I read Senator Richard Blumenthal’s op-ed piece on the Protect College Sports Act (“Act”). What I found incredible was the senator’s failure to recognize the complete chaos and collapse of the existing rules governing college sports. This has led to the unthinkable result of NBA and NFL players being allowed to return and play in college.
The senator objects to the Act on two grounds. Neither has merit.
Despite the Act providing student-athletes with the most comprehensive private rights of action to enforce their rights under the Act, the senator instead prefers to give those enforcement powers to government officials, state attorneys general, and bureaucrats at the FTC. He might want to check with his friends in the trial bar, who presumably believe they are doing a good job enforcing student-athlete rights, before taking those cases away from them.
It was the involvement of state attorneys general that led to the one-year transfer-portal rule that is at the heart of the current collapse of college sports. Likewise, having FTC bureaucrats make decisions about how student-athletes are compensated and whether they are eligible to compete seems far outside the agency’s area of expertise.
The senator’s second argument, concerning conference expansion, ignores the fact that the Act places no restrictions on UConn’s ability to join any conference. Moreover, the Act provides sufficient slots within the Power Four conferences to allow colleges such as UConn to join.
The senator would be well advised to heed the advice of championship coaches Dan Hurley and Geno Auriemma, both of whom have stated that passage of the Act is essential to UConn’s competitiveness.
The senator acknowledges that much of what is contained in the Act comes from prior bills he authored. He should recognize that compromise is precisely how this bipartisan Act was built. This is the last and best hope for meaningful legislation. Without it, it may soon become too late to fix college sports.
Randy Levine is president of the New York Yankees and Vice Chair of President Trump’s roundtable to fix college sports.