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SBJ Unpacks: Senator Chris Murphy Pushes For College Sports Reform

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) joins our Andrew Levin to break down shifting power dynamics across college sports, as well as to discuss his involvement with the proposed "College Athletes' Bill of Rights."

On what business practices in college sports need to change:
Murphy: Over the last 10-15 years, the size of the college sports industry has gotten enormous, and the amount of money that largely white males have been making off of essentially the free labor of largely African-American young men is getting to disgustingly high levels. … It doesn’t look any different on TV or in person than professional athletics. The only difference is the people who are putting the product on the field aren’t getting compensated, and that, to me, is a civil rights issue as much as it is an issue of basic economic fairness.

On what the proposed "College Athletes' Bill of Rights" would accomplish:
Murphy: It’s not a great thing, ultimately, to have 50 different state laws on college athlete endorsement deals. That will lead to chaos in college athletics, so Congress should pass legislation creating a national standard. But what we’re saying in this Bill of Rights is that when we do grant national rights to the control of student-athletes’ name, image and likeness, we should give them the control. We shouldn’t give the NCAA control over setting the rules on endorsement deals, and we should also, at the same time, grant students a broader set of rights. That’s rights to healthcare, insurance, rights to compensation outside of name, image and likeness; that’s guaranteeing scholarships.

On football players practicing and living on campus while many regular students are taking classes remotely due to safety concerns:
Murphy: There are schools right now that aren’t letting students back on the campus that are essentially all virtual in terms of learning. ... But the football players are back on campus, and the reason for that is clear: The schools need to make money off the football programs. Some of these schools depend on football for 10-15% of their overall revenue, and so they can’t have the football players home. But it just blows wide open this notion that these football players are just like all the other students, that they’re students first and athletes second. No they’re not. They’re athletes first. They are commodities to these schools.

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