Lawmakers during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing "demanded the NCAA develop full-scale reform for college athletics, even requesting President Mark Emmert present Congress with a more broad set of modifications to the organization's archaic policies," according to Ross Dellenger of SI.com. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) during yesterday's hearing "scolded Emmert and the NCAA for not enforcing proper health-and-safety standards and for not seeing that athletes are graduating." The third Senate hearing on the debate over athlete compensation "resulted in little news and a lot of fireworks," as Booker and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) "chastised Emmert for, mainly, the NCAA's lack of universal and long-term healthcare for athletes." Emmert acknowledged that he "supports what's called a 'scholarship for life,' where athletes may later return to get their degrees." He also "denounced COVID-19 waivers that some schools are requiring athletes to sign before they return to campus, calling them 'inappropriate.'" U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that the committee is "starting a working group to craft a basic rights package for college athletes, with a deadline of Sept. 15." The group "appears to be led by Blumenthal and Booker" (SI.com, 7/22).
LAYING LEGAL GROUNDWORK: ESPN.com's Dan Murphy noted Emmert told the senators that the NCAA was "not requesting an all-encompassing antitrust exemption but an 'extremely narrow' one tapered specifically to litigation about NIL rules." Federal courts have ruled several times in the past decade that the NCAA "violates antitrust law by capping what each school is allowed to offer its athletes in exchange for playing on their sports teams." Emmert is asking for an exemption that "will allow them to open the door for athletes to make money from endorsements without the NCAA legally losing the ability to cap other types of payment that might come directly from a school." U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked Emmert and Clemson AD Dan Radakovich "why any type of restrictions on how college athletes are able to make money with endorsements were necessary." Radakovich said that they "wanted to make sure that future endorsement deals did not become thinly veiled ways for boosters and other fans of a particular college team to pay athletes to induce them to play for that school" (ESPN.com, 7/22).
