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[Senate Hearing 119-526] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] S. Hrg. 119-526 PROTECTING COLLEGE SPORTS: SUPPORTING STUDENT ATHLETES, RESTORING FAIR COMPETITION, AND SAVING THE GAMES FANS LOVE ======================================================================= HEARING before the COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION __________ JUNE 3, 2026 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Available online: http://www.govinfo.gov ______ U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 64-622 PDF WASHINGTON : 2026 SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION TED CRUZ, Texas, Chairman JOHN THUNE, South Dakota MARIA CANTWELL, Washington, ROGER WICKER, Mississippi Ranking DEB FISCHER, Nebraska AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota JERRY MORAN, Kansas BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee GARY PETERS, Michigan TODD YOUNG, Indiana TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin TED BUDD, North Carolina TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois ERIC SCHMITT, Missouri JACKY ROSEN, Nevada JOHN CURTIS, Utah BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico BERNIE MORENO, Ohio JOHN HICKENLOOPER, Colorado TIM SHEEHY, Montana JOHN FETTERMAN, Pennsylvania SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia ANDY KIM, New Jersey CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware Brad Grantz, Republican Staff Director Nicole Christus, Republican Deputy Staff Director Lila Harper Helms, Staff Director Melissa Porter, Deputy Staff Director C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hearing held on June 3, 2026..................................... 1 Statement of Senator Cruz........................................ 1 Letter dated May 31, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz and Hon. Maria Cantwell from James J. Phillips, PhD, Commissioner, Atlantic Coast Conference.................................. 39 Letter dated June 1, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz and Hon. Maria Cantwell from Tim Pernetti, Commissioner, American Conference................................................. 40 Letter dated June 2, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz and Hon. John Cornyn from Daniel Pullin, Chancellor, Texas Christian University................................................. 41 Letter dated June 2, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz and Hon. Maria Cantwell from Judy MacLeod, Commissioner, Conference USA... 42 Letter dated June 1, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz, Hon. Maria Cantwell, Hon. Eric Schmitt, and Hon. Chris Coons from members of Saving College Sports........................... 43 Letter dated May 18, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz and Hon. Maria Cantwell from the President's Roundtable on Fixing College Sports..................................................... 48 Letter dated June 2, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz and Hon. Maria Cantwell from Nina King, Vice President and King-Compton Families Director of Athletics, Duke University............ 50 Letter dated June 2, 2026 to Senator Cantwell from Gene Taylor, Director of Athletics, Kansas State University..... 51 Letter dated Larry Benz, Chairman, Board of Trustees, University of Louisville; Gerry Bradley, President, University of Louisville, and Josh Heird, Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics, Director of Athletics, University of Louisville................................... 52 Letter dated May 27, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz from Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, President, University of Nebraska................ 55 Letter dated June 2, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz and Hon. Maria Cantwell from J. Michael Haynie, PhD, Chancellor and President, Syracuse University............................. 56 Letter dated June 1, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz and Hon. Maria Cantwell from Timothy D. Sands, President, Virginia Tech University................................................. 57 Letter dated June 3, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz and Hon. Maria Cantwell from T. Taylor Eighmy, Ph.D., President, University of Texas at San Antonio, and Carlos Alvarez Distinguished Presidential Chair........................... 58 Letter dated June 2, 2026 to Hon. Ted Cruz and Hon. Maria Cantwell from Heather Wilson, President, University of Texas at El Paso........................................... 60 Statement of Senator Cantwell.................................... 4 Posters...................................................... 7 Statement of Senator Young....................................... 10 Statement of Senator Capito...................................... 11 Statement of Senator Schmitt..................................... 36 Statement of Senator Blunt Rochester............................. 62 Statement of Senator Blackburn................................... 64 Statement of Senator Hickenlooper................................ 66 Statement of Senator Lujan....................................... 70 Statement of Senator Curtis...................................... 73 Statement of Senator Kim......................................... 75 Statement of Senator Fischer..................................... 78 Statement of Senator Budd........................................ 79 Statement of Senator Moreno...................................... 80 Statement of Senator Rosen....................................... 80 Statement of Senator Moran....................................... 85 Statement of Senator Sullivan.................................... 89 Letter dated December 12, 2024 to Rich Clark, Executive Director, College Football Playoff and Nick Carparelli, Executive Director, Bowl Season from U.S. Senators, Senators-elect, and Members of Congress.................... 91 Witnesses Nick Saban, Former Head Football Coach, University of Alabama.... 12 Prepared statement........................................... 15 Pete Bevacqua, Director of Athletics, University of Notre Dame... 18 Prepared statement........................................... 20 Gordon Gee, President Emeritus, West Virginia University......... 22 Prepared statement........................................... 24 Teresa Gould, Commissioner, Pac-12............................... 25 Prepared statement........................................... 27 Lance Holtzclaw, Student Athlete, University of Utah............. 30 Prepared statement........................................... 31 Appendix Response to written questions submitted to Nick Saban by: Hon. John Thune.............................................. 101 Hon. Maria Cantwell.......................................... 102 Hon. Tammy Baldwin........................................... 103 Response to written questions submitted to Pete Bevacqua by: Hon. Maria Cantwell.......................................... 104 Hon. Tammy Baldwin........................................... 104 Response to written questions submitted to Gordon Gee by: Hon. Maria Cantwell.......................................... 105 Hon. Tammy Baldwin........................................... 106 Response to written questions submitted to Teresa Gould by: Hon. John Thune.............................................. 107 Hon. Maria Cantwell.......................................... 108 Hon. Tammy Baldwin........................................... 110 Response to written questions submitted to Lance Holtzclaw by: Hon. Maria Cantwell.......................................... 111 Hon. Tammy Baldwin........................................... 112 PROTECTING COLLEGE SPORTS: SUPPORTING STUDENT ATHLETES, RESTORING FAIR COMPETITION, AND SAVING THE GAMES FANS LOVE ---------- WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 2026 U.S. Senate, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:11 a.m., in room SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Ted Cruz, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. Present: Senators Cruz [presiding], Wicker, Fischer, Moran, Sullivan, Blackburn, Young, Budd, Schmitt, Curtis, Moreno, Sheehy, Capito, Lummis, Cantwell, Klobuchar, Rosen, Lujan, Hickenlooper, Kim, and Blunt Rochester. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TED CRUZ, U.S. SENATOR FROM TEXAS The Chairman. Good morning. Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will come to order. College sports is one of the few institutions in America that still bring entire communities together. Families plan Saturdays around kickoff. Students pack arenas on cold winter nights. Alumni come back to campus every fall to see friends, to sing old fight songs, and to cheer for the same colors that they wore decades ago. Rivalries are handed down through generations. They become part of family traditions, part of lore and stories that span decades and that connect generations. They become--in every corner of the country, college sports carry a sense of place and identity that very few other institutions in America can match. But today, tragically, the foundation underneath college sports is cracking. Fans can see what's happening. Rosters turnover every year. Your team develops a great team, and boom, the next year they're gone somewhere else. Schools fight to keep pace with out-of-control NIL spending. Coaches have to re- recruit their own locker room each offseason. Eligibility disputes are decided by lawsuits and emergency injunctions. Historic rivalries go away. Pro athletes are returning to play in college. The richest conferences keep pulling further and further away, and the mid-major programs become farm teams for the Blue Bloods. In 2024, Marshall withdrew from the Independence Bowl after its coach left, and 25 players entered the transfer portal. UNLV fans watched their 3-0 team lose its starting quarterback midseason after an NIL dispute. And the Pac-12, one of the most historic conferences in college sports, collapsed under realignment. These things only happen in a broken system. To be clear, this problem wasn't caused by student athletes profiting from their name, image, and likeness. The problem is the old system was dismantled without a durable replacement. College athletics is being torn apart from every direction. State laws compete against each other. Agents, collectives, boosters, and media companies make decisions without care for the student athlete or the greater good. And when national organizations try to create some structure, they're repeatedly sued, forced to change the rules again, or simply blocked from enforcing them. As a lawmaker, it was not my intention to try to insert Congress into college sports. College sports came to Congress because changing the law is the only way to fix the legal chaos that we're seeing right now. Congress, unfortunately, helped create the legal environment in which college sports now operates. Federal antitrust, broadcasting, and interstate commerce laws shape what schools and conferences and governing bodies can do. If college sports cannot enforce basic rules because of the laws that Congress wrote, then Congress has a responsibility to adjust them, and we're the only people who can. That's exactly what the Protect College Sports Act does. Legislation that Ranking Member Cantwell, Senator Schmitt, Senator Coons, and I introduced. That's what it's designed to do. For the fans, the Protect College Sports Act creates a national rulebook that restores order to a system that is overwhelmed by transfer chaos, recruiting, inducements, tampering, eligibility lawsuits, and unchecked bidding wars. It preserves real and legitimate NIL opportunities for student athletes that's better and more fair. But it also makes clear that college sports should not be a constant and unrestricted free agency where programs are rebuilt every offseason through payroll instead of coaching, player development, and fair competition. It puts education back into college athletics. Most student athletes, we know, will never play professionally. The statistics are 99 percent of the more than half million student athletes in America will not play in the NFL, will not play in the NBA. But college sports is an incredible avenue for opportunity for them. Those athletes they play to compete, to earn a degree, to gain discipline, to become leaders, and to build a foundation for life beyond the field or beyond the court. This bill is designed to put student athletes on a path to a degree and it protects their scholarships regardless of injury--if they blow out their knee, their scholarship is still there--and regardless of their performance. The bill also brings accountability to the NIL and to the agent marketplace. It requires standard terms and legal protections in NIL contracts, and it prevents agents from charging outrageous fees, which right now is an endemic problem. Young athletes and their families deserve clear contracts, honest representation, and protection from people who make promises they cannot keep. It establishes strong health and safety protections and restores clear eligibility standards so that rules are not written by local judges or a G League player coming back to swipe a roster spot from an 18-year-old kid fresh out of high school. The Protect College Sports Act also gives universities the option to pool media rights, the same authority given to professional leagues like the NFL. I want to make clear, this provision is entirely optional. It is also not a statement on the current use of the Sports Broadcasting Act, as I know many of my colleagues have expressed concerns that the antitrust exemption given to professional sports leagues is not serving consumers in today's landscape. This new option exists so that schools can make TV money work for college sports by helping to generate revenue to support and preserve Olympic sports and women's sports, to protect traditional rivalries for fans, and to keep games accessible for all of those who love them. Some critics ask, with everything going on in the world, why is Congress focused on college sports? Let me explain. If we do nothing, the current trajectory will concentrate more power in fewer hands and will widen the gap between the richest programs and everyone else. In a few years, if we do nothing, we could lose dozens of historic football and basketball programs, not to mention tens of thousands of Olympic sports at colleges dependent on the revenue from football and basketball. Is that what our country wants? To allow Federal law, the failings of Congress, to kill off everyone but the SEC and Big Ten? Look, I'm from Texas. I love SEC, the Big Ten, they're incredible institutions. But I also love all of the rest of institutions that make college sports so fantastic and fun to watch. If we do nothing. A few years ago, college football in Texas could be reduced to UT and A&M, both incredible institutions. But if we wake up and those are the only football programs in Texas, we've done something tragically wrong. As much as I love them, I want to see Baylor and Rice and TCU and SMU and Texas Tech and all of the great institutions being able to compete and having a chance. Our system of college sports is unlike anything else in the world. This is something to reflect on. There is no nation on planet Earth that has anything remotely comparable to college sports in America. I have to admit, before we began working on this, I never focused on that. I never thought of that. You just kind of take for granted that's what Saturdays are about, is college football. But there's no other country that has a half million kids at any given time, many from low-income environments, many who would never otherwise have a chance to go to school, have an avenue to get an education, to learn discipline, to learn sportsmanship, to learn excellence. That is extraordinary. If we wake up in a few years and instead of a half million kids in college sports, we have half as many, and that opportunity has been taken away, that would be a profound disservice to this nation, and I believe all of us should prevent this. Let me make a final point. Look, this is a time when both political parties are battling like crazy. We practically can't agree on anything. We wake up in the morning, say good morning, and half of us say no, it's not. Like, it's just--that's the reality of the world we're in. I hope and pray, and I'm encouraged that this is a moment where we can come together-- and I will say I want to take a moment of praise for Ranking Member Cantwell. She and I have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours negotiating this bill. It has been excruciating. I am certain Ranking Member Cantwell thought at multiple times we're never going to get there. I have to admit, I thought it multiple times. We're never going to get there. I'm going to confess to everyone there is a secret sauce, which is when we had moments when everything broke down, I did have my staff bring in Cuban coffee. I am now the lone remaining Cuban American in the Senate. And Cuban coffee, it is full of caffeine and sugar, and if nothing else works, Cuban coffee solves a lot of problems. And we would knock down some Cuban coffee and then go back and keep negotiating. That gives me some hope and optimism we can actually get this done. And by the way, I think the country will be shocked if they see Congress actually get something done. I want to thank the witnesses for being here. I want to thank everyone for being here. We got a job to do. Ranking Member Cantwell. STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL, U.S. SENATOR FROM WASHINGTON Senator Cantwell. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And yes, thank you for that coffee. I am from Seattle, so that is a way to get us going. And I want to thank the witnesses especially for being here. Each of you represent a special expertise on this subject and your thoughts and wisdom today will be much appreciated. My colleagues probably know that there are probably 25 things that Senator Cruz and I don't agree on and that's just in this committee. So saying that it is an accomplishment for him and I to agree on this, is saying something. We agree today that college athletics are in crisis, and we agree that the system is broken and unsustainable. Universities, athletes, and fans are pleading with us to do something about this issue. Schools are cutting women's and Olympic programs, and they are dropping scholarships--I think we have a poster out here that shows that--erasing roster slots to try to keep pace with out-of-control spending in football and basketball. And I think as Coach Saban says in his Statement, that this has turned into pay for play. So we cannot have a pay for play system and then continue to cut this many women and Olympic athletes in various programs. Just since 2023, over 100 programs and more than 1,000 athletic scholarships and rosters in women and Olympic sports have been eliminated, and it's going to get worse. In April, the University of Arkansas and St. Louis University both announced within days of each other they were going to cut the women's actually, and men's tennis team. Kansas, Colorado, Rutgers, and Washington State, my home state, beloved institutions with strong alumni bases and storied histories, are getting hollowed out. And even if the universities are not cutting sports programs, they are taxing students who are not athletes and taking money out of their general funds to cover ballooning athletic program deficit. James Madison University now charges every student an extra $2,400 a year for athletics, whether or not they ever step on a field. What once felt like a shared national pastime has become a free-for-all, a money flowing with few guardrails, players and coaches constantly moving, and schools struggling to keep pace. As Coach Saban notes in his testimony--and I thank you for emphasizing the effect on women and Olympic athletes. I appreciate that coming from a football coach, the whole ecosystem is important. Coach Saban says, ``We will lose scholarships, we will lose Olympic pipelines, we will lose chances for young people who may never play professionally but whose lives are changed by college sports.'' The pay for play antics and this failed system are putting our future Olympic athletes and future women sports participants at risk. When you ask the American public in a poll about this, it's not football that rises to the top. Only 54 percent of the respondents say they really care about football. Eighty-seven percent of the respondents say the most important thing they worry about is women in Olympic sports. And why not? Because they understand how unique they are and how threatened they are by a system that cuts even $1 from where we are investing today. Clearly, both of these things, women and Olympic sports, need larger investments than we are doing today. Other countries like China and Russia recruit their athletes and do it through dedicated programs and dedicated facilities. We rely on our college system instead to help train the best. 3 out of 4 members of the 2024 Olympic team in Paris were current or former college athletes. And it was the women Olympians in Paris who took home the majority of the gold. As Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, who is here with us today, said, ``If we continue to go down this path of no legislative action, Olympic and women's sports around the United States will be at risk both this year and years to come.'' I believe the failure of us to act here will make us responsible for the outcome of future Olympic teams if we don't come up with a solution. But as my colleague Senator Cruz said, none of this is inevitable. We can and we should write better rules that put athletes first and keep our institutions strong. And that is exactly what the College Sports Act does. It protects college athletes' hard-won rights to be paid name, image, and likeness and recognizes revenue sharing, as in the settlement agreement. It replaces a patchwork of weak State laws with strong Federal laws, and our bill makes sure that an athlete cannot lose a scholarship because of an injury or a bad season, and it requires Division I schools to guarantee those scholarships even after they've graduated, to make sure they can complete that--after they've finished, so they can complete their college education. It requires Division I schools to have medical care while athletes play and for 5 years after. And we create a $60 million trust fund for athletes with long-term conditions like CTE. That is landmark investment. It also makes sure that medical staff is independent so that coaches can never overrule a doctor, and it ensures that whistleblowers can't be retaliated against. The bill puts real rules on unscrupulous agents who have started to exploit our youngest athletes at the high school level, and it does this by making sure that we cap their fees and make sure that they are registered in their states. It also ensures that the NCAA and conferences cannot provide women with unequal facilities. That means travel, meals, rest, championship tournaments. Women get to be--women get to be treated equally as the men's team. And these rights have teeth. If they're violated, the athletes can have their day in court. This bill also gives institutions a way to raise more money without having to raid endowments or levy new fees. I believe, and I hope that Mr. Gee will emphasize on this today, we cannot lose the innovation race with China because we are cutting university R&D and putting it into sports instead. These institutions have very important roles for our Nation right now, and any school that chooses can pool its media rights and negotiate with them similar to what the NFL and NBA do today. It lets these schools build smarter schedules, so regional rivals can play closer to home. It requires that every football and basketball game be offered in local markets for free viewing in the home market. I think every one of my colleagues will want to go home and talk about this. We are not letting content be put behind a paywall so that you can only access it--your favorite team--if you buy a subscription. And it brings in real revenue. Experts believe that this could bring in an additional $4 to $8 billion in media rights revenue, money that we would like to dedicate to women and Olympic sports. The solution here is to grow the pie, not shrink it, and give schools more resources. Senator Capito and I wrote the Equal Pay for Team USA Act, now the law of the land, which requires women representing this country receive the same pay, medical care, and travel and expenses as men. And this bill carries that same principle into law here for college. We all remember that the women's NCAA basketball players given a single rack of dumbbells while they were playing in a championship tournament, and the men had a full weight room. So this cannot be the standard. So, Mr. Chairman, I again want to thank you for the hard work that this legislation represents. Many athletes have been hurt by us not having this legislation. As I mentioned, athletes who basically failed to basically get a scholarship or a team that did not stick up for them when they were hurt and shouldn't be playing, or someone whose program got canceled and then tried to go play golf at another school only to be told by the NCAA they couldn't play. This bill puts real athletes' rights into Federal law, and I hope we can make it the law of the land very soon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. Thank you. Without objection, I ask unanimous consent to admit the posters into the record. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] The Chairman. And I'll now introduce our witnesses. Our first witness is Coach Nick Saban, which in a hearing on college sports, there is hard to find another witness who needs no introduction. Mr. Saban is formerly the head coach at the University of Alabama, a team under his leadership that was so damn good it was frustrating to every team in the country and certainly frustrating to every Texas team. Throughout his career, his team won a ridiculous seven national championships, one with LSU and six with Alabama. 49 of his players went on to become first-round draft picks in the NFL. And even more importantly, at the University of Alabama under his leadership, his players earned 656 college degrees. Our second witness, someone who has become a friend over time, Pete Bevacqua, and I'll turn to our colleague from Indiana, Senator Young, to introduce him, but I will on behalf of the Committee ask him not to break into the Notre Dame fight song as he does the introduction. STATEMENT OF HON. TODD YOUNG, U.S. SENATOR FROM INDIANA Senator Young. