Federal legislators are taking their first steps toward considering college sports legislation since the new Congress was formed.
A spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee told Sportzshala Tuesday that he plans to hold a hearing on March 29 to discuss the name, likeness, and likeness (NIL) rights of college athletes.
The spokesperson did not provide any information about who might be asked to testify at the hearing, but it will also be the first NCAA-related public meeting on Capitol Hill since NCAA President Charlie Baker took office on March 1. Baker, who took up the position after completing his second term as governor of Massachusetts, has been asked by NCAA member schools to lead their efforts to persuade Congress to help them regain some control over how college athletes make money and help them fend off the onslaught of legal challenges. regarding the current business model based on amateurism.
“I think talking to Congress will inform that talking to members, and vice versa,” Baker told Sportzshala last month. “I understand and appreciate the difficulty of working on something through the legislative process. It’s incredibly difficult.”
In 2021, House and Senate committees held hearings on the future of college sports, but neither provided significant momentum for new federal legislation. Over the past three years, lawmakers have proposed more than half a dozen different federal bills to change college sports in a variety of ways.
Bills proposed by Democrats support sweeping changes, including education and health care reforms, and give athletes the right to form unions and bargain collectively against the NCAA. The Republican-backed bills contained narrower proposals aimed at creating a national standard for how athletes are allowed to profit from the sale of rights to their NILs.
The hearings will be led by a pair of Republicans: committee chair Kathy McMorris Rogers of Washington and Gus Bilirakis of Florida, who chairs the subcommittee on innovation, data and trade. In a statement, Rodgers and Bilirakis said their group wants to “create a clear set of rules for male and female athletes in every sport so that they can capitalize on their name, image and likeness – in schools large and small.” in every state is to save the future of college athletics.
“With the March madness ahead of us,” they said in a joint statement, “we look forward to holding this timely hearing and resuming discussions on how we can protect the rights of young athletes across the country.”
NCAA Board Chair Linda Livingston told member schools earlier this year that they hope to ask Congress for new legislation that would make it clear that college athletes are not employees of their schools, create a national standard for NIL rules, and protect the organization from retroactive effect. lawsuits from athletes who have been denied the opportunity to make money from NIL opportunities in the past.
Source: www.espn.com
