Hearings to examine positioning student-athletes for success in school and beyond.

Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will please come to order. People love college sports. They go to bars just to watch a game. I bleed purple and gold for LSU, but I like to say that any team in my state, I bleed their colors on game day. And there is nothing like a great football game at LSU Death Valley. You get up early, you tailgate, you watch game day with your friends until it is time to go to the stadium, and it brings people together. There is a community. Ashley Moody just stepped out, but I could even like Ashley Moody because we connect over, you know, SEC sports even though she is a Florida fan. But more importantly, though, as important as that is, student-athletes can change the trajectory of their life by participating in college athletics. Collis Temple, who is a good friend of mine, he is one of our witnesses, will speak of that student-athlete from a small rural town breaking out of poverty, having opportunities they never could have imagined because they get an athletic scholarship. And the family, good people, but the parents had not gone to college, did not have the vision, the athlete then goes to college, maybe the only way they could go to college is with a scholarship, they see the broader world, and their life changes. Sports gives these young people that chance, and parents want it for their children. By the way, not that we need to just a comment for context because we all know it, sports is an economic gold mine. The LSU home football games bring in millions of dollars to Baton Rouge, hotels and restaurants. I go to Phil's Oyster Bar, he says if LSU wins a game, oh my gosh, his business is great for the whole week. And so people go to bars, restaurants, the school benefits, the endowment at the school benefits. In many ways, there is great economic impact. College admissions and application rates to a school which has just won a national championship goes up. We can continue to speak about this multi-billion dollar impact not just upon the student but upon the university, upon the community, upon the state, and all that in a setting which I bring this up, people say it is a wild, wild west. With that context, NIL and everything that has occurred, it just spontaneously people say it is a wild, wild west. For the first time, student-athletes are sharing revenue. Coach Tuberville, who I am sure will be here later, said when he was a coach at Auburn, he advocated for that from the get-go. Even before the NCAA was forced to do it, Coach Tuberville and others were saying there should be revenue sharing. That is a good thing. The bad thing is that I gather that some people are preying upon these young athletes. Not praying like, dear Lord, bless their lives. No, like sign this contract and the contract is not to the advantage of the student-athlete. Exploiting them to make decisions that sometimes leave them without a degree, without being set up for that future success, knowing that according to Coach Tuberville, only 0.2 percent of these athletes will play in the pros. The highest number I have heard is 2 percent. Whatever it is, 98 to 99.8 percent of these athletes will not play in the pros. So the goal of their experience in university should be to set them up for life. The question is, is that happening? Now, clearly the student-athlete should share in the revenue, but it is a false choice to say we must choose between them receiving no revenue sharing and the current system which spontaneously people call the wild, wild west, where as many as 98 percent, I won't quite say that, but a significant percent will lose that setting up for success for the rest of their life. So it is fair to say that court decisions, the lack of rules, leadership hampered by all this has created confusion and potentially opened the door to exploitation. And a common theme I hear aside from wild, wild west is the current system is unsustainable. Title IX violations may be something to consider. In fact, we should consider it to make sure that it isn't, and if Title IX is being violated, we should address it. There doesn't seem to be enough money to turn a student-athlete into an employee-athlete and simultaneously fund non-revenue sports. Because what I am hearing is that if the expense increases too much, schools will cut non-revenue sports and as a result cut off thousands of young people's chances to go to college. By the way, you cannot eliminate women's sports because of Title IX, but you can reduce how much money is being invested and shared with the players, and that is not what we want. At most colleges, sports are not profitable. So the president of the NAIA warned at a round table that many small and medium-sized colleges would not be able to survive the cost of collective bargaining. Think about it. I am not sure that Senator Baldwin is still here. I would be interested in the impact on High Point University if they could keep their basketball program, shall we note in the NCAA tournament took out Wisconsin. You will get your chance. So the current...

I had Wisconsin winning everything.

Did you?

I was cheering for your team.

My bracket had McNeese winning everything. I have not done well. The current landscape is just replacing one unfair system for another. Short-term financial gain with NIL deals is overshadowing the value of an education and the value of Olympic and women's sports. Remember once more, the majority of these student-athletes will not go pro. So we must encourage them to get their education and make sure that they are set up for success. Any solution we come up with must protect the student-athlete as a student. And the Power Four conferences represent less than 10 percent of student-athletes. Now, again, constantly hear people ask, will Congress do something? This committee has responsibility over education, labor, and pensions, also health. We should tackle it. Let's bring stability so students and institutions can navigate without unnecessary burden or cost. Let's get off the sidelines. This hearing is how do we set up the student-athlete for success whether he or she attends a Power Five, NAIA, a mid-major, or an HBCU, and along the way make sure we take care of the universities as well. I thank my witnesses for being here. With that, I recognize Senator Murphy for his opening statement.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good to sit next to you at this very important hearing. Really appreciate your willingness to put this hearing on. Important for this committee to exercise, as you note, our jurisdiction over this really critical issue. So listen, like you, I am a huge college sports fan. I am a huge college basketball fan in particular. My state stops on weeks like this to follow both the men's and women's team in the tournament. Much of my life has been shaped by playing and watching sports. I wasn't good enough to play in college, but you know, I wouldn't have needed to be paid. I mean, I would have paid to play sports in college. That is how important it was to me and my upbringing. And so what I see is that our mission is to save college sports because there is so much good that comes from it. Senator Cassidy, you talked about the athletes who get so much from their participation, lives are changed, but I also think about the way that fandom brings together people across political and cultural spectrums to root for their local team. College sports, it is a unifying exercise in our country. It is part of what is great about America. But greed and big business, it is threatening the college sports model, especially in those big money-making sports like football and basketball. The model has become extractive and exploitative. In no other billion-dollar industry in America are wages controlled so vigorously and unfairly for the most valuable employees. And the high-value athletes who labor under a system of collusion and wage suppression aren't going to do it for much longer. Either the top-performing players are going to abandon college athletics, and that is already happening to an extent in college basketball, or the Supreme Court is going to eventually rule that the whole system is illegal and unconstitutional. In the unanimous 9-0 Alston decision, Brett Kavanaugh, conservative justice, said this, quote, "Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate." Now, I know the solution that the NCAA and its most powerful schools want is for us to just pass legislation that limits the ability for the highest-value athletes to earn a fair market rate. Exactly what the unanimous Supreme Court decision said was so wrong about college athletics. They want a fig leaf to pacify athletes, some compensation, but far less, far less than what they are worth, so that the adults, the high-earning coaches, the sports industry CEOs, and others can keep their position of primacy as the primary monetary beneficiaries in a corrupt system. And let's just put all our cards on the table here. Part of what makes this corrupt is that this is an economically unfair system, but it is also a question of civil rights. It shouldn't be lost on anybody that the people who would make the most money off of continued wage restrictions would be white male adults, and the people who would lose the most are young black athletes. The SCORE Act, which is in the House now, is an effort to put the big schools back in a position where they can collude and wage suppress. It fails to require Title IX compliance, which mandates equitable treatment for female athletes. It bars players from being considered employees and grants the NCAA a blanket antitrust exemption. It wouldn't solve the problem because it would permanently push the highest-value athletes out of college sports, and I think that would just diminish the experience for everyone. I also don't think it can pass. More than a dozen organizations have come out against it, including the Congressional Black Caucus. Two final things. First, I do hope we talk about the impact on the so-called Olympic sports and women's sports. I acknowledge that is a really important issue here. But personally, I suspect that it is a red herring to suggest that there isn't enough money in the existing system to be able to both fairly compensate the highest-value athletes in the high-revenue sports and continue high-level college athletics in the other sports and for women. I think that sounds like a scare tactic to try to preserve the current system in which the very rich folks stay very rich. And lastly, let me be clear. The current system that we have now with non-transparent NIL deals, secret booster collectives, players moving teams every year, that is not worth defending either. It is better for the athletes than the old system, but it is also not working. Now, I have introduced legislation that would create college players associations so that the athletes can just negotiate directly with the schools and frankly keep Congress out of micromanaging college sports. I think that is the best way forward. But I do submit that we need to fix what was wrong with the old system, but also what's wrong with the existing system. And that is why I think this hearing is so timely and so important. So Mr. Chairman, thanks for allowing me to join you on the dais this morning.

Thank you, Senator Murphy. And just for the people watching, in this committee, we would not have jurisdiction over issues of antitrust, the collective, and wage restrictions. I suppose there could be something regarding labor unions, which we do have jurisdiction over, but we certainly have no kind of ability to regulate what a university or a collective would pay an athlete. So just for the folks who, and Senator Murphy knows that, but just to make sure that we all understand that. So let's start with our witnesses. We'll introduce each witness as that witness's turn comes up, and I'll introduce the Republican witnesses, and I presume you will introduce the Democratic witnesses. First, we're joined today by Collis Temple, an entrepreneur and member of the LSU Board of Supervisors. Mr. Temple played basketball at LSU, played professionally with the ABA, was the first African American major sport scholar-athlete to attend Louisiana State University, and has been a mentor to generations of athletes since. Among his many entrepreneurial ventures, he's a real estate developer and builder, established a nonprofit organization housing over 5,000 individuals, including foster youth, adjudicated youth, and those with disabilities and challenges. He earned his bachelor's and master's in business administration from LSU. Mr. Temple, thank you for joining us. And each of you have five minutes. So sir, if you could go and hit that button in front of you, the microphone, and the clock's ticking.

