, they should be willing to apply them to coaches as well.”

“I want the Senate to vote yes on this college sports bill. It is rare and important work.”

“Mr. President, the Senate has worked its will tonight, and that is a rare occasion on something this complicated but this important for America’s future. I thank all my colleagues. I urge a ``yes’’ vote and will speak after the vote in more detail.”

“I want the Senate to vote no on this bill. It is bad for college athletes. It does not treat them equally to coaches or give enough money for their health. It also fails to protect women's sports and Olympic athletes, and it stops athletes from suing over civil rights and privacy violations.”

“I know this bill is about to be passed, but I want to say very plainly, this bill sells out college athletes. This bill does not allow equal treatment between coaches and those athletes. This bill does not provide enough money left over for their health and interests. This bill gives permanent antitrust exemptions to this organization, and it does not create permanent protections for Olympic athletes, no permanent protections for women’s sports, and this bill undermines the ability for athletes to sue for privacy violations and civil rights violations. I urge my colleagues to vote no. I know this is not the final word on this legislation, and I am grateful for those colleagues that joined me in ``no’’ votes.”

“I want to clarify how this bill works. Colleges only get legal protection from antitrust laws while these specific rules are still in effect. I am asking Senator Coons to confirm that this is what the bill means.”

“Mr. President, I rise to clarify that the effect of the antitrust exemption in section 118 of the Protect College Sports Act in the event that the House settlement expires or terminates and Congress does not extend the revenue share cap. To be clear, the antitrust immunity for enforcing and complying with sections 114 and 115 applies only to the extent that the provisions of those sections continue to have force or effect. Senator Coons, do you agree that this is the intent of the legislation?”

“I want the House to pass this bill before the end of the year. It puts college football games back on free local TV instead of behind paywalls. It also brings fairness back to college sports and keeps a couple of giant leagues from taking over everything. I want to thank the senators and staff from both parties who worked together to pass it here.”

