WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, gave the following opening statement at today’s full committee hearing on the future of college sports:
“My colleagues probably know that there are probably 25 things that Senator Cruz and I don’t agree on, and that’s just in this committee. So, saying that it is an accomplishment for him and I to agree on this is saying something.
“We agree today that college athletics are in crisis, and we agree that the system is broken and unsustainable. Universities, athletes, and fans are pleading with us to do something about this issue.
“Schools are cutting women’s and Olympic programs, and they are dropping scholarships – I think we have a poster out here that shows that – erasing roster slots to try to keep pace with out-of-control spending in football and basketball. I think, as Coach Saban says in his statement, this has turned into pay-for-play. We cannot have a pay-for-play system and then continue to cut this many women and Olympic athletes in various programs.
“Just since 2023, over 100 programs and more than 1000 athletic scholarships and roster [spots] in women and Olympic sports have been eliminated, and it’s going to get worse. In April, the University of Arkansas and St. Louis University both announced within days of each other they were going to cut the women’s—actually and men’s—tennis teams.
“Kansas, Colorado, Rutgers, and Washington State –my home state – beloved institutions with strong alumni bases and storied histories – are getting hollowed out. And even if the universities are not cutting sports programs, they are taxing students who are not athletes and taking money out of their general funds to cover ballooning athletic program deficit.
“James Madison University now charges every student an extra $2,400 a year for athletics, whether or not they ever step on a field. What once felt like a shared national pastime has become a free-for-all, a money flowing with few guardrails, players and coaches constantly moving, and schools struggling to keep pace.
“As Coach Saban notes in his testimony – and I thank you for emphasizing the effect on women and Olympic athletes. I appreciate that coming from a football coach. The whole ecosystem is important. Coach Saban says, ‘We will lose scholarships. We will lose Olympic pipelines. We will lose chances for young people who may never play professionally, but whose lives are changed by college sports.’
“The pay-per-play antics and this failed system are putting our future Olympic athletes and future women[‘s] sports participants at risk. When you ask the American public in a poll about this, it’s not football that rises to the top.
“Only 54% of the respondents say they really care about football. 87% of the respondents say the most important thing they worry about is women[‘s] and Olympic sports. And why not? Because they understand how unique they are and how threatened they are by a system that cuts even $1 from where we are investing today.
“Clearly, both of these things – women[‘s] and Olympic sports – need larger investments than we are doing today. Other countries, like China and Russia, recruit their athletes and do it through dedicated programs and dedicated facilities. We rely on our college system instead to help train the best.
“Three out of four members of the 2024 Olympic team in Paris were current or former college athletes, and it was the women Olympians in Paris who took home the majority of the gold. As Notre Dame Athletic Director Pete Bevacqua, who is here with us today, said, “If we continue to go down this path of no legislative action, Olympic and women’s sports around the United States will be at risk both this year and years to come.”
“I believe the failure of us to act here will make us responsible for the outcome of future Olympic teams if we don’t come up with a solution. But as my colleague Senator Cruz said, none of this is inevitable. We can and we should write better rules that put athletes first and keep our institution strong, and that is exactly what the [Protect] College Sports Act does.
“It protects college athletes’ hard-won rights to be paid [for their] name, image, and likeness and recognizes revenue sharing, as in the (House v. NCAA) settlement agreement. It replaces a patchwork of weak state laws with strong federal laws.
“And our bill makes sure that an athlete cannot lose a scholarship because of an injury or a bad [game] and it requires Division 1 schools to guarantee those scholarships even after they’ve graduated to make sure they can complete their college education.
“It requires Division 1 schools to have medical care while athletes play, and for five years after. And we create a $60 million trust fund for athletes with long-term conditions like CTE. That is [a] landmark investment. It also makes sure that medical staff is independent, so that coaches can never overrule a doctor, and it ensures that whistleblowers can’t be retaliated against.
“The bill puts real rules on unscrupulous agents who have started to exploit our youngest athletes at the high school level, and it does this by making sure that we cap their fees and make sure that they are registered in their states.
“It also ensures that the NCAA and conferences cannot provide women with unequal facilities. That means travel, meals, rest, championship tournaments, women get to be treated equally as the men’s team. And these rights have teeth. If they’re violated, the athletes can have their day in court.
“This bill also gives institutions a way to raise more money without having to raid endowments or levy new fees. I believe, and I hope that Mr. Gee will emphasize on this today, we cannot lose the innovation race with China because we are cutting university R&D and putting it into sports instead.
“These institutions have very important roles for our nation right now, and [under the bill] any school that chooses can pool its media rights and negotiate with [broadcasters], similar to what the NFL and NBA do today.
“It lets these schools build smarter schedules, so regional rivals can play closer to home. It requires that every football and basketball game be offered in local markets for free viewing in the home market. I think every one of my colleagues will want to go home and talk about this. We are not letting content be put behind a paywall, so that you can only access it – your favorite team – if you buy a subscription.
“And it brings in real revenue. Experts believe that this could bring in an additional $4 to 8 billion in media rights revenue, money that we would like to dedicate to women and Olympic sports. The solution here is to grow the pie, not shrink it, and give schools more resources.
“Senator Capito and I wrote the Equal Pay for Team USA Act, now the law of the land, which requires women representing this country [to] receive the same pay, medical care, and travel and expenses as men, and this bill carries that same principle into law here for college.
“We all remember the women’s NCAA basketball players given a single rack of dumbbells while they were playing in a championship tournament, and the men had a full weight room. So, this cannot be the standard.
“So, Mr. Chairman, I again want to thank you for the hard work that this legislation represents. Many athletes have been hurt by us not having this legislation: as I mentioned, athletes who basically failed to get a scholarship, or a team that did not stick up for them when they were hurt and shouldn’t be playing, or someone whose program got canceled, and then tried to go play golf at another school, only to be told by the NCAA they couldn’t play.
“This bill puts real athletes’ rights into federal law, and I hope we can make it the law of the land very soon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”
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