Senators, I certainly appreciate the opportunity to share with you again. As you as you may or may not know, I was here a couple of weeks ago and and we were discussing in in a roundtable discussion this this really, really important topic. When we speak about college athletics, I I heard a moment ago someone make a comment about the fact that that people aren't able to, the majority of people aren't able to make the pros. What I do is I I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, the fact that every student-athlete who goes to a university and completes an academic performance standard has an opportunity to be a pro. We just need to realize that that pros are mathematicians, pros are scientists, pros are English teachers, pros are congressmen, pros are senators, pros are people who have a lifetime of opportunity to have a lifetime of success in whatever endeavor they they meet and whatever challenges they meet as they ascend through the college ranks. Now, we all know that we're talking about money, dollars and cents here. And one of the things that's really significant is that the major players in our community, and I consider, most of us consider the major players being our elected officials at the very highest rank. We're talking about senators. We're talking about congressmen. We have an opportunity to right a ship that is quickly fading into the depths of the ocean when we talk about college athletics and not being able to correct the things that need to be corrected. Now, there are some simple measures that that should be put in place. We need to put guardrails up so that there's an age limit involved in college athletics. Well, when you say what kind of age limit guardrails? Certainly, you we all are aware that a 17, 18, 19-year-old athlete, it's almost impossible for that athlete to compete with a 23, 24, 25, 26-year-old college athlete. I mean, it's just it's almost impossible. Coach Tuberville can make that really, really clear. And if, you know, if you have an average age of 24, 25, 26-year-old guys competing against 18, 19, 20-year-old guys, there's just no way you're going to have college guys outplaying professional guys. So there there needs to be the guardrail of age. And I know this is getting down in the weeds, but these are the kind of things that need to be put in place. When you talk about the issue of making sure that the athletes are prepared for life in the professional ranks, you're talking about putting young folk in a place in college where they can have access to performance, academic performances that involve training in financial literacy and other kinds of specific things that will involve them being able to maneuver through life after the athletic career is over in college and and professionally. And I'm sure that most of you have heard about many of the things that impact young young athletes who come out of college either too early or some who come out of college and they're not prepared for things in the professional ranks. The tax structure will eat these young folk alive if they're not familiar at all with how that process works. That's something that's really, really important. So the simple thing to do is put some standards in place so student-athletes not online but in person are involved in academic performances when they're in college. So you can simply put things in place their freshman year where they have to go both semesters and involve be involved in financial literacy course type work. And there are there are a number of other things that need to be addressed in and like I, you know, I'm making a comment about being in the weeds and it may not be something that that some folk would think about, but this literacy thing is so critically important. Also having access to proper management, having people who are just not fly-by-night folk who manage these people's finances and who are not trained to help preserve the future as it as they move forward in the financial world and professional world. So there are just a number of things that that need to be addressed here and I'm I'm really glad to be here to share in them today. Thank you.

Thank you. And I would be remiss if I didn't say that Collis, who's a personal friend, has been very influential in my approach to all these issues. So thank you, Mr. Temple. Next, I just found out today, Dr. Scott is a Baton Rouge native, but unfortunately went to Texas A&M to play football, so we disown him, you know what I'm saying?

Very briefly in basketball.

He is the inaugural Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics at Grambling State University, has led a transformative era marked by strategic innovation and competitive success and institutional growth. He has developed and implemented the department's strategic plan, Sports Programs Win. He has promoted the profile of the Grambling University through multiple ways, including major facility enhancement. Competitively, the department has achieved multiple Southwest Athletic Conference championships and NCAA post-season success while academically posting a 970 APR. I'll also point out that when I was a young person, except for Notre Dame, Grambling had more pro football players in the NFL than any other any other school. And so Grambling has a rich academic history and Eddie Robinson, their head coach, I think is the second leading coach after Joe Paterno in terms of most wins. So thank you, Dr. Scott, for being here. We look forward to your perspective.

Thank you for having me as well. It's a perfect segue with Coach Robinson and all that he was able to achieve as a coach during his 56-year tenure leading and molding men at Grambling State University. And I certainly like to begin my testimony by making one of his famous quotes that is still relevant today. The tail is about to wag the dog. When Coach Robinson spoke these words before Congress on July 31, 1984, he was issuing a warning grounded in foresight and experience. In the wake of the NCAA versus Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, which stripped the NCAA of control over television rights, Coach Robinson recognized that this era was emerging. One where exposure, revenue, and influence would no longer be evenly distributed, rather concentrated among institutions with the most resources and visibility. He understood that television was not just a platform, but a power structure that would reshape recruiting, funding, and competitive balance, leaving under-resourced programs at a systemic disadvantage. At Grambling, we don't speak about college athletics in theory, we speak from lived experience, much due to Coach Robinson and what he was able to contribute. For more than a century, we've stood as a place where opportunity was created in the absence of resources, where excellence was built through discipline, and where young men and women, many from underrepresented and under-resourced communities, found a pathway to education, leadership, and economic mobility through sport. Our program where history and purpose are inseparable, Coach Robinson did not simply build a winning program. He built a model of access and transformation that changed lives, families, and communities through generations. Coach Robinson's warning was not about resisting change, but about preserving the purpose of college athletics. He feared that as external financial interests gained influence, the educational mission and developmental focus of the system would be overshadowed. Speaking on behalf of institutions without equal access to these growing revenue streams, he called for intentionality, for safeguards that would ensure equity, and for yes, opportunity to remain central to the model. His words were a challenge to decision-makers to consider not just what college athletics could become, but what it should remain. That warning has come to pass in today's collegiate athletics landscape. What was once a caution has now become our reality. From the perspective of a Division I athletics director at a low-resource NCAA institution, that forecast has materialized into a series of pressing structural realities that must be addressed with both clarity and urgency. As Vice President of Intercollegiate Athletics, I carry the responsibility of leading a program rooted in tradition, opportunity, and transformation. My perspective shaped not only by my professional experience in collegiate athletics, but also by my time as a former Division I student-athlete at a low-resource institution. Today I have the privilege of serving student-athletes, ensuring they are supported academically, competitively, and personally in an increasingly complex environment. We are operating in a system where competitive balance is no longer a shared expectation, but an increasingly distant idea. Institutions with substantial financial backing exist in a different reality than those without. The gap is visible in recruiting, in retention, in facilities, in staffing, and ultimately, in outcomes. Without a unified national framework, disparities have widened to the point where equity is no longer the goal, survival is. Competitive balance has shifted into something far more complex than wins and losses. Programs with access to significant financial resources are functioning in a different ecosystem altogether. They are able to invest heavily in athlete compensation opportunities in ways that others simply cannot replicate. For institutions without those resources, the challenge is not just competing on the field, it's competing for relevance, visibility, and for the ability to retain talent that has already been developed internally. The gap continues to widen and without structural intervention, it becomes increasingly difficult to close. Opportunity, which has long been the heartbeat of collegiate athletics, is also being constrained. Extended eligibility and shifting policies have slowed roster turnover, which directly impacts the number of available scholarships. At underfunded institutions where each scholarship represents a critical investment, that creates a bottleneck. Talented high school student-athletes are finding fewer entry points and programs are forced to make a difficult decision on how to allocate already limited, difficult resources. Can I ask for like 30 more seconds?

Sure.

I'll close here. The SCORE Act establishes a national framework for name, image, and likeness activity as institutions will be required to carefully evaluate how resources, support services, and institutional involvement are distributed. Although NIL compensation is largely driven by market demand and individual visibility, universities cannot ignore their responsibility to maintain gender equity in the support structure surrounding those opportunities. This creates a nuanced challenge as institutions must navigate a space where free market dynamics intersect with federal compliance obligations. Collegiate athletics, and I will close, is a uniquely American institution full of opportunity, and it must be allowed to continue as such. I would not be sitting here in this room today, a kid from North Baton Rouge, Louisiana, without collegiate sports opening a door for me. I want that door to remain open for young men and women to follow. The warning from Coach Robinson was never about control, it was about consequence. And now the responsibility to respond belongs to us. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Dr. Scott. Next we'll hear from Abby Lynch, a 2025 graduate from the University of Illinois where she ran track, played soccer, and earned an undergraduate degree in finance at the Gies School of Business. She earned Academic Big Ten honors twice and is completing her two-year term representing the Big Ten Conference on the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. She now works as an analyst at a healthcare management consulting firm in Chicago and brings a unique perspective having played multiple sports and represented fellow student-athletes. Thank you, Ms. Lynch.