“Mr. President, I note that the Protect College Sports Act is also critical to local broadcasters. Right now, too many college football games are trapped behind paywalls. The Protect College Sports Act aims to change that by supporting consumers’ access to TV. And I understand Senator Moran has entered a statement in the record on this topic; and I agree with him on this, in putting college football on free TV on local broadcasting stations instead of in paywalls. I did not, before the vote, take time to thank all the people involved with this legislation, and I would like to take that opportunity now. First of all, I want to thank Senator Cruz for his partnership on this legislation and working to create a bipartisan bill that I think the majority of our colleagues showed tonight that they support, and I hope that we will get our colleagues in the House of Representatives to also agree on that before the end of the year. Obviously, this legislative process is a challenging one, and we would not have been here at this moment without a lot of help from a lot of different people. I want to thank especially Senators Schmitt and Coons for their tremendous leadership in being partners with Senator Cruz and I on this legislation. The two of them provided key input, support--debatable, argumentative points of view at various points of time. But there is no way we would have gotten this legislation over the goal line without Senator Schmitt and Senator Coons, and I just want to thank them immensely for their long partnership in working with Senator Cruz and myself. And I also want to thank James Barton, who is with Senator Coons, because he played a key role in all of this, and I very much appreciate his support. I also want to thank key members of the Commerce Committee because they played very important roles in this: Senator Hickenlooper drafting the language and negotiation as it related to the U.S. Olympic provisions of the bill; Senator Lujan for drafting and getting amendments accepted related to the coaches; Senator Baldwin on a key amendment that we just adopted tonight by, as I said earlier, a record 96 to 1 vote, which shows that this place, when you let the right people in the room, can come to a conclusion--not just that, but that our colleagues also trust that that process can work too and rewarded that with a big, big vote tonight. So very much appreciate that. I also appreciate the President’s sports council--Randy Levine, Cody Campbell, Jack Swarbrick--all played big roles in this, probably nobody more than Randy Levine in constantly pushing the White House point of view on this legislation and Cody Campbell making sure that everybody understood that opening up the Sports Broadcasting Act was a great idea. That also seconded, obviously, by Jack, who added an AD perspective to the debate. I also want to thank a couple of big Washingtonians who played a key role in this. Mark Few, the famous--now Hall of Fame--Gonzaga coach who was just constant--now I know what it would have been like to play for Gonzaga because he was constantly saying: Maria, it is just about getting the basics done, about eligibility, about transfer, and about basic rules. And he reminded me of that all the time. I also want to thank Washington AD Pat Chun, who took endless phone calls from us. I want to thank WSU President Cantwell, who was in a trying situation of her own. Literally, the Pac-12 blew up, took $35 million of revenue out of her institution, and she had to figure out a path forward and engage on this legislation and try to help us all think about what is a fair way to move college sports forward, and she did that. And I appreciate her time. And certainly Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould, who testified before the committee and added a lot of input about what not to do next, and I just can’t thank her enough because I see even tonight some of this debate veered into the realm of what not to do. And I hope that we can continue to make corrections on that as we dialogue with our House colleagues because the last thing that we need to do is have another Pac-12 incident. But we need to grow regional sports, grow the regional system, and make it stronger. I also want to thank the many people on the Commerce Committee staff who--oh, I have to thank Senator Welch. Senator Welch also signing on early to the legislation, Senator Peters helping us with the Big 10, Senator Klobuchar doing the same, all of them were so helpful in this legislation. Now to the committee staff. Senator Cruz talked a lot about how this negotiation went on for months and months and months and hours and hours a day, and he talked about Cuban coffee. All that was true. It took a lot to keep us in a room discussing immense legal terms with a variety of conferences and individuals and athletes from all over the country. But I want to thank staff director Lila Helms, our general counsel Melissa Porter, Nicole Frazer, Phil Murphy, and Ramesh Nagarajan. Those individuals right there spent the majority of time working on this legislation. But Shannon Smith, who served on the committee for 5 years and recently retired, she deserves a jersey all by herself. I kid with her about saying it is going to say ``Jaxon Smith-Njigba,’’ but instead, it is just going to say ``Shannon Smith’’ and then some name because she deserves a new title for the immense amount of effort. We would just not even have a bill on the floor tonight if it weren’t for her efforts. But Nicole and Melissa and Lila, I can’t say enough about their leadership and patience in driving a process that was just fraught with different opinions. That is just all there is to it, fraught with different opinions and a lot of negotiations. So I think it will go down in history as one of the most challenging issues because, unlike a lot of policy issues that we deal with here in the U.S. Senate, you have different issues and they follow a certain path. They follow a construct. It might be consumer versus business; it might be various things. In this case, we had a lot of different viewpoints across the entire ecosystem of sports. And if there was a characterization here, it was definitely that nobody wanted the two big divisions to run away and be a super league and continue to X out the revenue and that everybody wanted to drive some sanity back into the system. But that sounds simple compared to what these individuals went through. So I really can’t thank enough Lila Helms, Melissa Porter, and Nicole Frazer for their incredible work on this. Phil and Ramesh, great work, challenging policy, appreciate their efforts. I want to thank Elizabeth Cuttner; Erik Eykel; Kate Sprague; Connor Jennings; Tricia Enright; Rob Blumenthal; Ciara O’Donoghue; Josephine Laing; Zoe Garrett; and Amit Ronen from our staff, who is here on the floor tonight; Ansley Lacitis, who I think got to know the entire press corps for sports across the United States and took all their questions and probably has some to feed back to them; Lauren Bazel; Seth Kolloen. And I want to thank Senator Cruz’ staff because, obviously, they worked very hard on this legislation. Brad Grantz, his staff director; Nicole Christus; Joel Wellum--I want to thank Joel specifically because Joel obviously took a lot of direct questioning, a lot of pushing by us and me particularly, and I appreciate his hard work--Michael Spierto; Ryan Cannon; and Justin Adams and Casey Contres. So there is no way to really sum up all of the thanks in one statement. I do want to thank my colleague Senator Moran, who is on the floor tonight, because he started this effort in the committee many years ago and had great thoughts on what we needed to do and got us all pointed in the right direction and kept the dialogue moving through myself and Senator Wicker, and then as Senators Booker and Blumenthal and I continued to dialogue, and then ultimately Senator Schmitt and I, and Senator Coons and Schmitt and I, and then ultimately this legislation with Senator Cruz and I. So this long, challenged situation of figuring out how to make more sense out of college sports, I want to thank him as well. So we definitely made the will of the Senate work tonight, and I hope we can do more of that. I hope we can find where there is the ability to solve problems. We obviously have a very big difference of opinion, but there probably isn’t a bigger gulf and difference of opinion. I say Senator Cruz and I probably disagree on 25 different issues, and that is just in the Commerce Committee, but if we can do that tonight and produce a product, I guarantee you the rest of us can. And tonight, it is about making sports about sports again. So I thank my colleagues for this legislation and now on to working with our colleagues in the House. I yield the floor.”

• Weak reasoning
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  Speech in the House

  Reasoning 33 of 100

  Of the 3 conclusions drawn, 2 rested on reasons that did not support them.

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• Little substance
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  Speech in the House

  Signal 28 of 100

  Much of this statement went to praise, blame, greetings, routine procedure or general stories rather than reasons, requests or specific points.

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“The Senate worked together across party lines to pass this college sports bill with 77 votes. Now I want the House to pass it so it can become law.”

“Mr. President, I just wanted to briefly add my comments this evening to thank Senator Cantwell and Senator Cruz. They have shown how two Senators from very different backgrounds, different regions, and different political values can work together tirelessly to hammer out a bipartisan solution that tonight won 77 votes on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I want to specifically thank my chief counsel James Barton, who helped me get up to speed on this issue and make modest contributions at the early stages of this legislation, and to thank the staff of Senators Cantwell and Cruz for their tireless work on this over many cups of Cuban coffee, over many late-night conversations, over lots of texts and emails and meetings. It was my honor to make small contributions to this great work by Senators Cantwell and Cruz, who have demonstrated what is possible in this body when folks bend their will toward something that matters to hundreds of millions of Americans but that is complicated and has lots of competing interests and lots of challenging issues at stake. I look forward to working with my friends and colleagues in the House to ensure this bill gets passed and signed into law. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from Kansas.”