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to our witnesses. Very few leaders in America are as familiar with the intersection of athletics and business as Pete Bevacqua, and it's a privilege to introduce him for today's hearing. Pete's been the athletic director for Notre Dame since 2024. Of course, this is not his first go-around at the university. He's a Fighting Irish alum. He graduated magna cum laude, and was a walk-on punter for the legendary Lou Holtz. He arrived for his second stint at Notre Dame with extensive experience and great success in sports business, serving as chair of NBC Sports, CEO of the PGA of America, and the first managing director of the U.S. Open Championship. He was also global head of golf at Creative Artists Agency, one of the premier talent and sports agencies in the world. I can't fail to mention that Sports Business Journal named him one of the 125 most influential sports executives of the last 25 years. He and I have had productive conversations about the future of collegiate sports. We will continue those conversations. I know his experience and vision will be instructive to all of us. So Pete, thank you for being here and for contributing to this important conversation today. The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Young. We'll now turn it over to our colleague from West Virginia, Senator Capito, to introduce our third witness, Gordon Gee. STATEMENT OF HON. SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA Senator Capito. Thank you, Chairman, and I am excited to be in this hearing today for many reasons, most importantly because we have two great West Virginians on the panel, one honorary and one born and raised in Marion County. The first being Dr. E. Gordon Gee and the second, Coach Nick Saban. Thank you both for being here. I'd also like to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to introduce Dr. Gee, a champion for college athletics who has made a profound impact on my State's trademark public land-grant higher education institution, West Virginia University. Dr. Gee, or as we call him, Gordon, was born in Utah and attended the University of Utah, but he is quick to mention that he is a born-again West Virginian, having served twice as president of WVU, and he always wears his signature, the gold and blue bow ties. He has experience having served as President of five different universities throughout his career: the University of Colorado, the Ohio State University twice, Brown University, and Vanderbilt University, in addition to WVU. He has also signed more college diplomas than anybody else in the history of this country. He has a long list of academic accomplishments and achievements that he took into his retirement from WVU last summer, but we're here to talk about a topic that Gordon remains central to Gordon's focus and identity, and that is college athletics. Gordon has long been quick to recognize that on-field success translates to the overall well-being and health of an institution. He says athletics is the front porch of the university. The place where people look at us and decide whether or not they want to walk through that front door. He has served at the Big 12 Conference's representative to the College Football Playoff Board of Managers, as well as Chair of the Big 12 Conference Board of Directors Executive Committee. As Gordon navigated WVU through the challenges and complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was a leading voice in maintaining that the 2020 college football season would go on saying that, ``West Virginia University will be playing football even if I have to suit up myself.'' Look at Gordon. [Laughter.] Senator Capito. Gordon's vast experience in this field will enhance the perspective of our members as we discuss ways to protect college sports and support our athletes. He's battle- tested in this arena and understands factors that jeopardize the future of college athletics as we know them and the impacts that they make. In a recent op-ed, Gordon noted that when it comes to the current state of college athletics, ``There is so much at stake. The future of the Olympics, the future of women's sports, the opportunity for young people to earn a scholarship and compete for something greater than self and become tomorrow's leaders.'' So I look forward to hearing from Gordon about how he sees Congress's role in preserving this crucial aspect of our society and I really thank him for being here and thank him for his friendship. The Chairman. I thank my friend Senator Capito. And in defense of our witness, I will note he may not be big, but I am confident he's really damn quick. [Laughter.] The Chairman. Our next witness is Teresa Gold, commissioner of the Pac-12. As commissioner, Ms. Gold has sought to build upon the 100-year legacy of the Pac-12. By launching in 2026 with 9 member universities, she brings extensive experience in athletics management from UC Davis, UC Berkeley, the West Coast Conference, and the Midwestern Collegiate Conference. And our final witness is Lance Holtzclaw. Mr. Holtzclaw is a student athlete--welcome--playing defensive end for the Utah Utes football team. He played football for the University of Washington before transferring to Utah in 2024. Coach Saban, you are recognized for your opening statement. Can you make sure to turn your microphone on? STATEMENT OF NICK SABAN, FORMER HEAD FOOTBALL COACH, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA Mr. Saban. Thank you, Chairman Cruz. I could use a little of that Cuban coffee because I didn't sleep much last night worrying about this testimony. Ranking Member Cantwell and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. And I really want everybody here to know that I'm not here to represent a conference or a team, but to preserve college athletics as a whole. You know, I think we all have to ask ourselves a question, what is our guiding principles for the future of college athletics, including Olympic, women, and non- revenue sports? You know, I've spent my adult life in college athletics. I believe in it. I've seen people come--young people come in the program, need structure, need discipline, need coaching, need academic support, need accountability, and I've seen them leave with a degree, a career, a family, and a better chance to be successful in life. I think the current system that we have in college athletics right now makes it more and more difficult to do these things. We moved away from development to focusing on money and not life skills. So to put this in perspective, if you had the biggest, baddest Ferrari that you could ever have and it was going 150 miles an hour toward the Grand Canyon, somebody needs to tap the brakes. And I think that's what we all need to do here. And I'm going to veer a little away from my testimony and just give you some examples of you know, things that I think people may not know that are happening in college football that are huge problems. First of all, I think student athletes should profit from name, image, and likeness as long as those things are authentic endorsements. They create branding for themselves. They sign with the company. They do promotions. I think these things are all healthy for their education as well as their quality of life. I think name, image, and likeness has become pay for play. You know, I said 5 or 6 years ago when a school that I'm not going to mention who didn't do anything wrong had what is called a collective. A collective is an organization that raises money basically from alumni to be able to pay players and disguise it as marketing opportunities. When a school did that, the first school that did it, I said, ``Is this what we want college football to become?'' And I got really criticized for that. But it has become that. And it has become pay for play. And we've also extended the opportunities now to funnel money from operations which come to the universities as marketing opportunities from the university standpoint, to funnel that money out of operations into paying players. So now if you take that $20 million or whatever it is, you could fund five or six Olympic and women's sports. So these are things that I think need to be addressed. And I think this bill takes a big step forward in doing that. So I think this bill also creates a competitive balance. You know, the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, they all have some kind of rules that govern how they compete. It creates parity. It creates, you know, something that gives you the opportunity to have a framework to build a fair play system in, which I think is really, really important. And I think this bill does that. Right now in college football, we have no rules. We have State laws, we have different in every state, we have litigation. The NCAA cannot enforce their own rules because every time they try to enforce the rule, there's a lawsuit. So, I mean, an example would be Ole Miss's quarterback. They say he can't play next year. He's playing next year because of litigation. So, but this is just the way it is. It's become arm race. Who spends the most has got the best chance to win. But I think it's a race to the bottom because if you don't spend to win, you lose your fan base and you don't have any revenue. So how do you manage the other sports? So the one thing that I think this bill does, you know, sort of enhance the enforcement of the House settlement, all right, which to me is a start, which sort of creates a revenue share, kind of a cap, and also controls some of the name, image, and likeness things that this bill tries to control. So, transferring. You know, I think transferring is a good thing. I don't think a player should be trapped in a bad situation. But I also think multiple transfers have a negative effect. I think there can be legitimate circumstances where you can transfer more than once. I think if you graduate, you should be able to transfer again. Because you might have a fifth year where you can have more success someplace else. But unlimited transfers creates free agency. Free agency with a collective, now you're talking about bidding war for players. And then you've got agents out there that are not certified, that are enhancing players or encouraging players to get in the portal, I can get you more money. So now we have this unbelievable number of players that get in the portal every year, and we have nothing to control agents. We have nothing to control tampering. You know, Clemson had a player that was on campus for a whole week, and they come and got him off the campus and took him someplace else. So these kinds of things going on in college football are absolutely not what anybody of--any of us signed up for relative to the educational institutions that you know, we've all tried to represent. So, what's the cause and effect of transferring? I think every time you transfer, you have less and less of an opportunity to graduate. You know, this hits home with me because I actually coached 50 years ago when people didn't graduate, and we saw 30 for 30s on what happened to their life, and we worked hard for a long time to get graduation rates where they are, and I'm proud of the fact that we had 668, or whatever the number is, you know, graduates at Alabama over 17 years. So we need to get back to, you know, that kind of atmosphere in college athletics. But if you transfer all the time--so first of all, we had players transfer that were in business. So they transfer, they couldn't get in business school at the school they transferred to, so they got in general studies so they could be eligible, so they minimize the importance of their degree because they transferred, and then also, could they graduate. You got guys transferring three or four years. We have guys playing seven or eight years of college football, which is ridiculous. We had 50 players in the draft this year that were over 25 years old competing against 17 and 18-year-olds, only because we have no structure in terms of what is eligibility? So the eligibility rule of 5 years is a really good thing, I think. I think we should protect prep schools. If somebody wants to improve their academic circumstance, their clock shouldn't start, and they should still have 5 years after that. And I think defining who is a pro. I know a guy came from the G League, that's a pro. There are also guys coming from Europe that are pros that are not under the same rules and regulations. I think all those things need to be controlled. So the collective. What if we continue to invest more and more in football and basketball? Let me give you the history. My first year we had collective at Alabama, $2.7 million. Next year, $7 million. Next year, $10 million. I retired. Next year, $17 million. Next year, $24 million. Now you have schools that have close to $40 million rosters. So, if we continue to do that, we're going to lose Olympic sports, we're going to lose non-revenue sports, we're going to lose scholarships, and basically what's going to happen is you're going to have football and basketball succeed, and we'll have club sports for everything else with no scholarships. That's horrible. I mean, we can't let that happen. And I think we have to continue to figure out ways that we can raise revenue so that we can keep all sports and all opportunities for all young people intact. I think we have to protect scholarships--we mentioned that--injury, roster decisions, athletic performance should not be reasons to get rid of a player. But what we've created now with the portal, which we think is a good thing, all the coach has to say to a player that's not very good is, get in the portal. I don't want you on the team. So he gets in the portal and maybe doesn't get an opportunity. Thirty percent of the people who get in the portal don't get an opportunity. So nobody talks about those things. And it minimizes, because everybody recruits out of the portal, how many young people out of high school get an opportunity to get a scholarship and play college football and start a career. So I think medical protection, injury protection, and healthcare are something that's really, really important. But I also think that Congress does not need to micromanage college athletics. There are lots of people out there that can help us do that. Congress does need to fix the mess in the courts, create a national framework so people inside college sports can enforce fair rules. Without legal certainty, every rule becomes another lawsuit, every standard becomes another risk, and the system keeps drifting toward the professional model. I believe we want an education-based model that compensates athletes fairly, protects athletes properly, and still preserves development, competition, opportunity, and tradition. That is what this bill is trying to do. It isn't perfect, and I'm sure many, many adjustments need to be made, and I think there are a lot of people who can add to that. But this is a serious bipartisan effort to bring order to a system that badly needs fixing. I don't think this is bipartisan. I think it should be nonpartisan. It's that important in terms of college athletics, in terms of the future for young people. It protects athletes, it protects opportunity, it protects competitive balance, it protects the sports that do not always generate revenue but still matter. It gives college athletes a chance to move forward with rules that are clear, national, and enforceable. For these reasons, I support the Protect College Sports Act and urge Congress to act. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Saban follows:] Prepared Statement of Coach Nick Saban Executive Summary College sports needs national rules. An endless stream of lawsuits and state-by-state laws and cannot produce fair, national competition. We need a model that brings stability and improves the quality of life for student athletes while keeping college sports connected to education, development, and opportunity. The current system has hurt student athletes who miss out on personal growth, and it's hurt competitive balance. Too often, whoever can raise the most money can buy the best roster. Transfer rules need stability. Athletes deserve freedom, but teams, coaches, fans, and universities also need a system that allows programs to develop. I support student athletes benefiting from their name, image, and likeness. That was never a problem. The problem is when NIL becomes thinly disguised pay-for-play and limitless free agency. The bill protects student athletes' ability to earn NIL. It also protects them from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous, and creates an independent student athlete ombudsman, scholarship guarantees, and medical/health coverage. The bill also protects the broader college sports ecosystem that depends on stability in football and basketball, including women's sports, Olympic sports, non-revenue sports, and rivalries. Congress should act now. If we wait until every lawsuit is finished and every program has adjusted on its own, there may not be much of the old college sports model left to protect. Testimony--As Prepared for Delivery Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. I'm not representing any conference or any team; I'm just a former college coach who cares about college sports. I have spent most of my adult life in college athletics. I believe in it because I have seen what it can do for young people. I have seen players come into a program needing structure, discipline, coaching, academic support, and accountability. I have seen them leave with a degree, a career, a family, and a better chance to be successful in life. That is what college athletics is supposed to be about. It is not just about who wins on Saturday. For me and many of my colleagues, it was about developing young people. I want to be clear at the start: student athletes should be able to profit from their own name, image, and likeness. I have said many times that student-athletes should be compensated for NIL. If a player earns a legitimate endorsement, builds a brand, signs with a company, or is paid for real promotional work, that is a good thing. It can improve their quality of life and help them build skills beyond sports. But that is not the same thing as turning NIL into a pay-for-play system. It is not the same thing as using collectives and outside entities to create a bidding war for recruits and transfers. When the system becomes whoever raises the most money gets the best players, then we are no longer talking about college athletics as millions of fans and I have known it. That is why I support the Protect College Sports Act. This bill recognizes the difference between real NIL and disguised pay-for-play. It gives student-athletes a Federal right to earn NIL compensation, but it also creates contract, agent, and enforcement rules so the system has integrity. That matters. Athletes and their families need transparency. They need to know whether a deal is real, what the student athlete is required to do, what the athlete will be paid, and whether the agents advising them are ethical and accountable. The bill also addresses competitive balance. Every sport that succeeds over time has rules. The NFL has rules. The NBA has rules. Major League Baseball has rules. Rules do not destroy opportunity. Good rules make competition better, because everyone knows the framework and everyone can build within it. Right now, college sports have no rules. There are different state laws, constant litigation, unclear enforcement, transfer instability, and an arms race that is dividing the top echelon of schools from everyone else and putting tremendous financial pressure on athletic departments that are losing tens of millions of dollars. That is not healthy for student athletes. It is not healthy for non-revenue sports. It is not healthy for fans. And it is not sustainable. I also support the bill's approach to transfers and eligibility. Athletes should have real freedom. A young person should not be trapped in a bad situation. But unlimited transfer freedom, combined with pay- for-play incentives, has created something very close to unlimited free agency without contracts, without rules, and without stability. That makes it harder to build teams and harder to develop young people. The more a young man or woman transfers, the less likely they are to finish their degree. The bill's one-transfer rule, with exceptions for legitimate circumstances, is a reasonable balance. Another important part of this bill is that it does not only focus on football. Football and men's basketball generate most of a department's revenue, but college athletics is bigger than those two sports. Women's sports, Olympic sports, and other non-revenue sports create opportunities for thousands of young men and women. Those opportunities matter. They are part of what makes college athletics different from professional sports. If all the money in the system is pushed into football payrolls and basketball payrolls, we will lose programs. We will lose scholarships. We will lose Olympic pipelines. We will lose chances for young people who may never play professionally but whose lives are changed by college sports. This bill takes that seriously by protecting women's and Olympic sports and by looking for ways to expand revenue for the broader system. The scholarship and medical protections in this bill are also important. If a young person gives his or her body to a university program, then that young person should not be discarded because of an injury, a roster decision, or athletic performance. Scholarships should mean something. Medical coverage should mean something. Health and safety standards should mean something. Independent medical judgment should not be overridden by competitive pressure. That is not just an athlete issue. That is a values issue. The bill also helps preserve what fans care about. Fans care about rivalries. They care about regional traditions. They care about watching their teams. They care about the connection between the school, the players, and the community. Once they are gone, they are hard to rebuild. Congress does not need to micromanage college athletics. But Congress does need to fix the mess in the courts and create a national framework so the people inside college sports can enforce fair rules. Without that legal certainty, every rule becomes another lawsuit, every standard becomes another risk, and the system keeps drifting toward a professional model without ever admitting that is what is happening. I do not believe most fans want universities simply sponsoring professional teams. I believe they want an education-based model that compensates athletes fairly, protects athletes properly, and still preserves development, competition, opportunity, and tradition. That is what this bill is trying to do. It is not perfect. No bill on a subject this complicated will be perfect. But it is a serious, bipartisan effort to bring order to a system that badly needs it. It protects athletes. It protects opportunity. It protects competitive balance. It protects the sports that do not always make money but still matter. And it gives college athletics a chance to move forward with rules that are clear, national, and enforceable. For those reasons, I support the Protect College Sports Act and urge Congress to act. Thank you. Summary of Key Items in the Act Protects scholarships and education. Schools may not revoke, reduce, or condition grant-in-aid based on athletic performance, injury/illness, or roster management, and athletic departments may not unduly pressure academic choices. The ultimate goal is pushing student athletes toward an education and securing a college degree. Protects true NIL. It sets a national standard (no more state-specific carveouts for recruiting boosts). Student athletes can earn NIL compensation and hire representation, while the bill targets sham NIL deals used as recruiting, retention, or cap-avoidance payments. Regulates agents and covers collectives. The bill updates the Federal Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act (SPARTA), requires agent registration/certification, standardizes NIL contracts between agents and student athletes, empowers the NCAA to sanction unscrupulous agents, caps endorsement-contract fees at 5 percent, creates consequences for false NIL promises, and covers collectives and associated entities used to route improper payments to student athletes. Enforces and extends the revenue share cap. The bill gives associations, conferences, and schools legal certainty to enforce the House settlement revenue share cap and prevent end- runs around it. Creates an anonymized NIL market database. Student athletes report NIL deals greater than $600, institutions report NIL agreements in anonymized form, and associations maintain a searchable database to help athletes and agents estimate fair market value. Creates enforceable transfer rules. Students have one free undergrad transfer without losing or delaying eligibility; additional transfers may carry sit-out consequences unless an exception (like a head coach departure) applies. Restores clear eligibility standards. The bill creates a five-calendar-year eligibility clock, preserves academic standards, bars professional athletes from competing, and permits rules from the NCAA on eligibility for drugs, sports wagering, conduct, and prize money. Stops tampering and recruiting chaos. Associations may enforce rules limiting contact with enrolled or committed athletes and may prohibit inducements offered in violation of recruiting and tampering rules. Lets rules actually be enforced. The bill provides targeted antitrust protection for associations, conferences, schools, and officials that enforce or comply with covered rules, including sanctions for violations. Protects student-athlete health and safety. The bill requires medical coverage, post-eligibility coverage for covered injuries, a catastrophic-injury fund, health and safety standards, abuse/hazing protections, independent return-to-play authority, and an Ombudsman. Protects whistleblowers. The bill prohibits retaliation against student athletes or employees who report violations or assist proceedings. The SBA title is voluntary. A pool media rights option if 75 percent of current FBS schools elect to participate. Preserves rivalries. If the pooled rights entity takes effect, the bill protects current conference rivalries and requires annual scheduling of at least one out-of-conference rivalry for schools whose most common opponents (top ten historically) are outside their conference. Keeps games locally available. Participating media-rights entities must make at least one no-charge local outlet option available for football and basketball games in participating schools' local markets. Protects women's and Olympic sports. Schools receiving collective media-rights revenue must maintain at least the same grant-in-aid opportunities and roster spots for non-revenue sports, including women's and Olympic sports, as in 2024-25. Prevents warehousing of non-football/non-basketball rights. Media distributors that buy rights for sports other than football and basketball must use those rights within one year or risk reversion. Blocks certain super conference consolidation. Large-revenue conferences cannot use mergers, acquisitions, media-rights rollups, or membership acquisitions to further consolidate power in violation of the bill's membership guardrails. The goal is practical amateurism for the modern era: students can be compensated for bona fide NIL, but college sports remains tied to education, finite eligibility, team continuity, and fair competition. That's why this is a win for fans, athletes, schools, and the future of college sports. Sincerely, Nick L. Saban. The Chairman. Thank you, Coach. Mr. Bevacqua, you're recognized for your opening statement. STATEMENT OF PETE BEVACQUA, DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME Mr. Bevacqua. Well, thank you, Chairman Cruz and Ranking Member Cantwell. It's an honor to be here. It's an honor to be here with my fellow witnesses and to represent Notre Dame. And I also want to thank Senator Young for a very nice introduction and also everything he does for our state in Indiana and for Notre Dame. I agree with Coach Saban. This is a major milestone to have this bipartisan support to do something for college sports. And I think this bill is an enormous step in the right direction. We have to act now. There is a tremendous sense of urgency. If we don't act now, women's and Olympic sports are going to be de-emphasized or cut, as you showed, Senator Cantwell. We need to act now to protect athletic departments, and we need to act now to make sure that the student athlete experience--and these are student athletes, they're not just athletes--that the student athlete experience is preserved and maintained and