Thank you so much, Senator Cassidy. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Abigail Lynch and I'm a former dual-sport student-athlete at the University of Illinois. I had the privilege of competing in the Big Ten Conference alongside some of the country's best athletes while also earning a world-class education. I'm here representing the voices of hundreds of thousands of student-athletes across the Big Ten and NCAA. College athletics is not broken. Every day, student-athletes train rigorously and compete at the highest level while also dedicating time to their studies and preparing for life after sport. This uniquely American system continues to produce some of the world's most talented athletes and leaders while expanding access to higher education for individuals who may not have otherwise had the opportunity. My own experience reflects that. At Illinois, I competed in women's soccer and track for four years. Balancing two teams, travel, and a full academic course load sometimes felt impossible, especially when dealing with injuries. In those moments, the support system around me made all the difference. I had access to athletic trainers, team doctors, and comprehensive healthcare that allowed me to recover and continue competing at a high level. At the same time, my coaches and academic advisors reinforced that I was a student first, holding me accountable in the classroom, supporting my academic goals, and celebrating those achievements just as much as my athletic performance. I may not have been the most talented athlete, but college athletics gave me something arguably more important than accolades: discipline, leadership, and lifelong relationships. This experience worked because it was grounded in education, development, and support, not solely athletic performance. And that's why I'm here today, to protect and advocate for the system that has provided a life-changing experience for me and so many others. Because while college athletics is not broken, it's becoming increasingly unstable. We are seeing constant change across name, image, and likeness, transfer activity, eligibility, and more, all often without consistent national standards. Teams experience significant roster turnover year after year, and too many student-athletes transfer multiple times without making meaningful academic progress. This instability is unsustainable and not in the best interest of student-athletes. We need a path forward that provides stability while continuing to expand opportunities. First, as you consider the future of college athletics, I encourage caution in broadly classifying student-athletes as employees. Student-athletes should absolutely have opportunities to benefit from their name, image, and likeness and the value they create for their institutions and the league itself, the NCAA. However, a sweeping employment model could have unintended consequences. It risks shifting the focus away from education and development and could impact essential resources such as healthcare, academic services, and student-athlete development. Such a model also raises significant concerns for Olympic and non-revenue sports, and there are really important considerations around Title IX and equitable opportunities. The potential cost and consequences of such a shift are too high. Second, there is a clear need for a consistent NIL national framework. Right now, college athletics operates under a patchwork of state laws, institutional policies, and legal challenges. This creates inequities between institutions and conferences and makes it difficult to establish fair and consistent rules for all student-athletes. A federal NIL framework paired with clear standards for eligibility, recruiting, and transfer activity would help restore competitive equity and provide much-needed clarity to all. Third, we need a structure that allows these rules to be enforced. Without a structure that has certain legal protections, efforts to create consistent rules will continue to face challenges. Rules without teeth are just words on paper. To truly protect all student-athletes and ensure fairness, we need a system and governing body capable of enforcing standards and maintaining stability. Finally, any solution must keep all student-athletes at the center. This means protecting access to healthcare, education, scholarships, and resources like financial literacy and career preparation. At its core, this issue is not political, it's about sports which are meant to bring us all together. College athletics doesn't need to be torn down and rebuilt, it needs to be stabilized and modernized in a thoughtful way. We have an opportunity to get this right with a path that balances opportunity and stability. And I'm hopeful we can find it together. Thank you so much for your dedication to public service and the commitment to betterment for college sports. I appreciate your time today.

Thank you, Ms. Lynch. Senator Murphy.

Thank you. First I'd like to introduce to the committee Michaela Pivec. She's co-founder and organizing director of the United College Athletes Association, a players association built to ensure that college athletes are protected, are educated, but also fairly compensated. Ms. Pivec is a professional basketball player and a former Oregon State women's basketball captain. She was drafted 25th overall in the 2020 WNBA draft. Ms. Pivec, thank you for your work and for being here today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of this committee. My name is Michaela Pivec. I'm a professional basketball player, former All-American at Oregon State University where I was captain and led our team to one Elite Eight and two Sweet 16s before being drafted to the WNBA. I'm now co-founder and organizing director of the United College Athletes Association, UCAA, which is a players association that gives college athletes a real voice to secure a system that is safe, fair, and sustainable for generations. I grew up in Lynnwood, Washington and fell in love with basketball in third grade after my dad took me to a Seattle Storm game. Players like Sue Bird, Lauren Jackson, and Candace Parker inspired me to chase my dreams. So every night, I made my dad rebound for me for hours. And by the time it got dark, he'd want to go to sleep and I'd always say, just one more dad, just one more. And we'd count down like I was hitting a buzzer beater in March Madness. My work ethic took me to the next level. I led my team to the Elite Eight, busted some brackets in the process in front of millions on ESPN. I even competed against Sue Bird and Team USA. I was no longer on the playground with orange slices from mom and participation trophies for everyone. I sacrificed everything to compete at this level because of how much I love our game. But that's not why I'm here today. I'm here today because the NCAA has failed and continues to fail to protect and respect college athletes. When I was in college, I was working over 50 hours a week on my sport while earning less than $8 an hour from a $1,600 monthly stipend. I DoorDashed and collected cans to pay bills. Basketball was more than my full-time job and the university had complete control of my schedule. NIL has helped some players, but most still earn less than $10 an hour and struggle to pay for basic necessities. And the lack of protections goes way beyond money. My senior year, I had a foot injury that needed surgery. Every step felt like I was stepping on a nail and I kept requesting an MRI, but I was denied every single time. I kept playing because I loved the game, but in retrospect, I was denied the information I needed to make a decision about my own health. And right after graduating, I also needed a knee surgery and had to pay for it out of pocket. I had a professional injury, but I received amateur medical care from the NCAA. And my story is not unique. I have had conversations with thousands of athletes across the country and constantly hear the same stories of players pushed to play through serious injuries, broken bones, and even concussions. That's just business as usual for the NCAA. And this hearing is titled Don't Fumble Their Futures, but the truth is, the NCAA has fumbled athletes' futures for generations. My grandmother was forced to play half-court basketball because institutions like the NCAA believed women were too weak for full court. When Title IX was passed, the NCAA sued to block it. It hasn't even been four years since the NCAA finally allowed women's basketball to use the term March Madness, only after being publicly shamed by the weight room scandal. Now, only 7 percent of colleges are in compliance with Title IX and the NCAA is spending millions to lobby for the SCORE Act, which would strip athletes of their labor rights, silence their voices, and give the NCAA a bailout. The NCAA has repeatedly fumbled our future. So why would Congress even remotely consider entrusting the NCAA with that bailout? The NCAA has professionalized every part of our game except the rights and protections of the athletes who are at the center of its growth. The NCAA's business is professional, but its structure is amateur, which is why it needs to follow the lead of every professional sports league by negotiating a collective bargaining agreement, a CBA, with a players association. A CBA is the best way to make college sports safe, fair, and sustainable for both athletes and the universities because they can negotiate a solution that is good for both sides. Athletes get enforceable protections like safety mandates, academic freedoms, and fair pay, while universities get enforceable rules like salary caps, transfer limits, and tampering restrictions. That's why athletic directors at Tennessee, Ohio State, TCU, San Diego State, and Boise State support a CBA. Finally, Congress should not support the SCORE Act or pass the SCORE Act or any legislation that limits athletes' labor rights. Instead, I support the College Athlete Right to Organize Act introduced by Senator Sanders, Senator Murphy, and Senator Warren. I also commend the bipartisan leadership of Senator Cantwell and Senator Schmidt through their College Sports Competitiveness Act, which protects women's and Olympic sports. I want every little girl in the stands watching college athletes to know that when it's her turn, she'll step into a system that protects her as a person, educates her as a student, and empowers her as a professional. That's what current and future generations deserve. Anything less would let them down and empower the NCAA to keep fumbling their futures. Thank you and I look forward to your questions.

Lastly, we have Liam Anderson. He's a member of the National College Players Association's Players Council, a nonprofit advocacy organization focused on protecting past, current, and future college athletes in all sports. Mr. Anderson is an alumnus of Stanford University's track and field and cross country teams, where he served as co-president of the university's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and he represented all of Pac-12 athletes at the 2024 NCAA convention. Mr. Anderson, thank you for your work and for being here today.

Thank you, Senator Murphy. And good morning, Chairman Cassidy and members of the Senate HELP Committee. Thank you for inviting me to participate in today's hearing. I am grateful for this opportunity to provide my perspective on the issues facing the great and uniquely American institution of college athletics. My name is Liam Anderson, and I'm testifying today as a member of the National College Players Association's Players Council, which advocates to protect college athletes. As Senator Murphy said, I'm also here as a former Stanford track and cross country runner and as a former academic who authored my honors and master's theses on many of the same challenges in college athletics that are at issue today. These challenges can be distilled into two questions. First, how do we protect the economic and legal rights of the small subset of college athletes who generate tremendous revenues while also preserving this invaluable formative experience for those playing Olympic or non-revenue sports like I did? And second, in answering that question, should the federal government regulate college athletics any differently than it regulates every other industry in this country? With some very limited caveats, I believe the answer to the latter is a resounding no. The issues that have brought us here today are readily solved by accepting the obvious eventuality that certain college athletes are employees. Federal labor law provides a tried-and-true framework to resolve these issues through collective bargaining, and there can be little question that athletes in the heavily professionalized upper echelon of the NCAA meet the relevant criteria for employee status, namely FBS football players and Division I men's and women's basketball players, such as those playing in March Madness today. Congress need not reinvent the wheel by conjuring up a unique sub-employee classification as some have contemplated, nor should it altogether bar college athletes from obtaining employee status as the SCORE Act proposes. Doing so would deprive college athletes of the equal protections enjoyed by any other American. The NCAA has numerous complaints about the regulatory schema that exists in the post-House settlement world, including that the transfer portal has destroyed roster stability, that collectives are circumventing the revenue-sharing cap, that the courts have enjoined eligibility rules, and that disparate state laws make NIL unfair. Many of these complaints are well-founded. But the NCAA's solution, begging Congress to exempt it from federal labor and antitrust law, must be a non-starter, if for no other reason than the issue of equal protection. The NCAA's real solution lies in the non-statutory labor exemption. Once Division I basketball and FBS football players are recognized as employees and subsequently choose to form unions, the NCAA and its members can negotiate collective bargaining agreements with those unions on the mandatory subjects of bargaining, including compensation, workplace policies, and safety practices. It is its inability to enforce consistent rules on these subjects that precludes the NCAA from governing effectively, and with a collective bargaining agreement, the NCAA and its members can secure what they need most, including mutually agreeable and enforceable transfer limitations, salary or revenue share caps, eligibility standards, and NIL rules, all exempt from antitrust scrutiny. Industry leaders could decide tomorrow to recognize a subset of college athletes as employees. There is no statutory obstacle to their doing so. But we need support from Congress to affirmatively identify that some athletes are employees throughout the country. This is a real concern that Congress should help address. But many of the other purported reasons not to pursue collective bargaining as a solution are baseless. Consider the NCAA's tired argument that employment status is incompatible with the academic mission of college athletics. This is an obvious farce. Countless college students are employed by their schools, some by their athletic departments, and indeed many of these student workers are unionized. The NCAA also claims that athletes are sufficiently represented by its Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. This too is a facade. I have been in those rooms and can tell you they are as wholly ineffectual as any company union. These arguments and the NCAA's myriad other objections to collective bargaining are merely pretextual. I'll finish with this. Every college athlete deserves a pathway to join an independent advocacy organization such as the NCPA and is worthy of having health and safety protections enshrined into law. I will never forget sitting in on meetings with Senate staff and listening to the parents of Calvin Dickey Jr. tell the story of their son, who died after collapsing during his first day of college football at Bucknell. That is the gravity of what is at stake here. Any legislation Congress passes must include sufficient health and safety protections, and it must ensure college athletes receive the equal rights afforded to Americans in every other industry in this country, including the protections guaranteed by federal labor and antitrust law. The NCPA looks forward to continuing to work with the committee to address these critical issues, and I look forward to taking your questions.

