07/17/26 04:09:00
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07/17 16:07 CDT Senator says key piece of college sports legislation 'probably'
has 60 votes to clear upper chamber
Senator says key piece of college sports legislation 'probably' has 60 votes to
clear upper chamber
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) --- A lawmaker sponsoring a key piece of federal college
sports legislation said he believes the bill likely has the support it needs to
make it through the upper chamber.
"We probably have 60 votes," Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said Friday at the
Associated Press Sports Editors meeting.
Schmitt called the next two weeks critical for the Protect College Sports Act.
He said leaders from the Southeastern and Big Ten Conferences, both of which
oppose the bill as it is written, have met with the top sponsors --- Sens. Ted
Cruz, R-Texas, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. --- to negotiate changes in the bill
in an effort to gather their support.
Without the bill, Schmitt said "the trajectory of this in three years will be
even further unrecognizable," predicting a scenario in which women's sports
teams fold under financial strain.
College sports has been struggling to find a fair way to pay players for their
name, image and likeness since payments to players were approved by a federal
court last summer.
The legislation introduced by Cruz and Cantwell offers the NCAA and conferences
limited liability protection and moves to preempt the patchwork of state laws
that govern NIL payments. It also opens the option for conferences to pool
their media rights --- a move proponents say could generate extra billions but
that the SEC and Big Ten do not support.
In a letter to school presidents last month, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey
outlined worries that the bill could create more problems than it solves.
Sankey suggested rewriting a section of the bill that allows athletes to file
civil lawsuits in certain cases, saying as it was written it could create more
litigation instead of reducing it.
Even if the bill passes the Senate, it would face an unlikely run through the
narrowly divided House, where both Democrats and Republicans have found a
number of flaws with another bill --- the SCORE Act --- that never came to a
floor vote.
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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports
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