quite frankly reinforced around the country. We need sanity restored to the transfer portal. We need sanity restored to what it means to be a college student athlete around eligibility. I love the fact that we're talking about protecting scholarships, that we're talking about extended medical insurance, that we're talking about some real regulations around agents that are out there representing these young men and women. We need a realistic cap. The concept of a cap emanating from the House settlement, in my opinion, is a fallacy. There is no cap. It's an equation. It's an X plus Y equals Z equation. X being the cap dollars, Y being the gray space of third-party NIL, which quite frankly right now is littered with abuse and uncertainty. The more money that can come from the cap directly to student athletes I think will go a long way. And at Notre Dame, you know, our north star in the athletic department is preserving that student athlete experience. We want an integrated student athlete experience. And we spend so much time in this country talking about the superstars. In our world, the Jeremiyah Loves, the Hannah Hidalgos, the Caitlin Clarks, the Cooper Flaggs. But if Congress doesn't act now, there are going to be thousands and thousands and thousands of stories of young men and women, particularly in football and men's and women's basketball, that bounce around to three, four schools. And when you're going to three or four schools over a defined finite amount of time, the educational aspect of this becomes a total farce. And maybe they're earning NIL money along the way in bits and pieces. And maybe at a young age you feel that NIL money is going to cure all of your monetary woes for the rest of your life. But these are not the type of kids who have the talent to make it in the NFL, the NBA, or the WNBA. And you're going to have a generation of student athletes, thousands of cases that are finishing their college journey without a college degree, with money that is fleeting. So by the time they're 25, they've torn through that money, and it's kind of a good luck with the rest of your life. You know, we make a promise to our student athletes. We talk about 4 for Forever. Your 4 years at Notre Dame, your 4 years, your 5 years at any university, whether it's the University of Alabama, West Virginia, universities in the Pac- 12 where Lance is at Utah, that school owes those student athletes the skills, the education, and the degree to make it in life. And so I applaud this bipartisan effort. Coach Saban said, hey, it's not perfect, but it's progress. It's tremendous progress. And if we don't act now, I fear the future of college sports. We need a realistic cap. We need to clear that up. We have to be forthright with one another. If we have these continuing runaway roster fees, primarily around football and men's basketball, I think there's going to be two inevitable outcomes. You're going to have a super league because there's only going to be a small number of universities that are going to wake up year in and year out and say, OK, we can still invest this type of money to field a nationally competitive football team. I don't think a super league is good for college football, and I certainly don't think a super league is good for college sports. The other thing, and I think we've all said it, and Senator Cantwell, you said it so well, even the strongest universities, the healthiest universities, if you continue to have these runaway roster fees, if you continue to have a failed house settlement with a cap that is not realistic and continued motivation to move into that gray space of third-party NIL, you are absolutely going to see the continuation of the slide that you put up with cutting and deemphasizing Olympic and women's sports. And that would be a very, very sad day for this country and an unbelievably negative thing to take away all those amazing opportunities for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of young men and women who get their life started in a great direction by participating as a student athlete at universities all around this country. So I thank you for the efforts you've made so far. I thank you for this bipartisan bill that you've put there. I hope and I know that you want to work with all of us and leaders in the college space to get this bill in as good a shape as possible. And as I said, I'll repeat myself, I think it's a wonderful step in the right direction. [The prepared statement of Mr. Bevacqua follows:] Prepared Statement of Pete Bevacqua, Vice President and James E. Rohr Director of Athletics, University of Notre Dame Thank you, Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and distinguished Members of the Committee. I am honored to have this opportunity to represent the University of Notre Dame, our student-athletes, coaches, staff and our alumni around the world. Without their hard work, support and generosity for our University, we could not work each day to uphold the vision of our founder, Father Edward Sorin, for Notre Dame to serve as ``one of the most powerful means of doing good in this country.'' We bring this vision to life by investing deeply in the holistic success of our students in the classroom, on the field and beyond. From our Pathways program, which ensures all undergraduate admissions applications are reviewed need-blind and the University meets 100 percent of every potential student's demonstrated financial need without loans, to our athletic department's goal to ensure that all of our student-athletes have an experience that combines academics, athletics and student life so they are equipped to be active and positive members of society well beyond their years on campus. The topic at hand today is one fraught with complexities and urgency. I would like to thank the leadership of this committee, Chairman Cruz and Ranking Member Cantwell, for their continued and tireless leadership and to many of their colleagues in this Committee and the larger Senate for understanding the existential crisis facing college athletics and for their bipartisan commitment to advancing critical legislation. Ours is an educational initiative in crisis with schools decreasing opportunities for student-athletes, bad-faith actors with predatory practices harming both student-athletes and institutions and the inability for common sense rules to be set and followed without risk of endless litigation. It is imperative that Congress takes action imminently. The bipartisan Protect College Sports Act of 2026, led by Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, Senator Coons and Senator Schmitt, works to capture the critical components necessary to protect student-athletes, provides guardrails for the collegiate athletics system and codifies NIL agreements. At Notre Dame, we already uphold many elements of the proposed legislation in connection with the comprehensive health, safety, financial and academic support we provide to our student-athletes. We hope all student-athletes, not just those educated in South Bend, Indiana, have access to similar support measures and that academics remain a central part of their collegiate experience. The efforts you have made to restore sanity to the transfer portal and eligibility rules, protect the scholarships of student-athletes, ensure medical insurance is commonplace for these students, remove ``bad actors'' from college athletics and reform SPARTA represent just a few of the many concepts outlined in this bill that are necessary for the future of college athletics. We applaud your efforts in regard to these important matters as they relate to all student-athletes, regardless of their sport or the revenue their sport might earn, and their fans throughout our Nation and, quite frankly, the world. I want to outline three key measures and respectfully ask that you consider them as you embark on advancing this critical legislation: 1. Preserving the Student-Athlete Experience 2. Continued Growth and Sustained Health for Women's and Olympic Sports 3. ``4 For Forever'' PRESERVING THE STUDENT-ATHLETE EXPERIENCE We strive to provide an unmatched student-athlete experience for every student-athlete that attends Notre Dame. The four years (or more) that student-athletes have on our campuses across the country must be used to pursue their education, obtain a degree, create meaningful, and lasting relationships and prepare themselves for the rest of their lives. We all must agree that such actions are the true essence of their college experience. Unfortunately, those key elements are being lost and/or minimized throughout the country. Our hope is that our fellow institutions of higher education reaffirm their commitment that student-athletes are students first and foremost and that athletics, while important to the overall growth of our students, cannot replace the importance of being an authentic member of the overall student body. While there is no expectation that other universities follow our exact model, we set a standard for all of our student-athletes--they live on campus, fully integrated with their fellow students in dorms and we only provide and recognize in-person classes, with no online opportunities and mandatory attendance requirements. We have in place a class miss policy governed by our Faculty Board on Athletics to ensure that education stays at the forefront when schedules are created on a sport-by-sport basis. These are just a few non-negotiable components of student-athlete life at Notre Dame that we are preserving in order to maintain an authentic and credible student-athlete experience--one we feel is second to none in college athletics. What is our north star? It is the preservation of this experience for our student-athletes. We are confident that with your bipartisan support, we can continue to provide it for the foreseeable future. CONTINUED GROWTH AND SUSTAINED HEALTH FOR WOMEN'S AND OLYMPIC SPORTS Protecting the incredible value of the student-athlete experience beyond revenue-generating sports, with a particular emphasis on the continued growth and sustained health of our women's and Olympic sports, is central to our mission at Notre Dame. These programs are the bedrock of the collegiate model, providing thousands of young men and women with opportunities to compete at the highest levels while earning a world-class education. If we continue to go down the path of no legislative action, Olympic and women's sports around the United States will be at risk both this year and for years to come. Congress must ensure that the transition to new models that support NIL agreements with student-athletes does not inadvertently dismantle and/or materially weaken the broad-based athletic opportunities that have made the American collegiate system the envy of the world. At Notre Dame, we remain steadfast in our commitment to the Olympic movement and Title IX, recognizing that the success of these programs is a vital component of our institutional identity. ``4 FOR FOREVER'' Finally, we must address the critical nature of protecting our student-athletes through comprehensive support systems that extend far beyond their time in competition. These efforts include securing scholarship opportunities and roster spots, providing extended medical insurance and offering opportunities for them to achieve financial literacy. At Notre Dame, we call this commitment ``4 for Forever.'' It is not just a tagline or a motto. ``4 For Forever'' is something we believe in and execute on behalf of our student-athletes in all 26 of our programs during and after their time on campus. It is our promise--our lifelong commitment to them--that the time student-athletes spend at Notre Dame will prepare them for their futures. Spend four years at Notre Dame as a student-athlete and we'll set you up for the remainder of your life-- whether it be career placement, community engagement, life skills, or navigating the pivot from athletics to your next step--our ``4 For Forever'' promise is there for you. We believe that by codifying these protections, we can ensure that the collegiate model remains a sustainable and transformative force for generations to come. In conclusion, we urge Congress to advance legislation that protects student-athletes, holds those accountable who refuse to follow the agreed upon standards and rules and provides the appropriate governing body the latitude to ensure one of our Nation's greatest treasures, college athletics, exists well into the future. The Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Gee, you're recognized for your opening. STATEMENT OF GORDON GEE, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY Mr. Gee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and certainly Ranking Member Cantwell. I am really honored to be here today. In fact, I feel a little bit out of place with all of these--yes, I couldn't--I'm 5, 5" and 140 pounds. I could hardly get out of bed in the morning, let alone play anything. So it's very difficult for me to think about hanging around with these folks, but I'm grateful to do so. And I thank you, Madam Senator, who is my dear friend from West Virginia, who does a great job. But not only that, she's just a great person, and her husband Charlie is a member of the university's board of Governors, and they are just devoted to West Virginia. So thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here. And if I could just say amen to what Coach Saban said and amen to what my good friend Pete said, I would do so, but I will add a few other things. Yes, I have an unstable employment pattern. I have been president of five universities for 45 years and most of the time I've left voluntarily. Couple of times--couple of times I left just ahead of the sheriff, but-- -- The Chairman. Mr. Gee, sometimes that happens in politics too. Mr. Gee. I know, we're in the--we're in the same kind of business in some ways. You know, I must just say that I get that, you know, Woodrow Wilson left the presidency of Princeton to become the Governor of New Jersey, as you well know. And when asked why he left Princeton, he said he wanted to get out of politics. So I sort of think that we're in the same business, as a matter of fact. But during that time, I've been privileged to serve these great universities. But what I've really been privileged to do is I've been privileged to serve the people of the states in which I--in which I find myself. And these are wonderful people who care deeply about their institutions and care deeply about the opportunities for their young people. And so I get so much joy from fulfilling those expectations. And I do have my name on about 500,000 diplomas. In fact, I was in the hotel today writing down, a guy said, ``Hi, I was at Vanderbilt with you.'' He's about 6, 10". I don't know, he was big. Of course, everyone looks big to me, but he was a football player, and he's now working for Goldman Sachs, and he said that without that football opportunity at Vanderbilt, he would have been distressed. And I just thought that that was really driving the point home today. I've chaired the Big Ten Conference twice. I've chaired the Southeastern Conference. I've chaired the Big 12. I've even chaired the Ivy League Conference, which was the most difficult, I might add. And then, of course, I've been heavily involved in college--in the college football playoff. But all of this is just to say that I have seen it, I have experienced it, and I do believe that there is an existential crisis in college athletics. You're taking a look at the poster boy, for some of those problems. Presidents and chancellors are not free from blame, and certainly having been at this for a long time, I probably am at the head of that pack. We've agreed to outrageous salary contracts, reduced the academic mission of being a student athlete, and abrogated too much power to athletic directors and conference commissioners--some, by the way, who seem more aligned with media companies than with their own universities. The end result is that we now have an unsustainable system. As the coach said, as Pete said, we have an unsustainable system unless we take bold action. It's just that simple. The NCAA and the conference has lost in the courts because we failed to allow student athletes to function as true students with great talents who earned the right to monetize those talents. So saying that, I can hear the chorus now. There are people out there in the back and everybody will say, well, this is just a fuzzy-headed academic failing to understand the realities of college athletics. Well, I want you to know I plead not guilty. And the reason for that is the fact that I fully understand the power of college athletics and its impact on the university. For example, I have yet to be able to persuade 110,000 people to show up for a chemistry lecture. Well, I also point out that, you know, Coach, to me, to all the fans it was just a football game, to me it was my budget running up and down the field, so I had to keep track of that too. But athletics play an incredibly important part in the culture and spirit of universities. It is absolutely unmatched. And what you said, what both of you said, but what you said, Senator, is so true. Is the fact that I've traveled the world, I've been to so many different institutions around the world. This is a unique part of the American culture, and it really is so unique that no one has been able to replicate it. So this legislation solves the governance crisis in college sports with sensible consensus rules which balance and respect both long-term stability and student athletic rights. It also solves the financial crisis, which there is a huge financial crisis, not only caused by athletics, but we have a substantial financial crisis among universities in this country. If we don't address it as part of that overall structure, we are going to have considerable problems in terms of just sustaining our education system. Let me just give you an example. College sports will lose over $5 billion this year alone. Think about that. The system must capture the billions in media revenue that college sports leaves on the table each year. College football already has twice the viewership of the NBA, but half the media revenue. Now that just seems to me to be unsustainable. It's something that we cannot really be able to even understand. So I know that firsthand from my time in the conferences, et cetera, that this is a serious problem. This bill provides the option to pool our rights, and I say that again, to pool our rights, where the conferences and schools themselves will decide, as you said, this is optional, whether to sell their rights together. But the very fact that we have addressed this is so enormously important. So with this legislation, we bring common sense to a very intractable problem, and I am grateful that this is bipartisan. And I love what the coach said. It should be nonpartisan. College athletics should be nonpartisan. It should be about--it should be about joy, achievements, and a variety of other things. So making certain that there are sufficient resources to support women's sports and Olympic sports are absolutely critical. Senator Cantwell and I've talked about that so many times. I feel so strongly about that. So today we have an opportunity. And I do believe that that window will close quickly. And there are those who don't want that window to remain open. We have to run through it. And I've got some pretty good fullbacks here, including my guy right down here. He said he'd be my fullback too, right? As a matter of fact. So thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Mr. Gee follows:] Prepared Statement of Gordon Gee Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and members of the committee, I am honored to appear before you in support of the Protect College Sports Act. I do so out of genuine concern for America's university system, intercollegiate athletics, and student athletes. I retired from presidential service just last July. I was a university president for 45 years serving at five universities: two different terms at West Virginia University separated by nearly 40 years, two seven-year terms at The Ohio State University, and tenures at Vanderbilt University, Brown University, and the University of Colorado. It has been an honor to have led these great universities, serving their faculty, staff, alumni, and the people of the states in which they reside. Of greatest importance are the students who are the future of our democracy and who brought me so much joy and fulfillment. I am honored to have my name on nearly 500,000 diplomas. During my service over 45 years, I have been honored to have significant engagement in the role athletics plays within the university setting. Over those years, college sports has changed dramatically. I have had the opportunity to serve as the chairman of NCAA committees as well as chairman of the Big Ten, SEC, Big XII, and Ivy League conferences. I have also been closely involved with the College Football Playoff as a member of its board of directors. Without a doubt, college athletics has played an important role at the institutions I have served. And I am dedicated to that continuing and thriving. Unfortunately, I do believe we face an existential crisis in college athletics. Presidents and Chancellors are not free from blame for this crisis. We agreed to outrageous salary contracts, reduced the academic mission at the core of being a student athlete, and abrogated too much power to athletic directors and conference commissioners. The end result is that we now have an unsustainable system which will destroy American college athletics, unless we take bold steps. The NCAA and the conferences lost in the courts because we failed to allow student athletes to function as true students with great talents, who earned the right to monetize their talents. Saying that, I can now hear the chorus of observers saying I am a seasoned, fuzzy-headed academic failing to understand the realities of the athletic environment. I plead not guilty. I fully understand the power of college athletics and its impact on a university. I have yet to be able to persuade 110,000 people to show up to a chemistry lecture. Athletics plays an incredibly important part in the culture and spirit of the American university. It is a critical way to tell our story. There is immense pride in winning from rivalries to championships, and I have even seen states go into mourning when their hometown heroes lose. It is preserving this spirit of competition and pride that I believe is what is one the key attributes that differentiates American universities from those in other countries. And that is the reason I am so grateful to this committee and our government for stepping up. With this legislation, we will be able to bring a level of common sense and discipline to the college athletic enterprise. We can restore basic rules to govern the system while continuing to allow student athletes to earn their fair share of the revenue they help create. Further, this legislation will go a long way to making certain that there are sufficient resources available to support women's sports and Olympic sports at the same time. I fully support this bill because it comprehensively solves both the governance and financial crises threatening college sports. We have been operating over the past few years with virtually no rules. This bill changes all of that with thoughtful, fair rules, developed by consensus within the system, to bring stability to college sports in a way that respects student athletes' rights to earn compensation and an incredible education at the same time. The bill replaces perpetual free agency with sensible transfer regulations. The bill replaces wide open eligibility with a five-year standard already supported by the system. The bill replaces an uncapped Wild West of pay-to-play with fair revenue share caps and logical NIL regulation. The bill does this and so much more to bring fairness and stability to college sports. The bill also solves the financial crisis which for far too long has been overlooked by me and my peers causing deficits to balloon to unsustainable levels. College sports will lose over $5 billion this year alone. Many schools are hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in debt. The only way to solve this is to capture the many billions of dollars of media revenue that college sports leaves on the table each year. College football is America's second most popular sport, but it ranks fifth in terms of revenue. College football already has twice the viewership of the NBA but earns just half the media revenue that the NBA does. The reason it under-earns so substantially is the inefficient way we sell our media rights in college sports, and I know this firsthand given my leadership roles at the Big Ten, SEC, Big XII, and CFP. All we must do to fix this is sell our rights the way the pro leagues do: on a unified basis. Pooling the sale of the rights increases our bargaining power over the media companies and results in much more money for our schools and student athletes. This bill allows us to pool our rights and does so thoughtfully and respectfully by making it optional, where the conferences and schools themselves will decide whether to sell their rights together and how to divide the revenue. To be clear, this will not break the conferences or our traditions; it will preserve and strengthen them. I believe that the option to unify the media rights is not only something all schools should applaud for being in this bill, but they should urgently and aggressively pursue it. I have met with experts and believe that many billions of dollars of incremental revenue will be generated and believe that this much bigger pie should be divided based on relative value. This means that the SEC and Big Ten deserve more of more, and when the pie grows this much, the SEC and Big Ten will make far more than they ever could, and there is still enough for all other FBS conferences and schools to make more money. This is a win-win, and I commend this Committee for the foresight to include it in this legislation. Today, in America, we seem to agree on so little, but I am inspired that like so many Americans, both political parties here, have come together recognizing how sacred college sports and our student athletes are to our university system and our country. The Chairman. I'll warn you, he's a defensive end, so he's more used to tackling. Mr. Gee. I know, I know, I know. Yes. The Chairman. Ms. Gould, you're recognized for your opening statement. STATEMENT OF TERESA GOULD, COMMISSIONER, PAC-12 Ms. Gould. Good morning. Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to share my perspective on your vital work regarding college sports, an industry I have proudly served for more than 36 years. While college sports is now a massive business, its core purpose remains unchanged despite recent seismic shifts. College athletics has always offered and continues to offer transformational opportunities for young people while serving as an anchor for alumni and communities nationwide to connect to the institutions they love. A cornerstone of American life that is uniquely ours. Today, however, a combination of both internal and external pressures has brought us to a concerning crossroads. Without immediate intervention, we risk significant damage to our colleges and universities, and even more importantly, to the student athletes who are caught in the middle. Yet despite the challenges facing the current system, college athletics continues to thrive, expanding its audience, producing future Olympians and leaders, and delivering meaningful value to higher education. Like much of college athletics, the Pac-12 has faced unprecedented disruption. Yet through periods of adversity, we have remained relentless, creative, resilient, and willing to challenge convention. From securing national representation in governance at both the NCAA and conference level, securing student athlete benefits, providing national exposure for women's sports, the Pac-12 has consistently challenged the status quo and remains committed to meaningful reform through this process. All of the challenges facing college sports cannot be fixed in a single bill. There are just too many complexities. Yet we must act immediately on the most pressing needs that are in front of us: Codifying critical student athlete benefits and protections, providing a limited antitrust safe harbor, enforcing the House settlement as originally agreed upon and intended, ensuring that the implementation remains true to that intent, establishing strict safeguards against bad actor agents who prey on our student athletes, and creating new mechanisms, including pooled media rights, to generate incremental revenue to help preserve women and Olympic sports, and to fund the growing costs of our evolving model. These core items, all included in the Protect College Sports Act, will help secure our model so that future generations can pursue the same impactful experience our country and the Pac-12 Conference I represent has provided for more than a century. Because many important issues cannot be resolved this year, the proposed commission provides the framework to evaluate the complex changes that require more time and broader collaboration. Leadership of this effort must come from a diverse, balanced body that includes student athletes, represents the broad spectrum of Division I membership, and is grounded in both accountability and transparency. Our future model must encourage fair opportunities for all institutions to invest in student athletes, ensuring reasonable access to the very highest levels of competition. Every program and every student athlete deserves a world where they have a fair shot. Through the Commission framework, we must honestly engage in a conversation around student athlete employment status and collective bargaining. Student athletes deserve a meaningful voice in decisions that affect them and our future model must reflect that partnership. It should recognize the diverse perspectives and aspirations of all student athletes, from those in revenue-generating sports with significant economic upside, to those in Olympic and women's sports who may be seeking a different collegiate experience. They all matter and they all deserve a voice. The Commission should evaluate innovative structures for the future that reduce travel, limit time away from campus, and support student athlete wellbeing, while preserving competitive opportunities. And any future governance model must also represent the diverse realities of 300 plus very differently situated Division I institutions. The clock is ticking. We must act now to modernize our system and address the complex challenges facing college sports. While no solution is perfect, we have a pivotal opportunity to make meaningful progress. Doing nothing is simply not an option. The Pac-12 is committed to being part of this solution. If we come together at this critical moment, we can protect the traditions we love while recognizing the rights, offering the experiences, and delivering the protections that our student athletes truly deserve. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Ms. Gould follows:] Prepared Statement of Teresa Gould, Commissioner, Pac-12 Conference 1. Witness Introduction & Opening Statement Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today regarding the future of college athletics, an industry in which I have served for more than 36 years. I also want to thank Senators Cruz, Cantwell, Coons, and Schmitt for their leadership in introducing the Protect College Sports Act and for their commitment to addressing the significant challenges facing college athletics. I currently serve as commissioner of the Pac-12 Conference. Since assuming this role in March of 2024 as the first-ever woman to lead an autonomy conference, I have had the unique responsibility of serving as commissioner of three different versions of the Pac-12 in less than two years. I first led the conference through unprecedented realignment as 10 member institutions representing nearly 6,000 student-athletes departed for new leagues, then steered the conference through a transitional period and unknown future for two members in Oregon State and Washington State Universities and approximately 1,000 student- athletes who were left without a league home, and today I am leading the development of a new, reimagined Pac-12 that will launch for the coming 2026-27 season with nine member institutions. Across nearly four decades in college athletics, including leadership roles with the Pac- 12, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, the West Coast Conference, ESPN Regional Television, and the Midwestern Collegiate Conference, I have witnessed significant change in our industry. However, no period has been more transformative than the one we are experiencing today. My experience navigating the evolution of the Pac-12 has provided a firsthand view of both the opportunities and the challenges confronting college athletics and reinforced the need for thoughtful, sustainable reform that preserves the educational mission of collegiate sports, while supporting student-athlete success. For more than a century, the Pac-12 has been a leader in collegiate athletics, winning more national championships than any other conference in the country, placing more student-athletes in the Olympic Games than many nations worldwide, and helping shape many of the policies and practices that define the modern student-athlete experience. It was the first conference to include student-athletes in governance and the first to establish a conference-wide health and well-being initiative that became a model for the Nation. The conference led groundbreaking efforts on post-participation medical care, guaranteed scholarships, and mental health resources, helping set standards that have since been adopted across college sports. The conference's commitment to equity and visibility has also been unmatched. Through Pac-12 Networks, more than half of all broadcasts featured women's sports--an achievement no other conference or network has approached--and a reflection of the league's long-standing belief that all student-athletes deserve meaningful opportunities to compete, be seen, and be celebrated. Like much of college athletics, the Pac-12 has faced unprecedented disruption through conference realignment and the loss of long-standing members, rivalries, and traditions. Yet throughout periods of change, the conference has remained resilient, innovative, willing to challenge convention, while at all times being guided by our north star which is to support our student-athletes. The Pac-12 has often found itself at the center of the most consequential issues in college sports, serving as a defendant in landmark antitrust litigation, including the House case, student-athlete employment status litigation, and other major cases that have helped redefine the rights and opportunities of student-athletes. Today, the Pac-12 is undertaking a reimagination of what a modern athletic conference can be. Building on its historic foundation while embracing the realities of a rapidly evolving landscape, the conference is creating a vision designed for today's student-athlete and tomorrow's opportunities. The goal is not simply to preserve a legacy, but to build a new model that connects institutions, student-athletes and fans to an unexpected experience and future, one built for the modern-day student-athlete. The Pac-12 remains uniquely positioned in college athletics. It combines a history of autonomy and leadership, a geographic footprint that bridges regions and markets--including member institutions in California, Texas and Washington--and a proven willingness to lead through change. As college sports enters a new era, the Pac-12 intends to help shape that future with the same pioneering spirit that has defined its past. Today, as the Pac-12 builds its future, we remain committed to the same core principle that has guided the conference throughout its history: providing student-athletes with opportunities to compete, earn a degree, and thrive both during and after their athletic careers. That perspective informs my testimony today. 2. The Current Landscape College athletics is at a pivotal moment, facing challenges that threaten both its educational mission and the well-being of student- athletes. The increasing commercialization of the system has contributed to significant pressures on student-athletes, including extensive travel demands, mental health concerns, and uncertainty surrounding roster movement. National transfer portal data shows that nearly half of student-athletes who enter the portal never find a new home, underscoring the importance of building a collegiate athletics model that prioritizes long-term student-athlete success, stability, and support. At the same time, inconsistent state laws and a seemingly endless cycle of litigation have created a fragmented and uncertain regulatory environment. Financial pressures continue to mount as athletics department debt grows, while Olympic and women's sports face disproportionate risks as institutions seek ways to manage escalating costs. The widening structural and financial advantages afforded to autonomy conferences further disadvantage institutions that remain deeply committed to investing in broad-based athletics programs and competing at a high level. These challenges extend beyond athletics itself, as strong athletic performance is closely correlated with increased student interest and enrollment--an especially important consideration as colleges and universities across the country confront significant enrollment declines and demographic headwinds. Together, these issues underscore the need for a sustainable, student-centered model that preserves opportunity, competitive equity, and the educational values at the heart of collegiate athletics. 3. Support for Protect College Sports Act We strongly support the Protect College Sports Act because it represents the most impactful and comprehensive reform proposal advanced to date to address the challenges facing college athletics. The Act provides enhanced protections and support for student-athletes, ensures a stronger and more meaningful student-athlete voice in future governance, and establishes a structure that preserves important optionality for pooled media rights, which would bring in additional revenue, helping preserve women's and Olympic sports, and providing lower-resourced conferences and institutions a better opportunity to compete at the highest level. We also support the Act's efforts to codify the House settlement as it was originally negotiated and intended by the parties less than one year ago, providing clarity and stability at a time when interpretations have reportedly drifted significantly from the agreement's original purpose. Equally important, the Act includes a limited and reasonable antitrust safe harbor that would allow college sports leaders to address the growing eligibility and transfer crisis while maintaining competitive opportunities for student-athletes. Because many of the most significant challenges facing college sports cannot realistically be resolved in a single point in time, the Act's Commission on the Future of College Athletics is a thoughtful and critical framework which we must use to evaluate the deeper, structural reforms that will require sustained analysis, stakeholder engagement, and broad consensus. This effort should be led by a diverse and balanced body, which must meaningfully include student-athletes and ensure representation for the over 300 DI institutions, operating with strong accountability and transparency to ensure that future recommendations serve the long-term interests of student-athletes, institutions, conferences, and the collegiate model as a whole. We are particularly encouraged by the Act's commitment to collaboration through this Commission, as the future success of college athletics will require partnership, innovation, and a shared commitment to preserving opportunities for student-athletes and institutions alike. The Commission should prioritize examination of several fundamental issues that will shape the future of college athletics, including but not limited to the following: Student-athlete employment status and collective bargaining. Regarding this topic, the Pac-12 believes the industry should engage in this conversation honestly. Student-athletes today generate significant revenue and help define the identity of the conferences and institutions they represent. That honest conversation begins with recognizing that student-athletes deserve a meaningful and formal voice in the decisions that affect them, and building a structure that reflects it. Governance reforms that provide student-athletes with a genuine voice while ensuring greater diversity of perspectives across Division I. Pathways for institutions committed to investment to compete at the highest level. Commercial efficiencies and competitive opportunities for non-autonomy institutions. Sustainable competitive and financial models for institutions of varying resources. Innovative approaches to conference alignment and scheduling that reduce travel burdens and time away from campus and support student-athlete health and welfare, while preserving competitive opportunities. Efforts such as the Pac-12's men's soccer partnership with the Big West and our strategic use of affiliate membership models in sports like wrestling demonstrate the type of creative solutions that can preserve competitive opportunities while reducing strain on student- athletes. The Protect College Sports Act represents the most comprehensive and meaningful effort to date to address these challenges. By strengthening protections for student-athletes, promoting greater governance stability, providing clarity around the implementation of the House settlement, and creating a framework for future reform, the Act takes an important step toward preserving the educational mission of college athletics while modernizing its structure for the future. 4. Conclusion In closing, college athletics stands at a critical crossroads. The challenges facing the current model--from the erosion of the student- athlete experience and increasing financial pressures to regulatory fragmentation and growing competitive inequities--demand thoughtful, comprehensive, and lasting solutions. The current system is placing unprecedented strain on institutions and student-athletes alike. The status quo is not sustainable. We should not continue to accept outdated assumptions when a better path forward is within reach. The window for meaningful reform is short and the cost of inaction is real. Congress has an opportunity to modernize college athletics in ways that protect its traditions, strengthen its institutions and recognize the rights and protections that student-athletes have always deserved. The Pac-12 is committed to being part of that work. Thank you again to Senators Cruz, Cantwell, Coons, and Schmitt for your leadership. We look forward to working with Congress, student- athletes, higher education leaders, and our colleagues across intercollegiate athletics to build a sustainable, student-centered model that preserves opportunity, competitive excellence, and the educational values that make college athletics one of our country's most cherished and distinctly American institutions. The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Gould. Mr. Holtzclaw, you're recognized for your opening statement. STATEMENT OF LANCE HOLTZCLAW, STUDENT ATHLETE, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH Mr. Holtzclaw. Thank you to Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and all distinguished members of the Committee. I thank you again for this opportunity to appear before you today, available to me through being in college athletics. Introducing myself to y'all, as I'm probably the least recognizable face sitting on this witness stand, but my name is Lance Holtzclaw, and I am a football student athlete at the University of Utah, and it's an honor to be here representing current and future student athletes across the country. My journey to this table began in my hometown of Dorchester in Boston, Massachusetts. But during my sophomore year of high school, I had moved to Mesa, Arizona. And sports have become a major part of my life at an early age and have helped teach me discipline, resilience, accountability, teamwork, and what true brotherhood looks like. Since Pop Warner football, I've dreamed of competing at the collegiate level while pursuing an education that would prepare me for life after sports. Also, I'd like to thank my parents, Anika Garcia and Hubert Holtzclaw, whose unwavering support, guidance, and sacrifices have made my journey possible. At high school, I was recruited during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recruiting visits were limited, evaluation periods were disrupted, seasons were cut short and canceled, and many of us were forced to make life-changing decisions under circumstances no previous generation had experienced. Following high school, I attended the University of Washington where I began my college career. During that time, our team captured the final Pac-12 championship, went on to college football playoffs and won the Sugar Bowl, and advanced off to the national championship game. I then transferred to the University of Utah, where I earned my degree in sociology and still have one season of eligibility remaining. Throughout my college career, I've experienced college athletics across the Pac-12, the Big Ten, and the Big 12 conferences, giving me a firsthand view of how conference realignment has reshaped the student athlete experience. I want to thank this committee for recognizing the importance of including student athletes in this conversation about the future of college sports. While I may not have the titles or experience of others testifying today, I do bring a perspective that cannot be replicated, which is the perspective of a student athlete living through these changes in real time. I've experienced the impact of NIL, the transfer portal, conference realignment, evolving eligibility rules, and the many changes shaping modern college athletics. These issues are often discussed through the lens of policy, economics, and governance. But behind every decision are real students balancing academics, athletics, personal development, and preparation for life. That is a why student athlete voice must remain at the heart of these conversations. Decisions about college athletics should not be made solely for student athletes, but made with student athletes. College athletics has provided me with incredible opportunities, relationships, and experiences that have helped me elevate my life in tremendous ways. I believe strongly in preserving these opportunities for future generations while continuing to improve a system that serves the student athletes at its center. Again, I thank you all for the opportunity to be here today, and I'm honored to represent the student athlete community, and I look forward to sharing my perspective with the Committee. [The prepared statement of Mr. Holtzclaw follows:] Prepared Statement of Lance Holtzclaw To Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and all distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Lance Holtzclaw, and I am a football student-athlete at the University of Utah. It is an honor to be here representing current and future student-athletes across the country. My journey to this table began in my hometown of Dorchester, Massachusetts, but during my sophomore year of high school I moved to Mesa, Arizona. Sports became a major part of my life at an early age and helped teach me discipline, resilience, accountability, teamwork and what true brotherhood looks like. Since Pop Warner football, I dreamed of competing at the collegiate level while pursuing an education that would prepare me for life after sports. I would like to thank my parents, Anika Garcia and Hubert Holtzclaw, whose unwavering support, guidance, and sacrifices have made my journey possible. In high school, I was recruited during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recruiting visits were limited, evaluation periods were disrupted, seasons were cut short or canceled, and many of us were forced to make life-changing decisions under circumstances no previous generation had experienced. Following high school, I attended the University of Washington, where I started competing at the highest level of college football. During that time, our team won the Alamo Bowl, captured the final Pac- 12 Championship, won the Sugar Bowl, and advanced to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game. I then transferred to the University of Utah, where I earned my degree in Sociology and still have one season of eligibility remaining after a Las Vegas Bowl victory over Nebraska in 2025. Throughout my college career, I have experienced college athletics across the Pac-12, Big Ten, and Big 12 conferences, giving me a firsthand view of how conference realignment has reshaped the student-athlete experience. I want to thank this Committee for recognizing the importance of including student-athletes in conversations about the future of college sports. While I may not have the titles or experience of others testifying today, I bring a perspective that cannot be replicated: the perspective of a student-athlete living through these changes in real time. I have experienced the impact of NIL, the transfer portal, conference realignment, evolving eligibility rules, and the many changes shaping modern college athletics. These issues are often discussed through the lens of policy, economics, and governance, but behind every decision are real students balancing academics, athletics, personal development, and preparation for life. That is why the student-athlete voice must remain part of these conversations. Decisions about college athletics should not be made solely for student-athletes but made with student-athletes. College athletics has provided me with incredible opportunities, relationships, and experiences that have helped elevate my life in tremendous ways. I believe strongly in preserving those opportunities for future generations while continuing to improve a system that serves the student-athletes at its center. Thank you again for the opportunity to be here today. I am honored to represent the student-athlete community, and I look forward to sharing my perspective with the Committee. The Chairman. Thank you very much. I appreciate each of the witnesses being here this morning, and I appreciate your testimony. I think we've heard broad agreement from very different perspectives that college sports is in crisis. It's driven by chaos, court cases, and evasion of rules. And if this continues, we're going to be left with 30 to 50 teams in essentially a mini NFL. And the victims will be the fans who see their favorite teams, storied teams and programs disappear, and hundreds of thousands of student athletes who will lose scholarship opportunities. Some might disagree. I will say I've been gratified since we introduced this bill last week, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. But there have been some critics who say they don't want Congress involved. They think things are fine. They think the powers that be can fix whatever ails college sports. And if you want the status quo, if you think that college sports can fix itself, then you need to defend the alternatives to passage of this bill. The House of Representatives tried multiple times to pass a bill. Unfortunately, it failed repeatedly. The Protect College Sports Act is the only bipartisan bill out there. It is the last best hope we have to save college sports. So my first question to the panel is, what happens if we do nothing? There's a lot of expertise on this witness panel. Help us look into the future if Congress fails to act, if we get locked up in partisan gridlock and we just yell at each other, which sadly we're very good at, what happens to college sports 3, 4, 5 years from now? And I open that up to anyone who wants to answer that. Mr. Gee. Well, Senator, I'll start by simply saying that looking at the--looking at the trends that are going on at the moment, if we think about the micro trends, which are higher education itself. Higher education has lost the trust of the American people in many ways. Not many students--not as many students are going into universities. We have a demographic cliff. We've got all of these issues. So on the macro level, and then all of the issues concerning the fact that our research really is what sustains us in terms of competition at an international level. Without solving this problem, many of those issues are going to be also writ large because athletics represents such an important way for us to tell our story. I don't think of--I don't think of athletics as being simply games being played. I mean, I do enjoy them, but I think about it as a way for a university to tell its story about the quality of its institution, about its research, about its students, about the things that are going on. And at the moment, the chaos will simply prevent all of that from happening. It will be a significant blow to the higher education system, let alone to college athletics. Mr. Bevacqua. I would add, Senator Cruz, and I certainly agree with Gordon, I think if it continues to go down this path, as I like to reference a kind of a financial train, and like, I think everybody up here, we adamantly believe that student athletes ought to be compensated and should have legitimate NIL compensation, of course. But you're going to see certain schools invest maybe almost singularly in certain sports. And if you take football, for instance, no matter what, if you continue to have all of your resources pulled into football with escalating roster fees and not knowing where that ends, I believe the inevitable outcome is there's going to be a small handful of schools that will differentiate themselves from other and play football at a Super League level. And I don't think it's good for college football to be a mini NFL. That's not the spirit of college football. That's not what college football is about. I think it would look far more like a JV football professional league than everything that makes college football so special. And if certain schools pour all of their resources into football or to men's basketball or to women's basketball, what I said in my opening has to happen even at very well-positioned schools. You're going to have to deemphasize Olympic sports and women's sports. And so we have to kind of right this road, put some regulations around it, restore some sanity, preserve the student athlete experience, and make sure that we can chart a healthy, sustainable future. The Chairman. Well, and you talk about the virtues of college athletics. As you know, I had the great joy of coming to Notre Dame last year for the A&M-Notre Dame game, not meaning to rub salt in the wound, but you did come to College Station and whip our ass the year before. But I will say, seeing Touchdown Jesus, it was a bucket list, and the culture at Notre Dame and Alabama and so many schools is incredible. And your institution does have one of the iconic sports movies to ever be made, Rudy, which is not about an NFL player. It's not about a guy who's like, you know, an all-time great. It's about someone with heart that can, through sports, achieve something extraordinary. Ms. Gould, the Pac-12 has had a tough few years. What did the Pac-12 learn about conference realignment and the greater college sports ecosystem from your experience leading the Pac- 12 during what has been a very turbulent time? Ms. Gould. Well, thank you for the question. It has been a challenging few years, but we are launching a new league on July 1, and we're really excited about that on behalf of our student athletes. Look, I think in part what I learned, and Lance mentioned this in his testimony, was what can happen when you don't keep the well-being of student athletes at the center of your decisions. And what has transpired, not just with the Pac-12 but across a lot of conference realignment and a lot of change that's happened in our system, is the well-being of student athletes is no longer at the center because of the economic pressures that we're dealing with. We now have Olympic sport student athletes traveling coast to coast for contests. We have student athletes that never show up at an in-person class on their campus anymore and are completely missing out on campus life. So I think for me, you know, when I look back on all of it and how everything transpired, I think we need to make sure that we always remember who we are here to serve and that the decisions that we make, while there are business ramifications, are decisions about the lives of the young people on our campuses. The Chairman. Thank you. Ranking Member Cantwell. Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to start with you, Mr. Holtzclaw. I know you're no longer a Husky, but thank you for that championship game and season in 2024. I think you told my staff one of the reasons why you transferred is that you had three different coaches in 3 years. Is that right? Mr. Holtzclaw. Yes, that's correct. Senator Cantwell. So I think Ms. Gould just said the effect on students, and people don't realize that then in this arms race of money, and coaches transferring that the students--I mean, how can you be--how can you learn any system or a coach or synchronicity if you have three different coaches in 3 years? Mr. Holtzclaw. Well, like you say, it is definitely a difficult task. I would like to explain a little bit. My first year, I got recruited by one coaching staff, and then when I had got there, that coaching staff was no longer there. New coaching staff comes in, played with that staff, and then a new staff comes in after that. I then transfer, have another staff there, 1 year there, another staff leaves. So again, it just kind of ties back into people staying and leaving and kind of the leadership portion that's really important when it comes to the team. That leadership portion is so important. It drives the team. It keeps the team together. It holds them tight together and creates that real family bond that comes in when you're playing college athletics. It's extremely important to how the careers of these young men and women go out and how they're developed in their time in college athletics. There's so much that goes on with life development that goes on with your education that goes on with your life experiences. And I feel like that leadership portion being strong in a system--in our program is extremely important. So when pieces move around a lot, it can alter that sometimes. Senator Cantwell. Well, it seems to me that this is one of the centerpieces that we're losing. I think all of us up here believe in competition, in real competition. But I think we love the fact that college athletics has put so much focus on developing teams who are successful because they build a team and not because they have a billionaire in their back pocket. And I think that that's what we're facing here right now. Are we going to create some rules here that puts people on some level of equity and parity? Now, I wanted to bring this up with you, Ms. Gould, because you've been very polite about this. I mean, the bottom line is WSU had a $35 million hole blown in their $85 million college budget. Basically, that is the revenue that was taken out of the Pac-12. And I think the reason why Senator Cruz and I have a letter from the Big Ten and--the Big 12 and the ACC is because they think that that's what's going to happen to them next. That somebody's going to come in and rearrange the deck chairs of those conferences, steal the eyeball schools, and then basically leave everybody with everything else. Now I believe in the rivalry of the Pac-12, I believe in the historic Rose Bowl competitions and the unbelievable, rivalries between all of these West Coast schools, and it has been phenomenal. But now WSU, instead of having a $35 million media budget, has a, I think, $10 million or $12 million media budget. So are we just going to let this continue to be this arms race? What do you think that we should do to make sure that we are saving this? And then for you, Mr. Gee, I have a question because you were very clear about where you think the alignment is. The alignment is with the new media companies. Even though we're losing $5 billion, there are people that don't want to look at an option to create more revenue, and that the schools--so I want to hear from you on that point. But Ms. Gould? Ms. Gould. Yes, well, I appreciate that the Act has some conversations in there about what the future model should look like relative to scheduling and relative to conference alignment and relative to the future model. I think we are at a crossroads where this history that we have in our industry of everybody just poaching some other league based on media rights dollars or whatever the driver might be, I think we have to take a step back and really think broadly and creatively about what the future model should look like. And as I referenced earlier, because it has impacts on other institutions in these states and because it has practical impacts on student athletes, I really look forward to the work that the Commission will do around this and to be creative and innovative. Maybe we look at regionalizing Olympic sports to try to keep student athletes at home. But I think now is the time for us to think about the role of conferences and what the structure looks like moving forward. Senator Cantwell. Mr. Gee, has the current system failed? Mr. Gee. Absolutely. That's the reason we're here today. I mean, we would not be having this hearing if we had a system that was working. Senator Cantwell. And so what do we---- Mr. Gee. Well---- Senator Cantwell. What do you think that on this notion of why university presidents didn't understand that ADs and conferences were taking us down a different direction that was going to be so painful? Mr. Gee. Yes, I think that I've always said that there are kind of three third rails for university presidents. One is university home, other is athletics, and hospitals. And I think that so many presidents want to stay somewhat distant from college athletics because there are a lot of issues that surround that. I think that---- Senator Cantwell. But hasn't that cost us a lot of money? Mr. Gee. It is costing us---- Senator Cantwell. It is costing us $5 billion. Mr. Gee. It has cost us a lot of money. Senator Cantwell. And it's causing Mr. Holtzclaw--he wants an experience that Coach Saban said that that's why he coaches, because he wants to build that, and he can't get that because now he's getting a new coach every other year. Mr. Gee. You're absolutely right, and that's the reason that I'm here today. You know, I should be playing canasta on a beach. I'm 82 years of age, but instead I'm a convert. As having been a university president for so long, I realize that what we really have to do is we really have to think about universities having an obligation to each other rather than this kind of Darwinian approach that we're taking. And I'll be just very honest, I think that we have turned over too much power to commissioners. They have a very--they have a very limited notion of what it should be about. The word student is not in their--in their lexicon. The word athlete is, and the word money. And this is an issue that we have to get at. And I don't mean to throw them under a bus, although I just did. But what I do mean to say is the fact that I think that university presidents need to take charge of this issue, and I believe that they will. You know, I think about my friends in the Pac-12, or in--not in the Pac-12, you're really good. [Laughter.] Mr. Gee. I was, I think--I'm thinking about in the Big Ten and the SEC. I mean, I know most of those presidents, they're really smart people, they're wonderful people. Half of them have worked for me. But we need to have an opportunity to really have those Presidential discussions because this is so simple. We have a revenue problem, either we grow the pie or we destroy everything that we're about. It's pretty damn simple. Senator Cantwell. Well, I don't care anything about your height because you just packed a punch. So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. Thank you. I'll now recognize my friend and partner in this bill, Senator Schmitt, who I will note is the single best baseball player in the U.S. Senate. Although, to be fair, in the Senate, that's not a terribly high bar. STATEMENT OF HON. ERIC SCHMITT, U.S. SENATOR FROM MISSOURI Senator Schmitt. I was going to say it's a low bar. It is a low bar. Maybe basketball too, Senator Cruz, you know. [Laughter.] The Chairman. OK, your time has expired. [Laughter.] Senator Schmitt. Thank you. I want to thank Senator Cruz and Senator Cantwell. You know, my journey in working with both of them and Senator Cantwell on the Sports Broadcasting Act started about six months ago. And I think that all of you being here today, lending your voice to the challenges and the opportunities ahead are very important. I think about--people have asked me why I've gotten so involved in this, and I've thought about it more recently, you know, sort of the why. And I think that sports in general has provided me so many opportunities with whether it's relationship building or just sense of community. As a former college athlete myself, I think of the lessons that I learned about character and determination and grit and teamwork, and it didn't matter who the guy, you know, where he came from, his race, his religion, that was your teammate, and you had a goal, and you wanted to accomplish something. There are so many great lessons to be learned in life through college athletics, and I truly believe that we are on the precipice of that going away, in large part, not altogether, but as you've heard today, maybe for a much more limited number of people. You certainly won't have 500,000 student athletes being able to learn those lessons every year. It'll be something very different, something very different that we've grown accustomed to. And I think that college sports, college football in particular, I think is such a uniquely American institution, and it really is worth fighting for. It's worth preserving. But that is not going to happen by itself anymore. The system now is, as Coach Saban said, is a Ferrari going 100 miles an hour, and somebody needs to tap the brakes. And people have asked me why is Congress getting involved in this? And it's a legitimate question. If you would ask me this three years ago, I would ask the same question. Why in the world would the Federal Government have anything to do with college sports? Well, the truth is Congress is the only entity on the planet that can provide the antitrust exemption status to empower a governing body to set the rules and to enforce the rules and to have a five-year eligibility standard, to have a one-time or two-time, whatever the transfer portal looks like. No one else can do it. It is up to us. And if we don't do it, I think if we're having a hearing two years from now shame on us, because it's going to look a lot different and it won't be better. And I think, as we've heard from the testimony, the way I view this thing is there are two buckets. You have the governance issue and you have the revenue issue. The governance issue is granting that authority to have the rules to protect the student athletes for there to be enforcement. On the revenue side, look, the business model of college sports forever has been basically you make money on your football program and it subsidizes all the other non-revenue sports, the women's sports, the Olympic sports. We will lose out if this thing continues down the path. We will not have the same level of athletes competing in the Olympics. Women, I mean, my daughters, I talk about the things that matter when you go back home. We're in a bubble here so much. But when you go back home, this is what people talk to me about. They don't talk about some CRA we just voted on. They say, what the hell is going on with college sports? They ask about aliens too, to be honest. But they do ask about this. And in my daughter's volleyball games, parents ask about this. And, you know, their daughters may have an opportunity, they may not, to play college volleyball. But I think for women, the Olympic sports, this is critical. And so if that model is busted, if you're now losing money in your college football program, you're just not going to be able to do those things. Or if you're spending all your money on your college football program, you're not going to do those things. You've heard even--and look, I'm a--I love Mizzou, I love the SEC. It's what I watch on Saturdays. I watch other football too, much to my wife's dismay, and even late into the evenings. But I want there to be an opportunity for other schools to be able to compete. And you've got the governance piece, you've got the revenue side and I think it's very important. This is totally voluntary for the conferences to opt in. Nobody has to do it. I wouldn't want the SEC or the Big Ten to do it if it didn't make sense for them. And this is totally voluntary. It sets a process up, it creates a lane by which conferences could pool their media rights to get a better deal. And if you have--like, right now, NBA is half the eyeballs of college football. It's $8 billion in revenue. College football all in is $4 billion in revenue. You can do the math, and you can argue that maybe it wouldn't be $8 billion. Maybe it would be--maybe it would be $10 billion. Maybe it would be $12 billion. But it's more than they have now. That is the revenue that can subsidize the non- revenue sports for the future. There are protections in place in this legislation to go do that. And so I just want to have an opportunity for these universities and these student athletes to continue to participate in something that, again, is very American. And it isn't--we do so much partisan stuff here. It's like Thunderdome a lot of times, right? You got your red jersey on and your blue jersey on. This should not be one of those things. And so I appreciate you all being here. I wish I had time for questions, but I've run out of time now. But you guys have--you guys have touched on a lot of the issues, particularly on the collective. I think there are a lot of challenges that need to get fixed with the collectives that are out there. It is an end around right now of the cap. There's no doubt about that. There need to be safeguards there. And then I think on the Sports Broadcasting Act, providing the opportunity for college football like you do for the professional sports to have those unified rights deals and grow the pie. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Schmitt. I'm going to ask now unanimous consent to enter into the record 14 letters of support for Senator Cantwell's and my legislation. These letters consist of 130 signatures representing over 65 universities submitted by the Atlantic Coast Conference, the American Conference, the Big 12 Conference, ConferenceUSA, Saving College Sports, the President's Roundtable on Fixing College Sports, Duke University, Kansas State University, University of Louisville, University of Nebraska, Syracuse University, Virginia Tech University, University of Texas at San Antonio, University of Texas at El Paso, the former Chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas at Austin. Without objection, so ordered. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] The Chairman. Senator Blunt Rochester, you're recognized. STATEMENT OF HON. LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, U.S. SENATOR FROM DELAWARE Senator Blunt Rochester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Cantwell, and also thank you to the panelists. Looking at the panel before us, I noticed a very strong emphasis on high-revenue football programs. So, Mr. Chairman, as the Committee continues its work on NIL legislation, I think it's important that the Committee also hear from experts that are representing female athletes, Olympic sports, athletes at non-revenue-generating institutions, and HBCUs like Delaware State University. I also want to note that I've been hearing a lot of serious concerns about the bill from student athletes and their families, labor unions, and civil rights organizations. As the daughter of a former student athlete--my dad played basketball at Winston-Salem State University--he had to balance being a dad, his classes, as well as sports. He didn't have to balance some of the things that students have to balance today, like NIL and transfer portals and things like that. But as the daughter of a former athlete, as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, the former CEO of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League, and a lifelong member of the NAACP, I'm taking all of these concerns very seriously. My first question is to Mr. Holtzclaw. I want to first thank you for being here. As you said, you are literally representing students of today and students of the future. So thank you for representing and also for being on a panel. You came from Dorchester to the U.S. Senate. So thank you first for being before us. As I looked at this--and also thank you to your family. One of the things I've heard a lot from are families who are very, very concerned at this moment--this bill places no enforcement responsibilities with the Federal Trade Commission or State attorneys general, as I understand it. And instead, it largely leaves enforcement to student athletes themselves. Student athletes should be empowered to pursue legal options if they believe their rights were violated. And I think we can all agree to that. But they cannot shoulder this burden alone. So my question to you, Mr. Holtzclaw, is are you aware that the bill allows for attorney's fees and litigation costs to be awarded to the prevailing party, meaning that the student athlete who sues, if they lose, they can end up on the hook for the school's legal fees? And do you think other student athletes and families are aware of this or feel prepared or supported? Mr. Holtzclaw. Thank you, Ms. Rochester. Appreciate that. The take that I would take on this is that it's a huge part of educating our student athletes and letting them know what rights and what resources they do have to use in these type of situations when they happen. And I fear that the issue that we run into a lot of times is the fact that they don't get educated nor understand and know the resources that they do have or the rights that they have until it's too late. They never know where, where to go to, who to reach out to, or what rights they have to themselves until they have to be in those type of situations and use them. So the issue that I see in that is that we do need to educate our student athletes more about what resources are available to them so they can use them and be aware of them before we even get into those situations. And then also educating our student athletes on the rights that they have before they get into these situations so they're not walking into these rooms blindly. And I fear that's probably our biggest issue when we come into those situations. Senator Blunt Rochester. Yes, I can totally agree. I think as a student athlete, there are already responsibilities like classes as well as other obligations, and that takes--that takes up time and attention. And, you know, one of the questions really is, do you feel confident that most student athletes like yourself or your teammates have the experience or time or resources to protect themselves from these violations? You mentioned that it's necessary to have that education, and I know even speaking to some of the parents who've reached out to me, one parent shared that they were able to take their child to different schools, but they had to do it on their own dime. And a lot of folks don't have that kind of support. Do you think the majority of student athletes that you talk to have the expertise or the time to protect themselves? Mr. Holtzclaw. The expertise part, definitely not. And that's what I speak into a lot when I say we need to educate our student athletes on, again, their rights and their resources that they have. Again, when you talk about families not having the means to be able to travel and get to all these different places on their own, it's definitely a very difficult situation to be into. And I've experienced that on my own. We were limited to only a certain amount of visits that could be paid for by a university. And then any other school that you wanted to see, you had to carry out on your own dime. And in order to do that, your vision on all these different schools and your perspective on these different universities gets limited to a very small window. Again, that's going to be solely on yourself and your team and your family to have to coordinate where you want to go to and what details. And it's on research and again educating yourself on these different universities so you can work within these limitations. It's hard to have to get there on your own dime, but again, you have to be able to work within the standards and rules and regulations and be able to figure out where you want to go to through your previous and personal research. Senator Blunt Rochester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If you would indulge, if I could just ask one question to Mr. Gee, and I'll ask the question, if we don't have time, he can submit for the record. But Mr. Gee, Congress rarely grants antitrust exemptions, and only when we believe the beneficiary will exercise the authority responsibly and an exemption is necessary. Given the NCAA's repeated losses in antitrust lawsuits, any antitrust exemption warrants close scrutiny. So, Mr. Gee, what NCAA activities do you believe truly require antitrust protections? Mr. Gee. Well, I think that first of all, thank you. It's wonderful to meet you. We haven't met before. Senator Blunt Rochester. Good to meet you as well. Mr. Gee. It's great to be here with you. You know, I think that the real issue for antitrust exemption is the ability to be able to collectively do our--have our rights put together. You know, the whole issue, of course is, as I said earlier, growing the pie. And by that I mean we have to be able to do frankly, what has happened with the NBA and the NFL and others. And that is the exemption that I think is the most important part of the Antitrust Act. Senator Blunt Rochester. Thank you. I yield back, and I understand also that the Congressional Black Caucus has sent letters to the Chair and the Ranking Member. This is just a really important issue at a very tough time, and so I hope that we take our time and get this right. Thank you, and I yield back. The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Blackburn. STATEMENT OF HON. MARSHA BLACKBURN, U.S. SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE Senator Blackburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to each of you for being here. As you can see, there is a lot of bipartisan interest in doing something to correct this situation that seems to be running off the rails. And quite frankly, I think Congress is late to the game on this. I think the NCAA has really dropped the ball on this. They should have done something years ago. And as you can see the audience behind you, I think every intern, college intern that is up here has tried to get in this room today so that they could see this. And I know that some from Tennessee are saying, go Vols and go Vanderbilt. Mr. Gee, they've had quite a season. We loved having you in Nashville at Vanderbilt. Coach Saban, I want to come to you. We've heard a lot about navigating this marketplace. We're talking about a billion- dollar marketplace right now that basically has no framework, no constraints. Senator Cantwell and I had introduced the HUSTLE Act, which put in place some baseline transparency standards by requiring these agents to be registered. And we've heard from Mr. Holtzclaw, sometimes you don't know what you don't know until you're too far into this and I really appreciated your opening testimony. So I'm glad that provision is in the Protect College Sports Act. But I'd like for you to talk a little bit about why there should be registration, why there should be transparency, why there should be disclosure requirements that would help protect the student athlete from exploitation? Mr. Saban. Well, we mentioned this before earlier in our testimony that I think it's imperative that student athletes, their families, you know, have protection from agents. Right now you don't have to be registered to be an agent for a college player, so anybody on the street can do it. We don't have any regulation on how much they can charge. Senator Blackburn. Could their fees be capped? Mr. Saban. No question. I think that, you know, if you look at NFL, they're three to five percent. We have college players paying 20 percent. We have agents that encourage players to get in a portal when it's really not in their best interest to get in a portal, only to try to stimulate more revenue for them, but really for themselves, with no guarantee that they're going to get them more revenue. So I do think there should be regulation. I do think there should be rules. I do think they should be registered. You know, look, the NFL has a lot of really good rules, and you have to be a registered agent with the Players Association in the NFL to be able to represent players. And I think families and student athletes have the same--should have the same protection in terms of the framework that we put around agents for college kids. Senator Blackburn. That's great. Mr. Holtzclaw, do you agree with what he said? And I want you also to talk about the financial literacy. Should that be a requirement? Mr. Holtzclaw. I do agree to parts of what Mr. Saban is over there saying. He is definitely speaking truth onto what happens in the lives of our student athletes when they have to deal with agents. Agents do encourage a lot of decisions for student athletes that they have signed to their agency. And again, agents do get paid through what college athletes get paid. So them trying to influence the decisions of student athletes will influence their pay. Again, I think this goes back to the education piece of educating a lot of student athletes on the fact that your agent works for you and that you don't work for your agent. Your agent is supposed to be helping you. And again, those ridiculous amounts of money that's being taken from a lot of these student athletes is a disservice to the game, you know, and I've had great experiences when it comes to me and an agent. I've also seen the bad side of other teammates that have had--that have had to deal with bad agents and have said, this agent hasn't done anything for me. They're taking too much money. They're this, they're that. And there's definitely an issue with anybody just being able to be an agent without those type of regulations. I agree that there should be that. Senator Blackburn. That's great. Ms. Gould, I want to come to you on the transfer portal. And just have you talk for a minute about the damage that can be done not only to the school and the program, but to the athlete with this constant transferring? Ms. Gould. Yes, thank you for that question. And certainly, while I think everybody at this table, you know, supports freedom of movement and freedom of choice for student athletes with guardrails in place, I think there are so many consequences of what's happening right now. Lance talked a little bit about how it feels to kind of jump from program to program and have lots of transition. What it does academically, if I think we're going to start to see with graduation rates around transfer student athletes that our core purpose of tying college athletics to the educational mission is being lost because of this hopping around from institution to institution. It really does undermine the foundational team culture and team atmosphere when you don't know year to year, month to month, who your teammates are going to be. And really, these relationships that happen in these locker rooms are some of the richest and most transformational relationships that a student athlete can have in their life. So I think there are academic impacts, I think there are culture impacts to teams, and I think there are mental health pressures too when you have agents in your ear, you know, kind of pressuring you to consider other options when maybe it's not in your best interest, or maybe you're happy where you are. Senator Blackburn. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Blackburn. And I will note, I think one of the most important parts of Senator Cantwell's and my legislation is a registry and important protections for student athletes dealing with agents and capping agent fees at 5 percent, because I think particularly when you're dealing with 17-, 18-, 19-year-old student athletes, there is right now pervasive exploitation of those student athletes, and one of the really important things we need to do is provide protections for those athletes. Senator Hickenlooper. STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN HICKENLOOPER, U.S. SENATOR FROM COLORADO Senator Hickenlooper. I'm not sure this---- The Chairman. I will say for the record, that's the fastest I've seen anyone ascend the dais. [Laughter.] Senator Hickenlooper. You know, this is--these are difficult times. One has to take opportunities where they come. Mr. Chair, Madam Ranking Member, thank you. You guys have worked, I know, hundreds of hours, thousands of hours on this, and I recognize full well the enormity of the challenge and the differences of opinion, and that you have both really done remarkable work to get to this point. I think most of us would agree, I think everybody here would agree that college sports are at their best when they create opportunities for as many young people as possible. If you step back and look at it, capturing young men and women at a young age and engaging them in all variety of sports is critical. I've been amazed at the power of Olympics to do that as a seedbed by which kids get engaged. Obviously Olympic and Paralympic pipelines run primarily through college sports, and they play a really integral role in ensuring that the U.S.-- well, that the U.S. leads the world in medal counts. Sounds ridiculous, but it's part of our international brand. What differentiates us is our success as an Olympic--you know, a source of Olympic talent. The Protect College Sports Act clearly creates protections for non-revenue-generating sports, but it does make them conditional on participation in a commercial arrangement. This means there is no guarantee that every Division I school will be required to maintain their current scholarship slots and rosters for that great diversity of sports that is represented by the Olympics. And again, these are Olympic sports and women's sports, that I'm most concerned about. So, Ms. Gould, I'll direct my question to you. From your perspective, is the risk of cuts and diminished opportunities for college non-revenue and Olympic sports across Division I sports a real concern that needs to be addressed? Ms. Gould. Thank you for that question. It absolutely is a real concern, and we saw some of the data poster that Senator Cantwell shared. You know, look, there have been incredible amounts of cuts already to Olympic sports, women's sports. And if we don't start to put some expense controls in place and there's more and more pressure to fund, you know, football and men's basketball, the revenue-generating sports at a higher level, that money has to come from somewhere. So it's either going to come from the central campus and take funds away from general students and other campus initiatives, or it's going to be taken away from other programs within the athletic department. So I think we've seen the data. I think the threats are real. And I certainly appreciate that the bill addresses this because it's an important issue for our country and for the student athletes that are competing in those sports. Senator Hickenlooper. I appreciate that. Thank you. And, the statistics are, I mean, amazing when you actually look at the relevance that American people see for supporting the Olympics. And this is one of those opportunities where if we don't act now, we might lose an opportunity that puts us on a road to a place where we don't want to be. So I look forward to working both with Senator Cantwell and Senator Cruz on this going forward. I can sneak in one more question. Mr. Holtzclaw, we all want student athletes to have the opportunity to benefit from their hard work and talent. We want to make sure that they don't get taken advantage of and a number of people have described this a little bit. This Protect College Sports Act requires disclosure of NIL compensation over $600 per year, while making sure that it protects student privacy and creates an NIL disclosure database of anonymized NIL data to make sure that families and student athletes can assess fair market value, can know what a fair decision is. So, Mr. Holtzclaw, do you think greater transparency around NIL compensation would help athletes negotiate on a more level playing field, particularly those who may not have access to the same level of advisors or resources as some of the athletes at the bigger programs? Mr. Holtzclaw. Thank you. Again, I take this back to educating our student athletes, and I think that's really the forefront of what we need to do and that's going to help us a lot. Student athletes are going to be able to publicly be able to go out there and see different values and see if--compare and contrast to see if what they're getting and what their deal's details are go along with what they think that they should be getting or what the fair market value is out there for themselves. So that just goes in and educates our student athletes and gives them a public platform to be able to see that visually. Senator Hickenlooper. Great, thank you very much. And I'm out of time. Mr. Bevacqua, you're spared my question, as are all of you. I have so many questions to ask, but maybe I'll be able to come back later. Thank you all for taking the time out of your busy lives and being here. I yield back to the Chair. The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Hickenlooper. And I will recognize that Olympic sports, I know, are particularly important in your home state of Colorado. And I think one of the really important parts of this bill is protecting Olympic sports and women's sports and non-revenue sports. One of the tragedies we're seeing right now under the status quo is it seems like every single week a different college is canceling women's sports, Olympic sports, non- revenue sports. If we don't act, we're going to continue to see devastation. And I, for one, don't want to see an Olympics where every gold medal goes to Russia and China and Americans are not able to compete because we've devastated the preparation of our Olympic athletes which is in college sports. I think that's one of the really compelling reasons for Congress to act and act in a bipartisan way so we can all cheer on a ton of American golds in the next Olympics. Senator Young. Senator Young. Thank you, Chairman, for holding this hearing. Thank you to you and the Ranking Member for your incredibly hard work, members of your staff. I know it's a really challenging issue. And it's just great to be here today and be part of this. The future of college sports is at a crossroads right now, we understand that. Congressional action is necessary to ensure that the NIL landscape is built on clear rules, fair rules, rules that lead to a measure of predictability moving forward. We need to provide protections for our student athletes and our universities alike and ensure the longevity of not only college football and men's basketball, but our Olympic sports and our women's sports as well. Without a Federal framework, the legal and operational uncertainty around this space will only cause our academic institutions and our student athletes to suffer. However, with any legislation Congress contemplates, we need to do our due diligence to ensure that it's going to work as intended. Hence this hearing today. In addition to many Hoosiers that are or will become student athletes, I have a diverse group of engaged stakeholders on this issue based in my home State, including the NCAA, U.S. Track and Field, USA Gymnastics, USA Diving, and just a host of top-tier universities, one of which I am glad is represented today at the witness table. And while these stakeholders continue to review the legislation and consider how it will be effectuated and its impact on their own activities, I'm hopeful this hearing will help clarify many of these considerations. Mr. Bevacqua, thank you again for your testimony here today. Last year, what we're calling the House settlement was approved in the Northern District of California, establishing a new revenue-sharing structure to allow schools to provide direct financial benefits to athletes. The cap under this new structure was set at $20.5 million per school for this past school year. Sir, can you speak to the revenue caps under the House settlement whether you believe they're adequate or if they need some sort of adjustment to reflect the current reality when it comes to the revenue sharing landscape? Mr. Bevacqua. Thanks, Senator Young. I've been vocal, and you and I have had conversations over the course of the last few years, but on this particular issue over the course of the last year, I think the House settlement did many good things. I believe that the cap number in the House settlement is too low. I believe we need to fix a more realistic cap. And I go back to my opening where there's this misnomer that there's a cap. There is not. There is no cap right now. You have a cap outlined by the House settlement, and then you have third-party NIL opportunities. So again, I view it as an equation of X being the cap, Y being the NIL space equaling the total spend on compensation. I think the more dollars that can be transferred into the cap and paid directly by universities in an incredibly transparent way is going to help clean up the system. So---- Senator Young. Just to interject respectfully, because our time's limited. What's the risk of maintaining artificially low revenue caps and could there be risks of fraud or other deceptive means of obtaining a competitive advantage? Mr. Bevacqua. Yes, I mean, I think the College Sports Commission is doing as good a job as they can, but I think pushing money into that gray space of third-party collectives and NIL, that's in my opinion where most of the uncertainty and the abuse is. What I would love to see happen is establishing a realistic cap. And if universities chose to exceed the cap, tying in some form of subsidy on a certain percentage of the dollars, maybe it's 20 to 25 cents per dollar over the cap, that you have to reinvest in Olympic and women's sports. And I think that would create not only some certainty and some stability, but I think it would help preserve the future of Olympic and women's sports. I believe the cap is too low right now. Senator Young. Yes. Mr. Bevacqua. And as much as I admire so many provisions of the bill, I think that de minimis amount of $600 is too low, unrealistic, and clogging the system. Senator Young. Just very briefly, Mr. Bevacqua, I was encouraged but not surprised because we've spoken at length about this, but in your written testimony you talked about preserving the student athlete experience, how important that is to remember that they are students. Give me a very quick answer about how Notre Dame does that, make sure we preserve the educational experience for student athletes, and maybe how you think Congress should tackle this question? Mr. Bevacqua. Well, our student athletes are just that. They are truly student athletes. They go to in-person classes on campus at Notre Dame. They're integrated with the student body. And when I talk to student athletes, regardless of the sport, whether it's football or rowing, softball, I always try to convey to them that even if you make it and play professionally--and there's such a small percentage of young men and women that can play professionally--but even if you make it, if you're one of those chosen few, you're still going to be done at a young age. And if you don't have that education, if you don't have that degree, you are going to have a very tough road ahead of you. Take advantage of this time on campus to get an education, to meet people outside of your team, outside of sports. Build those connections. Become part of the greater community of your university. Because it's those relationships, those education--that education, that academic curriculum that's going to help you lead a better life from the moment your sports career is over for the rest of your life. Because sports ends for everybody. Senator Young. Such an important message. Thank you, Chairman. The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Young. And I will note one of the important things I think of this bipartisan legislation is that it provides authority for enforcing the House settlement, but it also explicitly provides that the limitation in that settlement can be modified and it can be raised as the parties decide. And that was something important that Senator Cantwell and I wanted to include, is not limited, but let the parties raise it. And so that is very expressly in the legislation. Senator Lujan. STATEMENT OF HON. BEN RAY LUJAN, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO Senator Lujan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, everyone. Mr. Gee, I want to take a minute to brag about some of the women's teams at the University of New Mexico. UNM women's golf has won 10 Mountain West titles, women's soccer seven conference titles, women's cross country 15 titles, New Mexico State University women's basketball six regular season conference titles, softball 6 regular season conference titles, volleyball eight regular season conference titles. After years of absence on any TV platforms, we started to see many women's sports get more coverage on television. My understanding is that much of that coverage started because the conference leveraged college football rights to ensure that networks also carried these non-revenue sports. Now, the bill we're discussing today seems to focus on getting more revenue from college football. Now, Mr. Gee, if a negotiator's only focused on maximizing revenue for college football, are you concerned that women's and other non-revenue sports within New Mexico and other states will fall back to where we were 20 years ago where very few games were available on television? Mr. Gee. Well, thank you, Senator. Absolutely. This is one of the reasons that I'm here. Again, unless we grow the pie-- and this is the whole point--unless we grow the pie, we're not going to be able to sustain really positive support for women's and for Olympic sports. And that is the ultimate centerpiece, in my view, of this legislation. It protects student athletes. It provides a structure that we've needed to have. But most importantly, we've lost these cases, so we have no choice but to either diminish any support for any of these programs, or we have to grow the pie. And that's what this does. And it will--it will in my view, be very positive for women's sports and for Olympic sports particularly. Senator Lujan. Appreciate that, Mr. Gee. Mr. Holtzclaw, one of my colleagues asked you a similar question, but prior to transferring to Utah, it's my understanding you played three seasons at the University of Washington, and during that time you played maybe under three coaches. That's correct, correct sir? Mr. Holtzclaw. I played under two coaches and was recruited by a different staff during high school. Senator Lujan. Appreciate that. Now, what effect did playing under the different coaches have in your years with your experience? Mr. Holtzclaw. What has changed for my experience is it changed leadership and it changed the culture of a program. Culture of a program, it's a big toll on the success of a program and success of the relationships built throughout that program. My first--my first two years in there, the culture in there was set for a while. We had a lot of players in there that have played with each other and played under the same leadership and played under the same coaching staff and culture for a long time. So coming in there, that culture was set already and things rolled that same way. I would say the effect of changing that often does change the trajectory in changing the leadership and the culture of a program. I would say it changes how things are in the locker room. I would say it changes people's values. It changes how people move around a lot, and it can disrupt the consistency of how things are run on a program. Senator Lujan. I appreciate that. And Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, I raise this issue because it seems to me that the market for coaches is a bit of a mess as well. And salaries keep going up, and if a coach finds a better offer somewhere, they can take a buyout from the school, or if they get fired, they get a golden parachute. And all of a sudden, taxpayers across the country are on the hook for this stuff. I mean, no offense to the coaches here, accomplished, and, you know, while the coach that is here, he doesn't leave programs, he just keeps teams winning championships, I want to encourage more of that. And I certainly hope that when there's language in here that seems to restrict the movement of student athletes, but coaches just can leave midseason. Parity is parity. Fair is fair. Treatment is treatment here. And I certainly hope that that's something that we could chat about and we can work together to make sure that we can do something in that space. I'm tired of buying new jerseys for coaches in New Mexico because, you know, it's only good for a season and then, you know, I start washing cars with it. I want to stop doing that. I want to keep wearing them. Mr. Bevacqua, a major problem in college sports, that of unregulated, uncertified college sports agents. I didn't realize they existed, and I've been learning a lot more about this. Now, these so-called agents are exploiting college athletes and their families because they get paid for every transaction, whether you're in, you're out, whatever it may be. There are dollars flowing there, but then there are restrictions on everyone else. I don't understand that, while the student athletes are just getting bumped around. But I see a challenge here. So why is it important to have a system in place to ensure that college sports agents are registered? Mr. Bevacqua. Yes, I think--I think it's a key provision in this bill. Coach Saban said it well too. I mean, so hey, there are good agents and there are bad agents, but young men and women, 17, 18 years old, who are not used to negotiating with agents or not used to what it means to pay a fair and reasonable commission are being taken advantage of around the country. We need a database, a registry for these agents, a cap on their commission to make sure these young student athletes are not being taken advantage of. Coach Saban also mentioned it's often the agent who starts talking about putting a particular student athlete into the portal. Test your market value. You can get more money if you go to that school or this school, with no regard for the culture of a team, with no regard for where that young man or woman might be in their academic journey. So we need to clean up that area and have a registry and rules and regulations and that cap on their commission to make sure we're protecting our student athletes. I feel incredibly strongly about that. Senator Lujan. Appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the time. Senator Cantwell. Mr. Chairman, if I could, just for--since Senator Lujan asked about it. There is, Dr. Gee, the section of the bill that also says on media rights that these non-revenue sports should be let out of comprehensive media contracts where, you know, FOX or ESPN buys the media rights but then doesn't do anything to promote the women's golf or any of these. So it allows for those entities, you either use those rights and promote them or you get to have them back as an institution. And that I believe would really foster in this world--you know, do I think some volleyball team or golf team or some of these teams--well, look, that's an impressive record, right, and do I think that they're going to make hundreds of millions of dollars? No, but do I think they can make millions of dollars if somebody lets them go promote themselves, yes. And so we definitely want to free, if you will, these individual teams within an institution to go pursue making their program more successful this way. Mr. Gee. Yes, Senator, I'll just respond by saying when I was Chairman of the Big Ten when we created the Big Ten Network, and that was the whole purpose was to create an opportunity for all of the sports to be shown. Now I'm not contending that that's what we ought to do right now, but I do believe that that started the ball rolling of many people interested in volleyball and golf and a variety of other things that had not been shown for a long time. Senator Cantwell. Well, but I think the problem is that the Big Ten and the SEC just having that brand on the channel doesn't do anything. And the networks, they're looking for the big moment, they're looking for the Saturday big game of the week, and that's what they're putting all their money in. But I guarantee you that success of those New Mexico programs, just like we have a couple of world record holders at U-Dub track who, like, I would love to see these girls and the fact that they are world record athletes. So I think freeing schools to go--these non-revenue sports to be able to go pursue their own media rights is also a valuable part of the section of this bill. Mr. Gee. And I agree with that. Senator Cantwell. Thank you. The Chairman. And I will say this provision saying that if there's a comprehensive media deal and if there's a particular sport that's not being utilized, that's not being put out to the public, that the rights revert back, this was, I think, a very clever idea. It was entirely Senator Cantwell's idea, but I thought it was very clever to expand the ability. Look, as the father of two daughters, I want to see women's sports get as much--as many eyeballs, as much support as possible. And that's a really important piece. And I'll say additionally, Senator Lujan, on your very good questions, you talked about the problem of coaches leaving and leaving during the season. And one of the provisions in this bill that's gotten a lot of attention has been widely referred to as the Lane Kiffin rule. Says that coaching staff--that a school cannot recruit coaching staff or hire coaching staff during the season or during the playoffs. And I have to say, it's not fair to players if you're heading into the playoffs and suddenly right before you go into a game, your coach leaves and goes to a rival. That's not fair. And so what Senator Cantwell and I did is adopted the rule the NFL has, which is you can recruit coaches, just do it in the offseason. Don't do it while kids are playing for them. Don't pull the rug out from them in the middle of the season. I think that's a much more fair way to do it, and that's a lot of what we try to do in this bill, is find common-sense rules that would protect athletes and protect the system. And let's see. Senator Curtis. STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN CURTIS, U.S. SENATOR FROM UTAH Senator Curtis. Thank you. Mr. Holtzclaw, as my colleague alluded to, you've played for a lot of different teams, and this wouldn't be a good sports hearing without a little banter. So I'm kind of curious, what is your favorite team? [Laughter.] Senator Curtis. And just in case you need any help---- Mr. Holtzclaw. I wouldn't call any team my favorite, but I do represent who I currently play for, which is the University of Utah. Senator Curtis. You should be in politics. [Laughter.] The Chairman. That's damn diplomatic. And Senator Curtis, you better be worried that he may file for election, Senator. Senator Curtis. Oh, he looks far more comfortable in a uniform than he does in that suit, I'll tell you that. [Laughter.] Senator Curtis. So let me start with you and kind of follow up on this question. In this different frameworks, you've seen different State laws, institution rules, and constant legal authority changes. So from your perspective as a student athlete, what would be the benefit of having one clear national framework for name and likeness, transfers, eligibility, athletic protections, rather than asking athletes to figure out a different system depending on where they play? Mr. Holtzclaw. I think what it does is it creates standardization and it creates regulation and kind of keeps everybody in a set standpoint of what we can and cannot do. I feel like it makes things a little bit easier in some senses. And the way I would look at it is to look at things in a situation of eliminating the gray area a lot of times. And that is a big part of things that we should do when we're looking at a lot of people that don't really have the knowledge always of what they can and cannot do and don't really know the legal frameworks and everything all the time. Senator Curtis. Good, thank you. Mr. Bevacqua, Utah will host the 2034 Olympic Games. I'm sure you're aware of that. And many of the athletes who represent Team USA in those games are being developed right now through college sports in Utah. That pipeline includes skiers, runners, and a host of other athletes who rely on college programs to help them achieve their dreams. As an athletic director responsible for making real budget decisions, what signals from Congress would incentivize schools to not only preserve non-revenue sports, but expand opportunities for these athletes? Mr. Bevacqua. Well, thank you for that question, and I am a tremendous fan of the Olympic movement. I go back to my days at NBC Sports, which has been the home of the Olympics for so long, and I've been fortunate enough to go to many Olympic Games. Some of our proudest moments on campus are when our student athletes represent our country in the Olympics. That's a moment of pride for Notre Dame. It's obviously a moment of pride for their friends and families. I think there does--there does need to be real teeth in the bill where you are going to protect Olympic sports and the Olympic movement, because without universities maintaining and investing in their Olympic sports, the U.S. Olympic movement will take a major step backward. And I think you really, quite frankly, need to hold our feet to the fire. And if you're--a university is going to invest so heavily in the sports like football and