Thank you all. I will start. I'll start with you, Ms. Lynch. Ms. Lynch, obviously one thing that is at issue here, both in Senator Murphy's and the Democratic witness, is employment status. You in your comment say that a sweeping employment model could have unintended consequences, shifting focus away from education and development. Senator Murphy also suggested that the negative impact potential upon Olympic sports and non-revenue sports is a red herring. Now, your thoughts. Do you think it's a red herring or do you think it's real?

Thank you so much for your question. I really appreciate this. A sweeping employment model and considering all student-athletes employees is not a red herring that it would be a threat to Olympic sports and women's sports because it would be more expensive than you are expecting. It right now, even when we have the $20.5 million cap that some schools are trying to pay out and reach, it's still getting very expensive for schools, and this is only paying this amount of budget. Obviously, you can still negotiate caps under an employment model, but having to pay every student-athlete gets really dicey. Under an employment model also, we introduce Title VII. This is where things get a little bit complex. If we are under Title VII, Title IX is still on the floor and it doesn't completely go away, but the way that we balance women's sports and protecting women's sports is not exactly clear in an employment model. And so just going forward, women's sports and Olympic sports are a threat under an employment model, are at a threat under an employment model just because we're not sure how high the costs could be.

Sounds great. Dr. Scott, you actually got a balanced budget, brother. And so tell me, and you mentioned about under-resourced institutions, you speak eloquently. What would turning Grambling student-athletes into employees, how would that impact the opportunities the school provides such as scholarships, etc.?

Well, thank you for the question, Senator Cassidy. I think it would affect us in several areas. As employees, scholarships I believe and other fringe benefits would then become taxable. Could you imagine a student-athlete in a non-revenue sport, soccer, bowling, tennis, models of equivalency, meaning you can get zero or 1 percent all the way up to a full scholarship? So imagine a student-athlete receiving 25 percent of a scholarship, all right, and then having to use other means, student loans, Pell Grants, to subsidize the remaining 75 percent, but yet that 25 percent is taxable. Right? That's just on the student side. Now, when you start to amass a lot of the financial strain in terms of the things that come with employees and employee relations, fringe benefits and the like, then you start to look at the strain individually and collectively that athletics departments, particularly those, you know, at under-resourced, low-resource institutions will begin to face. Right? And so when you look at that, my belief is that roster spots would start to be reduced, all right, specifically to those non-revenue sports, specifically on the men's side. For an institution at Grambling State University where we have 15 Division I sports, that means baseball is probably going to go first. All right? Football is going to reduce roster spots.

Thank you, Dr. Scott. I've got only a minute left. I want to get Mr. Temple. Thank you for that. Mr. Temple, you speak eloquently about how to protect the student-athlete from being exploited by those who don't have their best interest. Mr. Temple, how would you suggest we do that? Because I think that could unify both sides.

Well, I think that one key component is to put in place and activate a system that gives a level playing field. And a level playing field, so when you're speaking about the power conferences and athletes who participate in the power conferences, when you have a guy who is moving from one school to another every year and he gets to a place where he has not attained any kind of academic performance standards because he's not required to go to class, he's not required to participate in academic component of where he is, after four years he's just in a space that's non-productive. And so these guardrails that I speak about are things such as making sure that a person is only allowed to jump or move one time in a four or five-year scholarship period or athletic period because you can't create any consistency if you're moving from one space to another and you certainly aren't able to perform academic standards if you're moving every year. I mean, nothing from nothing leaves nothing. So those are the kind of things that I think are critically important in designing a system that gives a level playing field.

Thank you, sir. Senator Murphy.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Listen, part of the reason why I think this should be up to a negotiation between students and universities is because I just don't want us in the business of micromanaging college athletics and how compensation works. That just doesn't feel like our role. Ms. Pivec, you described how much work you put in to becoming a high-level athlete. How does it make you feel that your industry is coming here and asking to suppress your wages? The music industry isn't coming here and asking for legislation to suppress the wages of 20-year-old pop stars. The tech industry isn't coming here and asking for legislation to limit how much money a 22-year-old engineer or coder can make. But the NCAA is coming here to ask us to limit the amount of money that you can make and specifically talk about what this means for women athletes. Because whether we like it or not, women athletes don't have as lucrative opportunities after college. For many of you, your primary opportunity to be able to make some money off your sport is in college. So what does it feel like to you to be being held to a different standard than other young high-performing workers and what does it mean for women to have wages suppressed by legislation?

Yeah, thank you for bringing up just the work that it takes to be a college athlete. Like all of us here, it's not just the hours that we put in during the school year, but it's also the 10 years before that that we sacrificed to just have a chance to compete. But it frustrates me that so many athletes before me and continue to not be able to get their true value and how everyone else, it's a job for everyone else. These are workers and that's the reality of it and we deserve our fair market value just like the coaches, just like the conference commissioners.

Mr. Anderson, you participated in a quote non-revenue generating sport. How do you respond to these concerns that just giving the ability to have a conversation between athletes and the universities or conferences as to how to work this out will have an impact on women's sports or on Olympic sports?

Thank you for the question, Senator Murphy. You know, I don't think that Olympic sports such as mine or non-revenue sports are going anywhere. There are plenty of schools that don't sponsor football or basketball and don't make money off of college sports and yet they still sponsor plenty of Olympic and non-revenue sports. And that's because they see value in them for many of the reasons we've discussed because these are leadership building experiences. These are formative experiences for young men and women and there is value to that and schools will continue to sponsor them and will continue to put work into them.

Yeah. Mr. Temple, really appreciate your contributions, enjoyed spending time with you at our working group. You know, Joe Mazzulla is a great coach for my favorite NBA team, the Celtics, but people don't come there to watch him. They come there to watch Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. And that's why in the pros, the players are paid a lot more than the coaches are. But in college sports, you know, on average, these coaches are making 10 times the amount of the NIL deals for the athletes. I hear your concerns and the guardrails that you want, but does it feel fundamentally fair today that this is a multi-billion dollar industry and most of it is still all going to the coaches, to the sports industry CEOs, to the million-dollar salary athletic directors? And with the exception of a few high-performing athletes at the Power Conference schools, still very little of it is going to the kids. I know you want to put the guardrails and you want to make sure this is done responsibly, but does this feel fair to you that the coaches and the adults are raking in such a big share of the money?

Let's be realistic, all right? I guess about in the 24-25 March Madness, now we're all involved in March Madness and the reality of March Madness is if you do an analysis, a financial analysis of what's taking place in the March Madness activity, particularly on the men's side, but also on the women's side now, I would venture to say that it's about a net $1.5 billion industry. A net 1.5 over about a five to seven-week period of time, there's a net financial effect of $1.5 billion. Now, it's absolutely unfair to have these athletes, 64 teams in basketball, now I think it may be 68 because you have a play-in system. So you got 68 teams and that system is netting someone, the NCAA, the average Division I high-level men's basketball coach earns probably $3 million a year. And then when he gets all his perks in place, it may be 4 million or 5 million. It's absolutely unfair what's going on and that's why in the previous discussion, I said that I had a high degree of respect for what your comments were when you said these super athletes are not benefiting hardly at all and they're just now in the last couple of years have been put in a position of being able to retain some of this money. Short-lived money because majority of those guys probably won't play in the NBA. That's another really, really narrow window to be able to get into that NBA model and have a sustained earning capacity for four, five, eight, 10 years. Now, so from my perspective, we absolutely have to design some system and the system hasn't been designed properly by the NCAA. So we have to figure out another way to set up these guardrails and put a system that's going to be effective to share, do profit sharing and what have you.