men's and women's basketball, I do believe there needs to be a quid pro quo. Where we are now going to also demand that you don't take your foot off the gas, you continue to keep those Olympic programs. Because the overwhelming majority of young student athletes--young men and women student athletes in this country are involved in Olympic sports. Senator Curtis. Do you think this bill that we're looking at does that and sends those signals? Mr. Bevacqua. I think it sends those signals. I think, you know, as Senator Cruz and Senator Cantwell said, I think the bill is a work in progress. I think it could do a stronger job, a more straightforward job, a clearer job of protecting Olympic sports depending on where the remainder of the bill heads. Senator Curtis. Thank you. Coach Saban, I was moved by something you said in your written testimony. You talked about young people coming into a program needing structure, discipline, coaching, academic support, and accountability, and leaving with a degree, a career, a family, and a better chance to be successful in life. It reminds me of a comment by BYU head football coach, I suspect you know Kalani Sitake, where he said that the best part of the job is to coach great leaders. That is exactly what college athletes should be about. Those life-changing experiences are not limited to football, they also occur in everyday sports that generate no revenue and have few fans, yet transform--and yet they do transform the lives of young people. So my question is this, as Congress looks at the future framework of college athletics, what do we need to get right to ensure we not only protect but help grow non-revenue sports? Mr. Saban. Yes, well, I think a lot of the things that we've discussed here today are certainly imperative, I think, in the future I think if we keep going in the direction that we're going and making these huge investments in football and basketball in terms of paying players, which is going up and up and up and up, that we should change the comment from student athlete to athlete that's a student, because we're going to have professional sports teams that are sponsored by colleges and universities. I mean, that's what's going to happen, because we're going to be paying the players so much, and I really think the only way to remedy this is, you know, we have competitive conferences, we have competitive teams, we have competitors involved in trying to create an advantage for themselves in every way that we can. And in college athletics, we have no, like, legislative branch of government that says, this is what the rules are. This is--I'm the commissioner of the NFL, and this is what you're allowed to do. This is a salary cap. This is how we draft players. This is how we create parity. This is how we create revenue so that we can maintain a level of competition in all sports, Olympic sports and women's sports as well. We don't have that in college. So we talk about conferences getting dismantled and all that, that would never happen if you had somebody that was the head of all this. Senator Curtis. Thank you. Mr. Saban. Right now, you know, like they say back in West Virginia, it's not about the money, it's about how much. And now everything that happens is about how much money can we create and are we actually deploying that money in the right places to maintain student athletes' well-being. Senator Curtis. Regrettably, I am out of time, but thank you very much. Go Utes. Mr. Saban. I think I've been out of time about all day. [Laughter.] The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Curtis. Senator Kim. STATEMENT OF HON. ANDY KIM, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY Senator Kim. Thank you, Chairman, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to have this and for the witnesses here to come out. As we're talking about this hearing and talking about protecting college sports, but the title also says supporting our student athletes. And we've talked about that a number of different ways, but one I want to focus in on is about injuries and about recoveries in that way, and just what is provided when it comes to our student athletes there. So Mr. Bevacqua, I guess I want to just start with you just to get a sense of what are some of the sports in particular that have the highest injury burden that you see in your program? Mr. Bevacqua. Well, it varies. All sports have the ability to be injured for a young man or a young woman, you know, obviously you think about contact sports, you think about ACL tears that seems to be so prevalent in so many of women's sports around the country. But I think it's a combination of what we really need to focus on, and one of the things I was incredibly encouraged about in the bill is this emphasis on extended medical insurance. So there has to be an emphasis on strength and conditioning, that is so important, that transition from high school to college, nutrition, the use of data analytics, diet, rest, all of that. It's not only injuries, but it's injury prevention. You have to be focused on injury prevention, and then when there are injuries, because inevitably there will be, how do you get that student athlete healthy again, not just to play a sport, but healthy again to live their lives. One of the negative consequences, in my opinion, of the transfer portal is there's not that consistency of the maturation of a young student athlete at a particular school with particular doctors and staffs and trainers to know that young person's journey from an 18-year-old to a 22-year-old. That also helps the prevention of injuries. You're surrounded by your doctors, you're surrounded by your trainers, you're surrounded by your counselors. If you're just jumping around from school to school every year, you're starting from ground zero. Senator Kim. The continuity of care, yes. Mr. Bevacqua. That continuity. You know, Coach Saban is one of the best football coaches in the history of the country, the Mount Rushmore of football coaches. I think one of the other reasons he was so successful is there was such consistency at Alabama for so many years. Not just who's your head coach, who are your trainers, who's your strength coach, who can you go to for an opinion, their doctors. Senator Kim. So we're looking at, as you said, injury prevention and strength training. We're looking at the immediate response to injuries as well as the extended medical care beyond their time. Is that sort of the continuity? Mr. Bevacqua. And Senator Kim, just getting to know the person, whether you're his or her academic advisor or trainer or nutrition coach, getting to know the person, building a relationship with the person leads to a healthy life and a healthy time period for them at a university. Senator Kim. Well, I would hope all of us can agree that that's what we want. I guess what I'd like to just ask you kind of bluntly here is, is that being provided equally across all college sports? Are some of the higher revenue generating sports getting more resources when it comes to injury prevention, the care, the extended medical? Mr. Bevacqua. You know, we say at Notre Dame, listen, if you're the starting quarterback at Notre Dame or the third string outfielder right fielder on the baseball team or the softball team, your life is going to be different. Whether that's the amount of attention you get, your visibility, your NIL opportunities. But there are certain things that should be non-negotiable. One of those is health, nutrition, safety, injury prevention, mental health resources, academic resources. Whether you're a superstar or never going to see the field, those things need to be non-negotiable. Senator Kim. I appreciate that, you know, about your institution. Ms. Gould, I guess I just want to ask you, just, you know, you see a wider lens here. Is that something that's a guarantee everywhere? And just what is it that we should be thinking about on it? I know in this bill, I believe that there's about $60 million for a fund in terms of being able to do that. I'm just trying to get a sense of like, what's enough? Like, what do we need to do to make sure that our student athletes across the board get fairness in terms of how they're treated when it comes to injuries and their health? Ms. Gould. No, I appreciate the emphasis in this bill around student athlete health and well-being. And I agree with Pete. I do think that sports medicine services and kind of holistic wellness support for student athletes is a priority across all of Division I. And I would hope that all of our leaders on our campuses make that a consistent application across all of their student athletes. I think the protections that are codified in this bill are really, really, really important, both in terms of the time on the campus and what happens post-eligibility when they leave our campuses. I would say that as the spending and the arms race continues to spiral out of control, this becomes harder and harder for institutions that don't have resources. So I appreciate that this issue has been brought to the fore through this Act, and I think it's an important one that we protect for all student athletes in all sports at all levels. Senator Kim. Thank you and I yield back. The Chairman. And I thank Senator Kim for his very good questions. And I will say one of the really important parts of this bill that Senator Cantwell and I worked hard on is providing what I think will be landmark protections for athletes, both health and safety standards so you don't have a kid with a concussion being forced to play, providing health insurance coverage for injuries across the board, men and women, for injuries or diseases that come from playing sports, not just while they're playing, but for 5 years after they play no out-of-pocket expenses for those athletes. That's provided in the bill. And as you noted, there's also a $60 million medical trust fund that it that is provided in part for schools like HBCUs that have vibrant athletic programs, but don't necessarily have the budget to provide that health insurance coverage. And so that trust fund is created there to ensure that we're protecting athletes, not just the superstars that are on TV every day, but the student athletes across the board. And that's something Senator Cantwell and I both worked hard on. I will note for the record that Coach Saban had a preexisting condition--preexisting commitment. Talking about health insurance, sorry--that he had a preexisting commitment, and so he's going to have to leave in a couple of moments. So I've asked senators on both sides if they had any questions specifically for Coach Saban, and I'm going to recognize Senator Fischer and Senator Budd for one question each for Coach Saban, and then and he's going to have to leave. And then after that, I'll recognize Senator Moreno, who's next up. But Senator Fischer, you're recognized for this question. STATEMENT OF HON. DEB FISCHER, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEBRASKA Senator Fischer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Coach, for being here today. I have a question on scheduling. When you played Nebraska, we were a member of the Big 12, and though now we are a member of the Big Ten, the Protecting College Sports Act proposes changes that would have major influences on conferences. And I've heard concern in particular about how a prohibition on conferences expanding applies only to the Big Ten and the SEC. And I hope this provision can continue to be discussed by this committee. Additionally, the bill would significantly influence the scheduling of football games toward historical rather than current opponents. And though Nebraska has now been in the Big Ten over 15 years, we do have very few conference members who would constitute that historic component that's defined by the bill. So Coach, can you share how else Congress could go about preserving those historic matchups while better considering this significant conference realignment that we've seen take place over the last many decades? Mr. Saban. Well, thanks for the question, but I've always had the opinion that conferences who historically in the past have been regional in terms of how those conferences sort of operated--I think the Southeast Conference has been able to maintain that, other conferences have not--I think it is in the best interest of student athletes that we do have regional conferences. I do think a lot of the traditional rivalries come regionally, but I also think that I was always a proponent of everyone having to play Division I schools. Like, I was always for having 9 or 10 SEC games and two out-of-conference games at Division I because, you know, we talk about trying to create more revenue. Well, in creating more revenue, you have to create better inventory that is going to interest people to watch. So therefore, the more really good games that you have as inventory, the more people are going to watch, the more revenue goes up, the more we can, you know, protect Olympic and non- revenue sports. So I do think the conferences should be regional in nature, but I do think we should play games of national interest. I don't think it's really fair that to someone playing at USC they have to go to Rutgers to play, whether it's a field hockey game or a football game. So I think that's crazy. Senator Fischer. If I could have just one follow-up question. When you talk about historic matchups, could you explain to us your lack of wins against Coach Osborne's Cornhuskers? [Laughter.] Senator Fischer. Thank you, sir. Mr. Saban. I will tell you a story about Coach Osborne. You know, my first game---- Senator Fischer. He's the best, isn't he? Mr. Saban. He's the best. My first game at Michigan State, my first game as a head coach, we played Nebraska when they were winning national championships and he was the coach. This was 1995. And we got beat like 56 to 7. And he put his arm around me after the game and he said, ``You're not as bad as you think.'' And we actually went 6 and 5, so he was right. Senator Fischer. Thank you, sir, very much. The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Budd, very quickly for your one question, because we're going to lose---- STATEMENT OF HON. TED BUDD, U.S. SENATOR FROM NORTH CAROLINA Senator Budd. Thanks, Chairman. Coach Saban, I want to ask you about some of this legislation's provisions regarding transfer and eligibility rules. So if Congress worked to prescribe rules and law for the NCAA or any other similar body to adapt for themselves, it can make the rulemaking needed to adapt to inevitable changes that are going to come in college sports it's going to make that more difficult in the future. So how do you think coaches would adapt their approach to player development if the rules were harder to change? And would you be concerned about that reduced flexibility? Mr. Saban. Well, you know, we talked about players transferring and having one opportunity. If they graduate, they have another opportunity. If there are extenuating circumstances, they could have an opportunity. We want--don't want to see student athletes get trapped in a bad situation. But I think multiple transfers, you know, affect a lot of things. It affects ability to graduate, it affects development, it affects what you can major in and what you can be eligible at the next school. So I think multiple transfers have a lot of issues that are not necessarily in the best interest in terms of development, being a part of a team. You know, somebody mentioned you're a part of a different team. We keep asking the young man over here who's a player at Utah, you had three different coaches. We have guys transferring three times to three different schools in 3 years, and we act like that's not a problem. What's the difference in that? You got three different coaches then. So I do think that freedom of choice is important, but I do think the combination of the transfer portal and collectives and being able to have pay for play that creates free agency all the time is putting 4,000 guys in the portal is not healthy for college athletics. And I don't think at the end of the day it's in the best interest of young people in terms of their development. The Chairman. All right, thank you. And I want to thank Senator Rosen for her indulgence allowing two Senators to jump in front of her. That was very kind. Coach Saban, I know you have the preexisting commitment, so thank you for that. Mr. Saban. Again, I want to say thank you to everyone here to giving me the opportunity to be here. This is a pleasure. College football is really--college athletics is really important to me as a college coach and having the opportunity for years and years and years to help young people develop. I appreciate the interest here and the effort being made in continuing to be able to have young people benefit from college athletics. Thank you. The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Moreno. STATEMENT OF HON. BERNIE MORENO, U.S. SENATOR FROM OHIO Senator Moreno. Thank you for the witness for being here. Coach, we'll see you later today. I have to--I have to run to a meeting, so I don't have any time. I would just say for the record, I have three concerns with the bill. It doesn't address the employment issue. We have 47 NCAA division teams between three divisions, 20,000 college athletes that I think would be left behind. So that gives me grave concern. Number two, I think the bill needs to be narrowed and more targeted as a targeted antitrust exemption. And number three, and most importantly, it does nothing about protecting biological women from competing with men in sports. So I'll leave my comments to that. But those are three grave concerns that I have about the bill going forward. Thank you. The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Rosen. STATEMENT OF HON. JACKY ROSEN, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEVADA Senator Rosen. Thank you, Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell. I really appreciate this. I'm grateful for---- Senator Cantwell. Thank you for your indulgence. Thank you. Senator Rosen. Thank you. I'm grateful for your work and all of my colleagues for their commitment to the conversation today. I'm going to build upon a lot of questions that have already been asked, and I think that the main issue that we're here today is we have to realize is that our students, they're our kids, they're our future, whatever they do, and they're not a commodity. And that's the really important message we have here today. And so I've heard from my State's universities and their leadership, including former Governor Sandoval, who sits on the Mountain West Conference and the NCAA boards and has been leading on this issue about how the current chaotic system is unworkable and how important it is to establish stability for universities and students. And so from my understanding of the bill put forth by the Chair and Ranking Member, the biggest challenges is it takes on stem from issues present today in college football. For schools outside the Power Four conferences, like those in Nevada, I'm wondering what key problems you think the Protect College Sports Act addresses. So, Mr. Gee, as a former president of a non-Power Four school, what do you see as the problems this bill solves for, for schools like UNR and UNLV who don't generate revenue from football at the scales of the schools in the Big Ten or the SEC? Mr. Gee. Yes, I guess you're talking about that I was the president of Brown, which is a non-Ivy League, or which is a non-Power Four. At least the Ivies aren't right now, I don't think. They may become. But I think that for every--for every part of intercollegiate athletics, what I'm really concerned about is that what we need to do is we need to develop basic fair rules for everyone. We need to make certain that--and I'm talking about everyone in all of these conferences, I'm talking about the fact that we need to have protection for student athletes and for--and for the institutions themselves. But finally, and again I come back to this because I have made this point probably ad nauseam, and that is that this bill allows us to grow the pie so that all the schools, including those who are smaller in smaller markets, so to speak, that they will be able to continue to thrive. Governor Sandoval and I have had a lot of conversations about this and he is---- Senator Rosen. And now he's president of the UNR, just to make myself clear for everyone who--former Governor, now president of the university of UNR. Mr. Gee. I still call---- Senator Rosen. We still call him Governor too. Mr. Gee. Yes, I still call him Governor, but a good friend of mine. But he is in total agreement with this bill and what we're trying to accomplish. Senator Rosen. I want to stay on this topic then, because schools unlock revenue if they make the college football playoffs, right? It's a billion-dollar-a-year revenue stream outside of the NCAA. So according to the Knight Foundation, 90 percent of that revenue goes to schools in the Power Four and Notre Dame. While we'll always cheer for them, we love to watch football, my State's biggest schools, UNLV and UNR, have consistently missed the college football playoff, and with that, this revenue stream. I know the world is all about likes and influencers and media and all of that and revenue streams, but Mr. Gee, the Protect College Sports Act would it help schools like UNLV and UNR who don't receive revenue from the college football playoff currently to receive more revenue? And how would pooling these media rights--it's all about like I said, it's the number of likes and the influencers and the streaming. But how does pooling this work in this bill compared to the Knight Commission proposal to redistribute the college football playoff revenue to all FBS schools? Mr. Gee. You know, first of all, this is--this is an opportunity to grow the revenue for everyone. Senator Rosen. For everyone, that's my point. Mr. Gee. That's right, for everyone. But at the same time, we have to recognize that there are--there are institutions that are going to be able to play for national championships and so forth. They should be rewarded. We're not about--we're not about leveling everything. We're about creating opportunities so that every institution, every institution is going to be able to continue to be competitive and---- Senator Rosen. So is it a question of do our universities just become sports revenue producers, or are they still universities? Mr. Gee. You know, of course, remember, I am a university president. I think--I think first of all about the academic integrity of what we're trying to solve. And I agree with the Coach who talks about the fact that we need to put the word student back into student athlete again, and I think that that is what we're trying to solve. This bill is the last great hope to try to bring some semblance of common sense to all of that, including the academic issues that we're facing. Senator Rosen. Thank you. I want to build--my colleagues have talked a lot about women's sports. It's really important. When I was a young girl, there wasn't women's sports that were organized, and so this bill really does provide essential protections for women and broad-based sports. The protections are tied to voluntary participation in media rights pooling, and I'm concerned that voluntary participation may not provide enough stability or certainty to adequately protect women's-- and of course, as people have been talking about, those Olympic sports that are so important to our national character, right? So, Mr. Bevacqua, are these bills' current protections durable enough to protect women's sports from being cut in the long term? And what other ways can Congress enable schools to protect women's and sometimes non-revenue-generating sports programs, but that we all love to still cheer on? Mr. Bevacqua. No, it's a great question. And, you know, we have 26 programs, 13 men's, 13 women's. One of the most popular sports on our campus by far is our women's basketball. You know, we sell out---- Senator Rosen. The Aces, three-time WNBA champs. Let's talk about women's basketball. Mr. Bevacqua. Well, yes, so women's basketball, you see how certain, women's volleyball is growing, the excitement going on right now with women's softball. You know, I go back to what I said earlier. I do think there should be a bit of a give and take. Like if you as a university make the decision to continue to invest so heavily in sports like football and men's basketball and women's basketball, there has to be an agreement, a contract, if you will, that you're going to continue to invest in Olympic and women's sports. And I think that combined with Title IX requirements will hopefully keep women's sports at the college level going in the direction they're going now, which I think is incredibly exciting and I think they're operating at an all-time high level of success. Senator Rosen. Do you think, as a follow up, Congress should consider requiring other revenue sharing agreements outside of the Sports Broadcasting Act that could be redistributed to schools to maintain and support some of these broad-based sports or women's sports? Mr. Bevacqua. Well, I think that the, you know, scholarship protections, the distribution of scholarships, the roster limitations, and just an agreement that you have to continue to invest in those women's and Olympic sports. It gets back to what is NIL, what are these name, image, and likeness deals. Coach Saban has said it repeatedly, and I agree with him, it's really become pay for play. And I think you have to increase the cap to make it more of a revenue share and then allow the universities to distribute that, certainly primarily to their revenue sports. You know, in our case, our main revenue sports is football first and foremost, but then men's and women's basketball. But I do think the bill starts to talk about ways to make sure that you can't go all in on just one sport at the expense of others, because that would lead to the disintegration of opportunities for young men and women who are participating in those Olympic sports, and obviously young women in women's sports. Senator Rosen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Rosen. Senator Fischer is now recognized for the remainder of her questions. Senator Fischer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Bevacqua, Nebraska is really proud of our women's volleyball program, that we've won a total of 5 NCAA championships. We're regularly one of the top programs in that sport. In fact, Nebraska volleyball has sold out their home arena every match dating back to 2001 and even sold out Memorial Stadium for an event in 2023. As we continue to explore the NIL legislation, it is important that these athletes maintain their NIL opportunities. You were just addressing much of that. Can you comment on how this specific piece of legislation addresses women's and Olympic sports programs like Nebraska's volleyball? How do you think it would help those programs without the Federal Government deciding who's going to win and who's going to lose if they're going to be dealing out funding? Mr. Bevacqua. Yes, the success of women's volleyball, and I point to Nebraska, you would know better than I do, but 81,000, 82,000 people to watch a women's volleyball game. It's exciting, it's astounding, and I go back to what I had said that I think there has to be has to be a commitment. Schools are going to pick sports. You cannot be in this day and age a year in and year out national championship competitor in all of your programs. It's just impossible. So you have to go back to the basics. At Notre Dame, do we want to win national championships in football? Absolutely. Do we want to win national championships in women's basketball? Absolutely. We start every season, that's our goal for those programs and others. But the true student athlete experience has to be more than just national championships. It has to be, you know, what are you learning? How are you developing? What's that education you're getting? What's that opportunity that you're provided? And that's why I go back to my belief that you should tie in universities--and I'll use the term again, hold our feet to the fire--that as you continue to invest in those primary sports, and they're different, Volleyball is also a big emphasis for ours right now. We have a wonderful coach and we're going in a great direction. But you can't do that, you can't be all in on certain sports at the expense of others. And I think one area where the bill can be improved is tightening that language, making that language a bit more forceful, that as you continue to put your gas on the--foot on the gas on major revenue sports like football, men's and women's basketball, we are not going to allow you to take your foot off the gas of women's sports and Olympic sports. Senator Fischer. OK, thank you. Mr. Gee, Nebraska is also home to the College World Series, the men's College World Series that's coming up in just a week or so now. Last year, that College World Series brought nearly $150 million in economic benefit to the City of Omaha. So as we consider this NIL legislation, how can Congress ensure that we're protecting some of these really cherished traditions that we have, whether it's the College World Series or it's basketball's March Madness? Mr. Gee. Well, I really appreciate that. I have seen the stadium in Omaha. I'm actually hopeful that the West Virginia team is going to be there this year, you know, we have fingers crossed. And I spoke, gave the keynote address at the Gallup organization last year, and so I was right there in the neighborhood. So it was great fun. I will tell you that this bill--I'm going to come back at this again, you think that I'm wearing a sandwich board that says vote for this bill--but I really do believe, to answer your question, that without this bill, we will have chaos. With this bill, we'll now have an opportunity to really address the issues you're talking about. The bill, like everything else, is not perfect, but it goes so much further to solving the problems and giving a structure to solve the problems and solve the traditions and ability to be able to---- Senator Fischer. But are there structures within this bill that you can point to right now that would protect College World Series? Mr. Gee. Yes, I'm just looking at--I'm just looking at--I'm going to ask him. Isn't there a---- Senator Fischer. No, we're not going to let Senator Cruz participate in this discussion. Mr. Gee. I'm going to let him respond. OK. Senator Fischer. I can talk to him anytime. Mr. Gee. I know---- Senator Fischer. But I want to hear your thoughts. Mr. Gee.