I'm way over my time. So thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. I'm taking over the gavel for the Chairman Cassidy temporarily, so I'll recognize myself for a couple questions. I always think about when I'm looking at this complicated issue and I always think about what's the goal. The goal of originally establishing school-based athletics were to teach character and physical fitness to the student-athletes. That was how it started. And it's only been in recent times with the coming of TV contracts that it actually became a big revenue sport or big revenue source for schools. There's 360 Division I schools, I believe, and only about 20 to 40 of them either make or don't lose money. And really this is the big part of this is the Power Four schools in football, 68 of them, they're 19 percent of all the Division I athletes, not to mention Division II, Division III, and they are the source of most of that revenue. And so there's a lot of money involved, but there are only a few schools that are actually making it. And as this committee does have jurisdiction over education, the big thing that colleges are struggling with today, frankly, is the fact that students can't afford to go there. The average student struggles to pay their tuition. With demographic changes and changes in the economy, many colleges are, unless they're publicly subsidized, are struggling to actually even stay in business at all. And I don't know if everyone knows this, but most schools' athletics programs are subsidized by fees that are paid for by the other students at the school. This can be on average between $500 and $2,000 per student. One Division I school gets 70 percent of its athletic budget revenue by charging fees to the other students that are already struggling to go there. So the idea that college athletics is full of a bunch of money that is not true, except for a handful of schools. And they are, as you said, Mr. Scott, the tail that's wagging the dog right now in this conversation. And so I think we can narrow the question of how we're going to deal with just that group of people. Because I do, Ms. Lynch, agree that there in your sort of view of athletics because I'm very concerned, I have a daughter who's a Division I athlete and I see that Title IX being undermined by the fact we have so many student-athletes coming from other countries that are taking scholarships away from American students, student-athletes at American colleges and universities. That's fine, people may think that's fine, it's great, it adds to competition, but we're actually taking away in many cases opportunities from American students to receive a scholarship. And so Dr. Scott, you're from, I would just be interested in, I want you to elaborate on behalf of all the schools that are not these revenue makers. How do we design a system that protects the virtues that we love about sports, but don't let the tail wag the dog because we have 100,000 other college athletes who go to schools that aren't making money off this?

Thank you, Senator Husted, for the point. And as I kind of scribble my notes, I think that's a perfect question. I'm listening to the Power Four, the Tennessee, the Ohio State, the TCU, the Boise State, but what about the Gramblings, the Howards, the Southerns, the FAMUs, the Morgan States, right?

Well, let me ask a question. If we're going to do collective bargaining, why don't we collect all the money those big schools are getting and give them to the other schools?

That's where I'm going, right? If we've got 333 Division I institutions, only 68 make March Madness, right? When you win per round, your unit is about $335,000 a unit. Right? So in the Southwestern Athletics Conference and Mid-Eastern Athletics Conference, for example, they're one-bid leagues. More often than not, they're involved in these play-in scenarios, which provides great financial benefit to these institutions for a period of up to six years. But they've got to make it because they've got one bid. As I sit here, I believe the SEC may have gotten nine or 10 bids, the Big Ten may have gotten eight or nine bids, you know, and so there are opportunities to your point to have the tail that wags the dog. My second point is this, when we start talking about things that are short-lived, which is, you know, the dollars that we're paying to these student-athletes, what's going to happen when that student-athlete who's making $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000, $700,000, $800,000, $900,000, right, doesn't take care of their academic responsibilities, right, doesn't graduate, or does graduate, now they're making $50,000, $60,000, $80,000? Right? Who's educating our student-athletes on soft skills, on money management, on taxation, on time management? There's an entirely different responsibility here that I feel needs to be brought to the forefront to correct and adjust this system that needs to be corrected.

Okay. Well, I've used up my time and the chairman's back and so I'll send this back to him and thank you.

All right. Well, I think that would be Senator Baldwin.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Pivec, in your testimony you highlight the low percentage of universities currently in full compliance with Title IX. Title IX has been a critical tool in ensuring that all students are protected from sex-based discrimination. However, President Trump and Education Secretary McMahon have continually undermined Title IX enforcement. They've spoken about their desire to dismantle the entire Department of Education. And it isn't just talk, at the start of this administration, over half of the staff at the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights received termination notices. The very office that is charged with enforcing Title IX. And it took 10 months for the administration to reverse course and rescind those termination notices, and it's been reported that it's already cost over $40 million in taxpayer funds to have these attorneys at the Civil Rights Division not investigate cases. As of last month, the Trump administration has resolved zero cases of sexual harassment or assault. So from your perspective, do you feel that dismantling the office charged with enforcing Title IX protections helps advance women's sports?

Thank you for that question and absolutely not. Department of Education has never pulled federal funding to enact that enforcement mechanism of Title IX, and I argue that we need additional Title IX strengthening through tightening up loopholes that currently exist. If we really want to protect women's sports, it's not through the SCORE Act, but it's through addressing those loopholes that currently exist to address the 7 percent compliance rate, the $1.1 billion in shortfall of scholarships and current opportunities that exist between men and women. And so I think we need to do a lot better job in those categories.

Thank you. Ms. Pivec and Ms. Lynch, you both shared in your written testimony your personal experience with sustaining a sports injury while in school, though you have had very different experiences with regard to those sports injuries. Being a member of a labor union can give players the ability to negotiate for better healthcare, support staff, and facilities, as we just saw with the new agreement between the WNBA and its players association. Ms. Pivec, how would collective bargaining impact the assurance that all athletes receive the medical care they need?

I think with NIL and revenue share a lot of people want to focus on the money, but the medical negligence and accountability that comes with collective bargaining and an outside entity that's independent and fully owned by the players is necessary to protect the players first. So I fully believe in a union and a players association that does enforce those accountability mechanisms.

And congratulations on the new agreement with the WNBA. Do you want to tell us anything more about that?

I'm just a fan for it and go women, pay those girls, so super excited for them that they've come to an agreement and that we have a season.

Right. And then Mr. Anderson, in your testimony you note that any legislation must include sufficient health and safety protections for students. Can you give examples of the type of health and safety protections that should be included in any legislative efforts that we're looking at?

Absolutely and I'll keep it short. I think really simply the NCPA wants to see third-party enforcement, similar to what we just talked about, mandated reporting, whistleblower protections. That simple.

Very good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am now privileged to call for the very first time on Senator Armstrong to ask questions in a committee. Senator Armstrong.

Great, thank you. And first of all, I want to say thank you. I've been in your seats a lot more times than I've been in this seat. So really appreciate you all taking the time to be here and share your thoughts. This is a very complex issue as I think we're all aware, and I think the goal here is to try to get to something that makes sense for everybody and not just, as has been pointed out, just not the superstars that we all hear about, but really for everybody. In Oklahoma, we have softball and wrestling are very big sports in Oklahoma. So our softball team at University of Oklahoma has had eight national championships, four consecutive, 34 national titles at Oklahoma State University for wrestling. So very familiar with the situation where people are really working their tails off, putting themselves up a lot of exposure to a lot of injuries. My daughter played soccer at University of Tulsa, which is a school that doesn't can't afford to operate in an environment where they're forced to pay payments. One of the ways that they've been able to be successful in that is through offering scholarships to a great school and that allows them to attract great people. So I'm curious and this comes to you, Ms. Lynch, what your perspective is on those student and if you've heard anything from them about concerns about taxation on the benefits that they get that student-athletes, that's the, you know, there's my daughter played with a lot of fantastic young ladies that would not have been at that school if they didn't have a scholarship. And so I wonder about how taxation and is that a concern from the athletes?

Yes, Senator Armstrong, thank you so much for this question. I actually was an accounting major so the taxation question is great. I'm an aspiring CPA and a lot of student-athletes are not actually familiar with the fact that if we became employees, your academic tutor that you have to go to once a month, that's taxed. You have to report that. There's so many academic support services, student-athlete development, healthcare, all of the in-kind benefits that you receive as being a student-athlete, those could be taxed in a way. Any wage that you receive, we they are doing a good job at least with informing student-athletes that anything above $600 in NIL and revenue sharing is taxable. But a lot of people are learning that, a lot of student-athletes are. And it is a concern when I tell student-athletes that is an impact from an employment model, that is a concern for them because that's not something that they're familiar with. I get to talk to student-athletes at the Big Ten, the NCAA, I serve on many engagement groups and I sit on several committees that I'm talking to student-athletes weekly, daily. And that's certainly a concern. So I appreciate this perspective. And I also want to shout out your Oklahoma women's gymnastics team too because they're also really good.

Thank you. I'll turn the floor back to you, Chairman.

Yeah, the next thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Is it Hickenlooper or also Brooks? I think Hickenlooper just like nailed it, just like a 10 from an LSU gymnastics. Let me have that opportunity to yield. Okay, then I yield the Senator Hickenlooper yields to Senator Alsobrooks.

I thank you so much. Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chair, for hosting today's hearing. Thank you as well to our witnesses for for being here today. I'm lucky I represent some really great schools and some terrific student-athletes in my state, which is the state of Maryland, everything from the University of Maryland Terrapins, we have also our Naval Academy Midshipmen as well as a UMBC Retrievers and so I'm really I'm really fortunate to represent them. A less popular fact about me, however, is that I am a graduate of Duke University, so let's go Blue Devils. And I was there during the height of the basketball glory days when Christian Laettner was there with that amazing shot. We were there during the back-to-back championships and back then you could get a ticket to the Final Four for $20 to $40. College basketball and college athletics have changed significantly since those days. Nosebleed seats I'm told this weekend, the Duke-St. John's Sweet 16 game in DC this Friday starting at $505 for the nosebleed seats. And so sports betting has exploded since my time in college, Americans legally wagering $3.3 billion on March Madness, broadcast rights surpassing $1.4 billion with another $1.2 billion spent just on advertising. So in the last five years alone, college athletics have been revolutionized and this question is first for Ms. Pivec, have been revolutionized by the interim name, image, and likeness rule, which was prompted not by benevolence as we have heard today, but by the NCAA losing litigation in the Supreme Court. So Ms. Pivec, your college career I know ended right before the NCAA instituted its name, image, and likeness policy, but how has the nature of the game shifted rapidly for student-athletes who are navigating their college careers since your time on the court? And I also want to know how has the rapid infusion of money in college sports in this new era heightened the need for student-athlete protections?

Thank you for that question for recognizing the the scale of this business. It's crazy six years ago like back in my day pre-NIL, pre-transfer portal, a lot of things have changed, but we've been able to talk with hundreds of women's basketball players and thousands of athletes across the country. And a lot of the same things of there's been so much progress through NIL in terms of opportunity that's been allowed, but we still have so much more to go. A lot of the stars of today are able to maximize their market value through the transfer portal, but a lot of the players at the bottom are still earning close to zero dollars and just their stipend, nothing above that. And so I really believe that athletes need to collectively bargain in order to maximize their value for everyone.

All right. And now while the NIL policy made progress, we know the student-athletes as you've mentioned are still not on equal footing. So has the NIL era exacerbated in your opinion some of the existing power dynamics between student-athletes and colleges and how would additional statutory guardrails help to protect athletes from this dynamic?

Yeah, I think it's highlighted the inequity. The scale of the business is shown how much money is involved and now the athletes are just getting a little bit of this billion-dollar business. It's it's made it a a controversial topic amongst dinner tables and and everyone across the country. But athletes need a voice at the table and in any decision that's made they need a true voice and need to be represented in not just a performative voice, but a real voice.

All right. Mr. Anderson, when you when you see the numbers flowing into March Madness alone, including ticket prices going for hundreds if not thousands of dollars, it begs the question who's actually benefiting from this new dynamic? And so are students across the spectrum of college athletics benefiting equally from the new big business of college sports? And I'm talking about women's sports in particular and lower revenue sports like swimming and track. Are these programs being invested in at the same rate as marquee sports like football and basketball?

I think the answer is certainly no, they're not being invested in equally. The question of whether they should be is a different question. I think when you have tremendous money flowing towards men's and women's basketball, they're generating that revenue. But the revenue that today, the revenue that comes from March Madness, that funds the vast majority of the NCAA's own budget, not the schools themselves, but the NCAA's budget. And so that money does flow out to sports like mine and it has for a very long time. But it doesn't flow certainly not to the athletes in those sports to the degree that it does to the athletes in basketball and football.

In the same way. Now, so is there a risk without guardrails that schools will be emboldened to pick winners and losers when it comes to investment in athletic programs? And would you say how does that threaten to roll back the progress for student-athletes that have been made in in recent years?

I think the the biggest threat is the loss of opportunity. The NCPA's position is is that we need guardrails to protect all sports and to ensure that opportunity for folks like myself or folks like Abby continue to to exist. But also that that folks like Michaela see what's what's due to them.

Thank you. I'll yield back and let's go Blue Devils.

The highly anticipated questioning of Coach Tuberville who got more experience with this than any of us.

Yeah, Houston, we have a problem. And it's getting worse every day. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for what you do. We got huge problems in a lot of areas. This year we will have 10,000 football players at all levels sign up for the transfer portal. 10,000. 5,000 men and women basketball players will sign up for the transfer portal. I just want to go through this. I've got a bill I put up. Probably won't get enough support to pass, but we have to start somewhere. We're all talking about NCAA, which has been a disaster, by the way, after 35 years of dealing with them. They're a big part of the problem, but it seems like we can't solve that problem. So at the end of the day, the issue to me is pretty simple. The question is whether we still believe student-athletes are supposed to be students at the end of the day. I'm all for athletes being paid every dime that they can get. Please go out there and raise your money and take every dime people want to pay you. I'm all for that. I've always said that. As you said, I forget who said it, but it is a full-time job. My God, sports is full-time. Meetings, weightlifting, study halls, you name it. I did it 35 years and I couldn't believe that we weren't paying student-athletes, but that's behind us. Young men and women have worked hard and have earned that opportunity. They ought to be able to benefit from this opportunity. We don't even talk about scholarships anymore. My God, that's what we used to talk about. Now we talk about money. The system is so far away from education it's embarrassing. College athletes starting to look more like a pathway, less like a pathway to a degree and more like a revolving door, as I said, of all this transfer. Athletes are bouncing from school to school chasing the next deal. We all know that. They're not paying taxes on that next deal either, by the way, and that's the next thing that's coming. It ought to concern everybody. Everybody. Because for the overwhelming majority of these young men and women, sports will not last forever if we continue down this path. 98 percent of the young men and women that go to college do not play pro sports. We need to get away from that. The future is going to depend on the education, the education part of going to school. If you want to play NFL or pros, go. Go get it done. But if you want to learn something, in which 95, 98 percent of the thousands of kids I coached that got a degree thank me all the time. Thank you for making me go to class. This week I'm introducing the Student Athlete Act. And we've all got problems. Collective bargaining, we don't get enough healthcare and all that. Hey, we're going to have those problems. This bill that I'm putting out is a basic idea. If you call it's going to cause problems with somebody, but at the end of the day, we've got to start somewhere, folks, or we're going to lose it. We're going to lose Olympic sports. We're going to lose women's sports because there's not going to be any money. It's going to be club sports. I've got news for y'all, it's coming. The money is not going to be there. You can forget about Title IX. You can have all the lawsuits you want, if the money is not there, it's not there. The money is going to go to athletes that get on television. So student-athletes to me should have a five-year window. You start, you've got five years. I'm sick of these 28, 29-year-olds playing in a young person's sport and taking your money. I'm sick of that. Five years of play. No waivers, no excuses. Once you start, you go five years. At the end of that five years, you go and do whatever you need to do the rest of your life. It's pretty simple. I mean, you can get a degree in those five years. If you transfer one time, the likelihood of you getting a degree is almost zero. Think about that. Unless you want to go to school seven, eight years and pay for a lot of that yourself. So I'm for a one-year transfer. One time, you get it freebie. If the coach leaves, if something happens in your family, you transfer. After that, you pay the penalty of what we used to do. You transfer, you sit a year. But you've got a one-year transfer. One year. Folks, we can't do this transfer portal. If we do it, we're going to, as I said, we're going to lose men's sports, women's sports, and we're going to have just a couple out there that's going to be on television and that is it. And there's not going to be any scholarships. So I don't have a lot of, can I ask a couple of questions while I'm at it? Ms. Lynch, my bill would solve the issue pretty quick in terms of transferring, but is it realistic for somebody to transfer and get a degree?

Thank you so much for your question, Senator Tuberville. Also, War Eagle. I would say that the realistic capability of a student to transfer and still get a degree, it depends where they transfer. Obviously, we deal with quarter schools and semester schools in the Big Ten, and that is a really complex thing in terms of transferring credits, academic progress, progress towards degree. Also, the timing of transfer portals isn't always the most helpful. Like the football transfer portal is now January 2nd to January 16th, and that sits right in the middle of when quarter schools start their new semester. And that's really problematic for getting student-athletes, particularly football student-athletes, enrolled in their next institution, which really puts them back academically. So transferring does inhibit academic progress, especially when you're transferring multiple, multiple times. So I appreciate your question. Thank you.

Mr. Temple, how do we keep integrity in this nonsense?

Well, before I address the integrity question, I just want to make some highlighted comments. As most of us know, South Carolina is a special, super special women's basketball venue. They average 18,000 folk a game in their stadium. There's another super basketball venue for women, it's called LSU. Kim Mulkey, we average about 14, 13,000 persons a game. Here's the reality of what's going to happen in the world of athletics as relates to Title IX and women's sports. The year Kim Mulkey won the national championship with, what was the young lady's name? Angel Reese. Yeah, with Angel Reese, LSU lost $6 million in the basketball arena for women. This past year at the University of South Carolina, women's basketball lost $8 million. It's unsustainable. It's unsustainable. Now, the answer is okay, what do you do with Title IX and women's sports? I submit to you there's not a total of $8 to $10 million that's been generated and earned to sustain women's sports. So as you move forward to work on this very complex circumstance, you've got to take it all into full consideration. You've got to take it all. It's mostly about the money. Because of it being mostly about the money, it is vitally important that we figure out a way to make sure that these student-athletes participate in the college experience, which is the academic piece first. Now, you say that we probably need to give them five years. I understand. Five years is a redshirt year plus four to play. Senator Tuberville, I would ask you to consider a six-year deal. A six-year deal would involve a grayshirt, which is something that you're familiar with, and then a redshirt, which is something you also familiar with, and then give them four years to play. So when you're talking about 18-year-old freshman, 19-year-old sophomore, 20-year-old junior, 21-year-old senior, and you give them a couple of extra years to get it together, I think it'll work a lot better than just five years. Now, what the hell was your question?

Integrity. Integrity. Can we keep the integrity?

It will absolutely in keep the integrity. We need to move forward on your concept because as you indicated, we have to start somewhere. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We have to start somewhere. And I think your concepts and your perspective about how this thing has to work is healthy and must be done. The NCAA is not going to fix it. They're not going to fix it. We have to move forward with you senators. Thank you.

To my Democratic colleagues, I really wanted to hear Coach's perspective. I gave him extra time. If one of you wishes to take extra time, please take it. But Coach has obviously the greatest insight, so I don't want to play favoritism here. Senator Hickenlooper.

Coach has special standing. I recognize that. Thank each of you for being here. This is something on the one side that's the financial remuneration and the questions about what that does to sports. I thought Senator Husted, because I was watching, when he talked about the development of character and what that does to students at that age, it's very powerful. And I, you know, I was in the restaurant business for 15 years. We had a big restaurant, had 100 employees. We then ended up with about nine or 10 other restaurants. Over the course of that 15 years, I probably hired 300 people directly myself, 250. Then I was a mayor, and you have 60 people you hire and their staffs, you know, governors even more people. I mean, I've gotten probably up to 600 or 700 people I've hired in those years, and I have always looked for student-athletes. The kids because those that character building includes how do you work with others, how do you create a team effort where you realize that what happens to you is less valuable than what happens to the group. And I also look at kids that play in rock and roll bands or in theater, kids that have worked as camp counselors or at a local YMCA. Those places where you are part of a of a framework. And I remember back when I was a kid, you know, it was all about the team, and it was all about being willing to lose gracefully, recognizing that winning wasn't everything. You know, I still think that I think most people on this board would disagree with me that when Vince Lombardi came out and said that, you know, winning wasn't everything, or it was the only thing, right? I think that's when this country started getting divided in a funny way that that that supremacy of winning detracts a little bit from what we've seen. I look at at this in a in a very real way of, you know, how do we deal with both of these aspects at the same time? And I think Dr. Scott, I'll start with you, you know, the needs of these small but mighty schools, if we if we phrase it that way. I went to a little school in Connecticut, I played as a freshman, I got moved up to the varsity soccer team. I loved it. I mean, to my, you know, some of the happiest days of my life were high school and and college sports. But I think this debate about NIL and college athletics, in so many ways the athletic opportunities at smaller schools outside the the Power Four conferences open more doors for more students to enter athletic competition by an order of magnitude. And since the House settlement with the NCAA, we're thankful that no Division I school in Colorado has cut a single sport from its athletic department. But we've got to think outside the box to make this maintain this nationwide. So Dr. Scott, what's your reaction to Senate proposals that allow, you know, smaller universities to pool their TV broadcast rights in order to increase revenue opportunities, but again, keep expanding sporting opportunities on campus?

I think it's a great idea. Thank you for your question, Senator Hickenlooper. I think it's a great idea, primarily because it increases and enhances the opportunities. I think when whenever you're in a unique space at an institution with the lore that Grambling offers, you you have the ability to effectively market and brand. Obviously, we we are the direct benefactors of this great institution on Thanksgiving weekend that everyone knows, of course, as the Bayou Classic. And so by right, we have a unique opportunity to continue to drive the brand imagery that is Grambling State University. But every institution doesn't have that. Right? Most of our institutions are carrying, for example, a 90 to a 98, 99 percent Pell Grant rate for the students that we serve. And right? So being able to afford ourselves with the opportunity to drive revenues through television is certainly a benefit and allows us to sustain the opportunities that we provide for our student-athletes across the board.

I appreciate that. Ms. Pivec, thank you, thank you all for joining us. Colorado, you probably are aware, is home to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and to many of the national governing we could say governing bodies that help support Team USA. And as we just saw in Milan and Cortina, the success of Team USA brings national pride. I think it brings real value to the country in many levels, but just on an international level, real value, billions of dollars of value. Team USA relies on so many NCAA college athletes in a variety of sports. And I'm glad that the chair is going to give me an extra minute because I've taken so long answering asking my questions. Ms. Pivec, can you describe for us the the harmful impact that when schools cut athletic programming on college athletes' opportunities, and especially and including the opportunity to to compete and represent Team USA? What does that do to that pipeline?

Yeah, I think the idea of cutting athletics, any sort of sports team, is devastating to those athletes that that train and to the future of our country. I think we all care about protecting opportunity. And I think we can do that through collective bargaining. And a lot of people here have talked about sustainability and needing to start somewhere. And I really think it starts with the College Sports Competitiveness Act, where to address that sustainability component, let's maximize it's a business, let's maximize and create as much value as we can to then be able to protect as much opportunity as possible while still recognizing the labor that's involved.

Great. Thank you very much. And I assume someone asked me coming yesterday knew I was going to come into this today, and that's that the organizing, the collective bargaining would only be with those sports that generate revenue. Right? In other words, so there's compensation involved.

We want to provide a place where all athletes are protected. And so athletes, we strongly believe that athletes should be the ones drawing the line on whether they want to unionize or not. It shouldn't be Congress drawing that line for them. So if all athletes want a union, then they should have the right to do that.

Great. Thank you very much. Thanks to each of you. Yield back.

Senator Banks.

Thank you. I was just going to say, Dr. Scott, I'm a alum of the proud national champions Indiana Hoosiers, Indiana University, and I really don't want to mess this up because I think the Hoosiers are going to come back and do it all over again next year. And the Purdue Boilermakers have a great shot at winning the national championship in in March Madness. They played tonight, so I'm happy for them too. And I I really want to dig into this subject because we we're all wrestling with it. So many questions from big schools, small schools, small colleges in my state trying to wrap our heads around it. And I think I think the political dynamic is that Republicans and Democrats aren't that far off from what we agree on. It's just this one small small issue that gets in the way from us passing something related to unionization and how we treat student-athletes as whether we treat them as employees or not. And I know you've been I know you've all been talking about that extensively already, but can you talk, Doctor, a little bit about about team dynamics and culture and how that would change if student-athletes were treated as as employees?

Thank you, Senator Banks, and congratulations on your national championship. I played basketball in college, and we're talking about IU, and we're generally associated with Coach Knight and Calbert Cheaney and those guys, and now we're talking about Indiana as a football power. What a difference, and congratulations.

It seems by the I mean, it seems admittedly very relevant to the subject that we're talking about.

Yeah, I believe it is. I think the question surrounding culture related to sport and in anything related to unionizing a sport kind of depends on who's at the table. You know, if we're just having a discussion from the lens of a Power Four, then many of the Group of Five institutions, the lower-level FBS institutions, the FCS institutions, and certainly the low-resource institutions, which I represent, won't have a say at the table. And just for clarity, the the low-resource institutions on the bottom end are basically the lowest 15 percentile in revenue generation in college athletics. Right? So, you know, with with those student-athletes that we represent, I feel like there needs to be some semblance, again, of opportunity to be at the table to be able to have these discussions. I feel like if we're just having Power Four conversations, then you drill down a little deeper, then you're going only really have substantive discussions with football and men's basketball. Right? So then there lies a missed opportunity for the rest of the sports. At Grambling, we have 15. I think at Ohio State, there may be 36. Right? So there's a an entirely different demographic of student-athlete who don't have their voices heard and missed, I'm going to say it again, an opportunity to to have a seat at the table. That's one point. I think that it undermines the essence of what education is for. I heard Coach Tuberville kind of allude to it earlier. I hope he would drill down a little deeper on the academic missions of these institutions. Look, we're all in favor of of NIL. I'm certainly in favor of of sharing revenue or direct compensation as many of my colleagues allude, but I do agree that the system needs to be refined in the way that provides opportunities for all involved in Division I. And then understanding the trickle-down effect. Right? So what happens in Division I Power Four affects the the lower-level FBS, and then that trickles down to FCS, and then it trickles down to the lower level of FCS, and then it continues to trickle to the Division II, to Division III, and then eventually to NAIA, right, where opportunities are being missed by our high school students. Right? So if you're a high school athlete, you're either elite or you're going somewhere else because as as my friend who I've known who coached me for for many years, Mr. Temple has said, we've got 24, 25, 26, 28-year-olds playing college athletics and limiting opportunities for our high school student-athletes.

I only got a few seconds left, but I do want to ask you on a different subject. As the NCAA and and Congress both fall down on the we're both falling down on the job. We're not we're not doing what we're supposed to do and pass a national law to confront the the big issue in front of us. A lot of states are looking at what they can do, which creates a patchwork of state laws around the country. Can you talk about how complicated that is for recruitment and for how confusing that is for student-athletes if different states are passing laws and and we continue to fail to do something at this level?

Absolutely, and I think that's a great question, and I know we're pressed for time, so I'll I'll share this. Multiple jurisdictions are now affecting what's going on in college athletics. Right? It's causing this competitive environment. I give you an example. The state of Alabama passes passes laws to be able to not tax NIL. Right? So what does the state of Louisiana do? We follow suit because LSU has to play Alabama. Right? Grambling has to play Alabama State. And right? And so they're trying to level this competitive playing field. And states now becoming increasingly involved in manage the jurisdiction, the process within their state lines with those higher education institutions. And so as we continue this very unstable environment, states are going to become increasingly involved in generating legislation that's going to allow their institutions at the state level to have a competitive advantage.

Senator Kaine.

Thank you. I've got two topics that I would like to address with y'all. Thank you for your testimony on this important issue. I got to start with bragging about a Virginia team, right? I mean, and the team I want to brag about is the UVA women's swimming and diving team. They just won their sixth straight NCAA championship. They're the leader now in the nation in a in the run of NCAA championships. On these six teams, there were 11 the six teams contributed to 11 medals at the Paris Olympics. A lot of broken world records. But it's a non-revenue sport. So if we do legislation here, I think there's a lot of balances we're going to try to strike. I think some are looking at the big versus small school balance, some will look at men's sports versus women's sports balance. I think I'm going to be really focused on revenue sports versus non-revenue sports balance. To the extent that you haven't said something already, I'm not asking you to repeat yourself, but if we want to try to legislate and get the revenue sport versus non-revenue sport balance right, what are things we should be paying attention to? And that could be for any of you. Mr. Anderson, you want to jump and then look like Ms. Lynch was about to jump in.

Thank you, Senator Kaine. I think the key is that it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. What is true for Alabama football is not true for Stanford cross-country or or for Virginia swimming. And I think that's the key is that we don't treat everybody with with one fell swoop because then there will be issues.

Yep. Ms. Lynch, were you going to say something?

I was. And I think this is a great opportunity. I know we've been dogging on the NCAA a little bit because of some past shortcomings, but this is where recently they have done a really phenomenal job in restructuring their governance model. There is a sport-specific committee for every NCAA Division I sport, and there's student-athletes that sit on these committees talking with coaches, administrators. And recently, the swimming committee had a bit of a the swimming-specific committee had a little bit of a back-and-forth with their coaches and administrators because they cut the B finals. And that had to do with TV time, they didn't have enough for it. And that's when the student-athletes were really like, hey, we want to bring this back. Like at the swimming national championship, people were literally chanting, bring back Bs, bring back Bs. And so that's when a sport-specific committee that we already have existing and that can have real impact is so important for these non-revenue sports to already have a voice. And so going off of your question, it's important that we have committees that are already in place and we utilize our student-athlete voice and have them sit at the tables with the administrators, with the coaches to actually make an impact.

Great. I'm going to switch to gambling in a second, but others who want to weigh in on the how do we make sure we're doing right by non-revenue sports? Okay, should I go to gambling? Or did you want to say something?

Something I'd like to before so you can still have time for gambling, but I think there's a balance between we need to preserve opportunity. And that's what we're all here to do, revenue, non-revenue, that's a non-negotiable. We also need to respect the economic realities of the different sports. And so I think collective bargaining through one union can help strike that balance where there's different rooms for each sport but also recognizing that all athletes deserve an opportunity and deserve to be protected.

I'm going to ask a question about gambling and I'm going to start with you, Dr. Scott, if I could. So I'm I'm just troubled by the whole phenomenon and it it really worries me the people, especially I think young males, getting into gambling in ways that are very destructive and this isn't just college athletes, it's like a phenomenon that I'm really troubled by. But I'm also troubled about this gambling on prediction markets and what it does to athletes and athletes who miss a shot at the end and turns out somebody's bet a lot of money on them and then they end up getting harassed online or facing all this pressure. College sports is pressure enough without having the world find a path to your door, which and they can find you now pretty darn easy and harass you because you didn't live up to whatever weird expectation they have based on a bet that they placed. How are you at Grambling kind of dealing with the gambling issue with with your student-athletes and what advice would you have for us?

Thank you for that question, Senator Kaine. I think for us it's about educating the student-athlete, but also about empowering the student-athlete. I think we cannot necessarily control the environment because in most cases some of these and and I want to be very delicate here in how I describe them, but some of these folks that are praying on these student-athletes, more often than not, they're introduced via social media. Right? And so that's more of an environment that of course we can't control. So what we choose to do is educate our young men and women on on being able to of course identify the pressures of gambling and what happens when something happens when something occurs, even that frontline communication. And so robust compliance education is increasingly important, being able of course to be forward-facing, have those conversations, and be honest with your student-athletes. Look, we're in a multi-billion dollar business. When they hear that Grambling State University is going Ohio State and making a million dollars, they want to know where the money is. Right? And so it provides a student-athlete with a thought process of saying, well hey, can we have some of that? I'm struggling. I need. We have. Right? Like those questions then come about and then it opens them up and makes them susceptible to responding to the communication should it happen. And so for us, just being able to offer that robust amount of communication, being really open. We have a saying in our department, our door's always closed but it's always open. And also invite the coaches in to have those conversations with those young men and women of course to to be able to educate them, have very real conversations about gambling and the negative impacts on gambling on college athletics.

Thanks. Thank you so much. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Senator Kaine, I've got two more questions. Mr. Anderson, your approach is different than Ms. Pivec's. You specifically spoke about limiting unionization to the revenue-producing sports, which would typically be men's basketball and men's football. Mr. Temple spoke about how even at LSU and South Carolina, packing the house, they're losing $6 to $8 million with, you know, I think they were the first women's basketball team to be shown on broadcast TV in prime time. And despite that, they're still losing money that that magnitude. So so how do you kind of phrase your approach differently than Ms. Pivec's, which would include all sports and yours you specifically mentioned revenue?

Thank you for the question, Senator Cassidy. Let me clarify. It is not our position that that is only revenue-generating sports that should be able to unionize. It is our position, very similar to hers, that athletes should be the motivating factor behind who becomes unionized. I think in my testimony I said that if Congress is to act, it is to push the revenue sports in that direction. We believe that Congress should not be taking away rights from anybody. We do not believe that Congress should be the one to draw the line. It is just those sports that it is most clear are deserving of employee status and the right to unionize. Where you draw the line, I can't answer that question.

Now next, and I'll have two more questions. If one thing that Ms. Lynch brought up, I think Mr. Temple, that once you begin to put someone into a union, I know Ms. Lynch did, then they may have to pay tax on a training table. They may have to pay tax on a value of a scholarship. If they're required to study extra in order to keep their GPA up, are they going to be compensated for those hours, therefore taxed? Now a non-revenue sport, that's going to drive up the expense. I mean, if if suddenly they've negotiated rights to get paid X number of dollars and and on hourly wage, I don't see how it doesn't drive up expense. But then the athlete then has to pay taxes on that expense. And so they're not going to earn that much because it's non-revenue sport, but the value of the scholarship at a place like Stanford, I'm sure Stanford costs $80,000 a year. So over the course of the year, that'll be a $240,000 scholarship that they're paying taxes on, but no offense, I'm thinking that cross country doesn't generate that revenue and just being honest. Let's say they get paid $10,000 a year, but they got to pay taxes on $240,000 a year. Square that for me. It seems like that's really to the disadvantage of the athlete.

Two things I would say to that. One is that it's not clear that scholarships would be subject to any different tax treatment under an employment scheme. And the second is that I haven't said that that a cross country runner like myself necessarily should be an employee. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but I'm saying that is an unresolved question.

So and then lastly, again, the employment issue seems to be the major dividing point. Everything else has a lot of common ground on. And one point being made is that at least by Mr. Dr. Scott and Ms. Lynch, is that if you do employ, that that will dry up resources for non-revenue sports. Mr. Temple said the same thing. So let me ask the two of you. If collective bargaining did result in less compensation or maybe fewer scholarships, fewer roster spots for non-revenue generating sports, would you still support collective bargaining rights for the athlete?

I'll take this one first. I would say athletes would not be in that position if we got to the negotiating table, we would result in a better deal than we have right now.

No, no, I'm giving you the theoretical, the hypothetical. I'm just stipulate that it is going to raise cost and that that athletic department has to squeeze some place. I gather during COVID 11 sports were ended at Stanford because they couldn't support it with because they had no revenue. So we know it's real. So just let's stipulate. Maybe later on we find it's wrong, but if these folks are right that the absence of revenue and or the increased expense will cause non-revenue sports to be trimmed out, would you still support collective bargaining rights?

I support collective bargaining in terms of raising the revenue, so raising the revenue for different opportunities that we can preserve and we would have

I'm not sure how collective bargaining will raise the revenue. But Mr. Anderson.

To your point about Stanford cutting 11 sports, after they cut those 11 sports, they generated so much outcry from the Stanford community, from alumni, that those sports were brought back.

I understand that. With philanthropy if you will.

That's how most of most of the non-revenue sports are

But go back, we're stipulating that if you increase the expense for the department, that the department will have to trim some place and it will and if we stipulate that it would that it would trim by trimming trim expense by trimming programs as Dr. Scott said and Ms. Lynch said, would you still support those collective bargaining rights?

I support collective bargaining rights unconditionally. I want to be clear though that I think the costs associated with employment status, whether just for football and basketball players or for everybody, is marginal. And I think there is plenty of room at the top of most athletic departments, you look at outsized coaching salaries, even athletic directors making $3 million a year, there's plenty of room.

Okay, so I think you answered it. With my stipulation, you would understand you would that even if it caused trimming, you would still support unconditionally, but then you modified my stipulation. But but I do think it's fair to say that as I originally stipulated, you would you would you would still promote even if it caused trimming of roster spots. Go ahead.

The NCPA's position is that we need to protect all sports. And I I think the premise is a false premise. I I don't think it's true that that the squeeze would be so significant that it would be the end of Stanford cross country or of of anybody else's opportunity for that matter.

I will point out that Ms. Lynch, Dr. Scott, Mr. Temple, and Coach Tuberville, various levels of management are involvement, disagree with you. But so it's not me, it's they. But all of you, thank you for being here. It's an important topic for the future of college athletics, which means for the importance of all those who participate in student-athlete student-athletes. So I really, yes sir, Mr. Temple.

As you ladies and gentlemen entertain this process, Senator Armstrong and Senator Cassidy and other members, please, please take into consideration that there may be another path to help solving it, and that is to put some guardrails on the salaries of coaches and professional athletic leaderships in the world of management. Because if you add up all of the salaries of the head coaches in the SEC football and probably basketball, you'll find some, some moneys that could trickle down to student-athletes and really serve a great purpose. So I don't know, as you manage this process, just take those kind of things into consideration.

I'm not sure we can do that, but I thank you. I see your point. I thank you all for being here. Thank you for serving our country. Oh, one more thing, I'm sorry. For any senator wishing to ask additional questions, questions for the record are due at 5:00 PM Thursday, April 9th. Again, thank you for being here. The committee stands adjourned.