--but he's much more interesting than me. Go ahead. Senator Fischer. Oh, please. Now we're getting off topic. Please, Senator Cruz, you are much more interesting. Please tell us. The Chairman. Well, I'm not going to take Senator Fischer's time other than to say, number one, you are absolutely right that Nebraska's women's volleyball is impressive as all get- out, and the massive crowd that came out to watch them play was really groundbreaking and I think changed college sports. I will say, in terms of your specific questions, one of the really important provisions here is we've tied the pooling of media rights to a mandate to protect roster spots and scholarships for women's sports, for non-revenue sports, that those two are intertwined for Olympic sports, because we want to keep all of that fully protected. And just to be a home- state partisan for a minute, I am particularly proud that right now we're right in the middle of the Women's Softball World Series, which is between Texas and Texas Tech. And in my view, we win either way, so I'm cheering for them both and really happy with that. But that's an enormously important part of this bill. Senator Fischer. Thank you. Mr. Gee. And he answered my question. Thank you very much. Senator Fischer. Thank you, sir. The Chairman. Senator Moran. STATEMENT OF HON. JERRY MORAN, U.S. SENATOR FROM KANSAS Senator Moran. Chairman, thank you and I thank our witnesses for being here. Chairman, as you and Senator Cantwell know, I should be a significant supporter of this bill. It's an effort that began with Senator Blumenthal and I and added Senator Booker. And so many of the provisions come from a draft that we introduced in 2023, and I thank you and Senator Cantwell for closing that gap that we've been unable to accomplish for a long time. And the longer this problem remains, the more damaging the circumstance is going to be to the things we're talking about today. I want to ask a couple of questions from these witnesses. One has to do with pooling rights under the agreement and that is the Sports Broadcasting Act has allowed professional leagues to pool their media revenues and collectively negotiate media deals with the intention of increasing access to viewing live sports. But since we, Congress, enacted that Act, streaming has fundamentally changed the media marketplace. In Kansas, in a professional sport, if we're trying to see the Chiefs game, if you want to follow every Chiefs game, you need reliable broadband, smart TV, streaming device, multiple subscriptions, and it's costly and confusing. I never know. I Google now, how do I watch a sports team play ball? And we have lots of places in our state that don't have broadband and access even if the game is there. The Protect College Sports Act of 2026 would adopt this broadcasting model if 75 percent of the current FBS schools opt to pooling their media rights. I appreciate that it's not mandatory, but I'm worried of the consequences of adopting this broadcast framework. What safeguards are in this legislation to prevent what I described as being the case that we have with the Chiefs, or what safeguards should be added? And I think I've phonetically spelled out your name, sir. Mr. Bevacqua. It's a tough last name. You know, I was encouraged in reading the bill that the provisions that related to the Sports Broadcasting Act were voluntary, and Senator Cruz made a point of reiterating that in his opening, that it's voluntary. I think intellectually I understand it. It makes sense. I go back to my former life at NBC Sports, and, you know, kind of combining my experience at NBC Sports with my experience at Notre Dame, I do think it could be difficult. That's why I like the fact that it's voluntary. My concern with that area of the bill is there are agreements in place, many long-term agreements, agreements the longest of which extends into the mid-2030s. So unless you interrupted the major media deals across the country, nothing could really be done roughly for a decade. Conferences, Notre Dame, or independent football, we would all have to negotiate agreements prior to that date in the mid-2030s. Putting on my media--former media executive hat, if I knew I was negotiating an agreement with a university, in our case, or a conference for a limited amount of time, I would refer to that as a stub deal, and I think the ultimate value of the deal would go down. So I fear that many conferences and universities might take a financial step backward before they could take a theoretical step forward in aggregating the media rights. So that's a concern. My second concern is if you want to truly maximize the media value around the largest sport in terms of eyeballs, which is college football, I do think the best way to do that is a Super League. And I don't--I certainly don't want a Super League. I'm not sure anybody necessarily wants a Super League. Flooding the market, aggregating the market, bringing it to an aggregate form to major media companies, I'm not sure that's going to drive the value some say it will. If you wanted to maximize media value around college football, I think you would take 24 to 30 teams, create unbelievably competitive scheduling where a team like Notre Dame would play Alabama, Georgia, Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, and start to get a number that more closely resembles an NFL number. I could be right, I could be wrong, but that's why I was encouraged that it's a voluntary application and that a lot more work could be done over the course of the next series of years to see if the value could prove itself out. Senator Moran. Let me see if I can summarize so I understand what you're saying. The way I would take what you said is that this is a few years out, so we have some time because there are contracts already in place to figure this out. It is voluntary, but there is still concern that the outcome of those voluntary decisions may not end up with the best result. That there's--that more needs to be done between now and the time you're then shopping for the television market. Mr. Bevacqua. Correct. Senator Moran. This topic has been raised. The subcommittee that I used to chair in this committee had responsibility for amateur sports. That's why we got engaged in NIL, and it also has authority over the U.S. Olympics. And I think there's a lot to be concerned about here, and you can assuage my concerns about what we do for--we've mentioned a couple of sports in which we talk about the Olympics, but there's a whole array of Olympic sports that I'm worried about training the next generation of Americans who compete on the global stage at the Olympics. I guess what priorities would you suggest beyond what's in this bill if I want to be a champion of the future of the U.S. Olympics and their athletes, what provision should I be worried about that's in the bill or that should be--I know, I think most of you are here as advocates for this bill, I understand that--but what else could be done that would protect what I'm concerned about? Mr. Bevacqua. I---- Senator Moran. That might be you, Ms. Gould. Mr. Bevacqua. I'm sorry. Senator Moran. That'd be fine. Mr. Bevacqua. No, I'll start and then Teresa, please. I don't--I don't necessarily, in my reading of the bill, think there are provisions in the current draft that are detrimental to the future of Olympic sports. I do think working together with all of you and leaders in the college space, we can add provisions that are more advantageous to securing the future of Olympic sports. Senator Moran. Anyone else? Ms. Gould. Yes, I might just answer it at a macro level because while women's sports and Olympic sports are not explicitly called out in every provision of this bill, what this bill provides is more certainty than we have today. So if you're a university president trying to make decisions about funding for an athletic department, if you're an athletic director, if you're a conference commissioner who's constantly getting reduced distributions because of litigation, this creates more certainty. And to me, more certainty allows the leaders in our industry to make the appropriate decisions to fund broad-based programs. Senator Moran. Ms. Gould, let me summarize what I think you said is there are problems today in colleges and universities being the training ground for Olympic athletes, but if we have more certainty, we may be able to do it better than what we're doing it today? Ms. Gould. Correct. Senator Moran. OK, thank you. The Chairman. Thank you. And I will say, Senator Moran's very helpful questioning on the questions you raised, the sports broadcasting provisions in this are, as Mr. Bevacqua emphasized, entirely voluntary and any school or conference can choose whether to participate or not. So it creates a new avenue. It's our hope that that will substantially grow the revenue that is available for all the programs. If it doesn't, they won't choose to do it. And nobody is being forced to do anything. And I will say on the question of streaming, I too am concerned about the fragmentation and how hard it is to watch games. One of the things Senator Cantwell and I did is we were deliberately neutral. We took the same language from the Sports Broadcasting Act about sponsored telecasts. So there is ongoing litigation with the NFL right now about the extent to which that covers streaming or not. And we're deliberately neutral on that. We did not want to piss off the NFL. We didn't want to engage in that at all. So we just said, look, whatever--by using the same language, whatever the standard is for the NFL will be the standard for college football as well. And that seemed to be the most prudent decision not to poke a hornet's nest. Senator Moran. But making the decision whether that's the right standard. The Chairman. Right, right. We're just--we're saying nothing about that. And finally, I will say on women's sports, another provision that is important in this is a requirement of parity for championship facilities and training facilities and gyms for men and women. And that's in the bill to require parity there. Senator Budd. Senator Cantwell. Can I just clarify one thing? There is a provision that says it has to be available locally. The Chairman. Yes, yes. Senator Cantwell. So it will be available locally in your community. Senator Moran. Is that different than the Professional Sports Act? The Chairman. Yes. Senator Cantwell. It's making the requirement so that we are seeing an advent of streaming media companies trying to put professional games behind a paywall. And that is frustrating a lot of people. The provision of the bill says that, even if you do that, that game has to be locally available to that community without being behind a paywall. The Chairman. Yes. Senator Moran. Senator Cantwell, I understand this is a provision you particularly were interested in being in the bill. And I look forward to making sure that I feel comfortable with you and---- Senator Cantwell. Thank you for your past leadership on this issue. It has been a long, long time. The Chairman. And I will likewise commend Senator Moran, has been a leader on this issue for a long, long time. You and I have spent a lot of time talking about this, and I'm grateful for your--you've been really integral bringing together the bipartisan coalition behind solving these problems. Senator Budd. Senator Budd. Yes, thank you, Chairman Cruz, and thank you, Ranking Member Cantwell, both for your efforts and dedication supporting both student athletes and programs alike. The bipartisan legislation we're here to discuss, it's a very thoughtful compromise, but it's incumbent on us and the members of this committee to reach an agreement that ensures that we don't have to come back to this committee room in a few years just to keep up with, I know, what's going to be an ever- changing landscape. In my home state of North Carolina our institutions of higher education help prepare many of our next generation, gives them tools and skills to keep our state the number one workforce. There's no doubt that college athletics, both directly and indirectly, play a role in attracting and keeping students enrolled in school and making North Carolina home after they graduate. But Mr. Gee, I know you're a West Virginian. I'm married to a West Virginian. Appreciate your service there to that great state. I will lament that she is a proud alum of the Thundering Herd, though. Mr. Gee. I call myself the Thundering Mountaineers when I'm being ecumenical. Senator Budd. And you're over toward Huntington, I understand. Mr. Gee. Right, yes. Senator Budd. President Gee, you mentioned that this legislation, it solves the financial crisis that a lot of universities are facing. And I know that institutions with athletic programs of all shapes and sizes, they're struggling to stay afloat. So how would an increase in revenue stabilize athletic departments and help academic institutions fulfill their educational mission in the face of a potential enrollment cliff? Mr. Gee. Yes, absolutely critical to the very issues that you've raised. First of all we know that most institutions in terms of athletics are already losing a lot of money, $5 billion overall, as I mentioned earlier. And so by increasing the pie, we provide an opportunity for people to at least have a chance to maintain their athletic program without--and I've heard this from everyone here, and we've heard it from a number of the questions--if we don't do this, it's going to start to really have a choice of we're either going to support athletics or we're going to have to close them down in order to be able to sustain the universities. I mean, it's that simple. You know, and on top of it, universities themselves are having tremendous challenges. We've got the enrollment cliff. We have students in your own state, about 10 percent fewer students actually opting out to go to college. So all of those issues mean that this Act really helps us to stabilize something that is so enormously important to our institutions, but at the same time it does not--does not deteriorate what is happening on the academic side of the--of the university. Senator Budd. Thank you, sir. You may have answered a piece of this, but we'll elaborate a little bit more. So with the bill's Title I antitrust protections that allow for the enforcement of transfer rules and third-party pay-for-play arrangements, would that be sufficient to stabilize the growing amount that schools feel they need to direct toward a roster of revenue sports in order to keep up? And would the introduction of enforceable rules create more stable revenue outlooks for this? Mr. Gee. Well, that's the whole purpose of the Act, absolutely, is to create stability. Now, let me just say something as university president--a former university president, I now have my First Amendment rights restored, by the way, which is kind of fun--but I think that universities also have to participate in this process. You can't simply grow the pie and then spend that money. You've got to make certain--and Teresa would agree with me--you've got to make certain that the universities themselves are making good choices so that the pie is not simply being eaten up by growing needs, rather there are solid and appropriate choices being made. Senator Budd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. Thank you. Senator Sullivan. STATEMENT OF HON. DAN SULLIVAN, U.S. SENATOR FROM ALASKA Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for this really important hearing from you and Senator Cantwell, appreciate the witnesses being here. I'm going to kind of change direction just a little bit and give you a specific issue that I'm not sure relates directly to the bill, but I just want your advice on and I want kind of to send the message to maybe others in college football and the NCAA who are watching this hearing. I have the honor of--I'm the Chairman of the Board of Visitors for the United States Naval Academy, and I get to see these young men and women who inspire me, who are going on to serve as officers in the Marines, in the United States Navy. You know, many Americans look at the current landscape of multimillion-dollar bidding wars and feel we are losing the very soul of amateur athletics. Yet the second week of December, every year, the American people get to watch the Army-Navy game, and it stands much more than just a--for an important football game in college football, it's a powerful reminder of what college sports were always meant to be: an area for character development, teamwork, leadership, where young people play for the love of the game and purpose far greater than themselves. The young men on those fields aren't looking for the highest bidder or checking the transfer portal, they are preparing to lead the American soldiers and Marines and sailors and maybe risk their lives for our great Nation when they graduate. I don't know, have any of you been to the Army-Navy game? Mr. Gee. I have. Senator Sullivan. OK. I think it's one of the most inspiring things in the country. And by the way, it's also an incredibly popular powerful recruiting tool to get young men and women who are watching on TV to join our military. For almost two decades, the NCAA agreed that this should be the only football game, college football game, the second week of December. That was the essentially gentleman's agreement with the Naval Academy and West Point. However, the money driving College football started to erode on that, and we started having games, and now there's even talk of playoffs to compete with the Army-Navy game. So two years ago, Mr. President, I'd like to--Mr. Chairman, I'd like to submit this for the record. The Chairman. Without objection, it'll be submitted. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Senator Sullivan. I led a letter to the head of the NCAA, the head of college football, saying, don't do that, that's bad for the country. I had dozens of senators and Congressmen sign this letter. They still weren't listening, so to the President's credit, he issued an executive order just a couple months ago saying, hey, hold off, NCAA, college football. Quit encroaching on this great game, America's game. You can't be that greedy and profit-driven. And by the way, this is the message now to the NCAA and college football. The President of the United States is now saying in an executive order, stop it. I was there at the signing of this executive order. So my question to all of you is just very importantly, from the vantage point as leaders in sports and education, how can the pure mission-driven model of our service academies serve as a north star as we write this legislation to restore fair competition? How can we use the inspiring example of the Army- Navy game and members of West Point and the Naval Academy to realign modern college sports with the classic American values of duty, loyalty, sportsmanship? People love watching college football in part because of these values, and we're losing them. And the one place that still has them is the service academies. And now even the NCAA is trying to encroach on that. I find it shameful. We're fighting back with the President, CEO, in this letter and probably legislation. I might have amendments to this legislation--really good legislation, by the way--that preserve the Army-Navy game. But any of you have views on this? And, you know, just again, more broadly, I think these players represent the truest definition of the student athlete. Mr. Bevacqua, I'm a big Irish fan, but no offense even to Notre Dame. I think this is the true student athletes right here at the service academies. They operate entirely outside the NIL. By the way, it's hard to get recruits. You got a great football player, wants to join the Naval Academy, maybe he wants to go somewhere else to get money. It's not always easy to recruit these guys now. So I'd love your thoughts on a national framework that can elevate this idea of student athletes, amateurism, that all Americans want. And that's why millions watch the Army-Navy game each year. And I certainly hope the NCAA or college football, if you're watching, stop it. Quit encroaching on the game. Mr. Bevacqua. Sure. I would say the student athletes who play all varsity sports, but you mentioned football at the Naval Academy, West Point, Air Force Academy, they're more than student athletes. I marvel at the fact of our student athletes can balance academics and athletics. I've had good friends who have played on those teams when I was growing up, and they have a whole nother level of what they need to do each and every day. It's---- Senator Sullivan. By the way, if you're an English major at West Point or Annapolis, you're not just an English major, you're an electrical engineer, you're a weapons system. These guys have--they all have to graduate with intense degrees in some of the nuclear engineering hardest classes. So you're right. Mr. Bevacqua. No, it's amazing. And Notre Dame has a special relationship with the Naval Academy, going back to a pledge that Father Hesburgh, our legendary president, made. Senator Sullivan. It's a great story. Mr. Bevacqua. Yes, coming out of, you know, during World War II you know, the Naval Academy did so much to keep Notre Dame healthy. And you know, we play the Naval Academy every single year. We'll be playing them in Boston this year on November 7th. Senator Sullivan. By the way, I guarantee you'll sell it out. Mr. Bevacqua. It'll be sold out. It's a game---- Senator Sullivan. I hope the Naval Academy wins, no offense to the Irish. Mr. Bevacqua. It's a special game, and you know, at the end of the game there's such a mutual respect. The Naval Academy comes, we go to their sideline first to listen to their alma mater, both teams. They then come to our sideline as we play our alma mater. So it's a game with--that we respect and admire, and I've been to several Army-Navy games, and wonderful, they're absolutely wonderful. When you talk about scheduling, I for one definitely think the window needs to be protected. But I think it's a bigger issue---- Senator Sullivan. For the Army-Navy game. Mr. Bevacqua.--for the Army-Navy game. But it's bigger than just college football. There's so much tension now in the media space and only so many available windows, particularly with the expansion of the CFP to 12 games and maybe to 24 games in the next few years. So I think it's a larger conversation than just college football. What are other major sports, what are professional sports doing that week? Because as the NFL--and I'm a huge fan of the NFL, and the NFL is a remarkable sports entity--but as they start playing more games on Saturdays as you go into December, the number of available windows and major media partners can offer is condensed. So I think that's---- Senator Sullivan. Just to make that--my warning and the President's executive order, it goes to the NFL too. Nobody should be encroaching on this game. That's my---- Mr. Bevacqua. I would love to see that window protected. Senator Sullivan. Good. Mr. Bevacqua. Whether the entire day can be protected, that's probably another question and another topic of conversation. Senator Sullivan. Thank you. Any other thoughts on this topic? Mr. Gee. I would just say Senator, I think that the Army- Navy game is America's game. Senator Sullivan. It is. Mr. Gee. And I think that we ought to preserve that. As Pete just said, the window ought to be preserved for that particular game no matter what. Senator Sullivan. Thank you. Mr. Gee. But I just admire what the academies do. I've spent a lot of time with the academies and just the opportunity to see what they do is something that inspires all of us. Senator Sullivan. Yes, it's often referred to as the only game in America where the players on the field are getting ready to commit their lives to the people in the stands watching it. It's pretty powerful. Any other thoughts on this? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Sullivan, and thank you for your commitment and dedication to the service academy and to the fighting the men and women of our military. It is inspirational. I want to thank each of the witnesses for being here today. I think this testimony was exceptionally helpful. And Mr. Holtzclaw, I want to--I want to say in particular, I just want to--I think your testimony is a powerful illustration of why college sports is so important. And a conversation Senator Cantwell and I both had just a minute ago. We looked at each other and said, you know, look, you're a college student. This is a pretty intimidating place to be. And I think your testimony was extraordinary. And it may be because you're used to enormous men crashing into you that you're not scared by much. But it really--you did an exceptional job and I appreciate your being here. I appreciate all the witnesses being here, but I appreciate your testimony. I will say, senators will have until the close of business on June 10 to submit questions for the record, and the witnesses will have until the close of business on June 24 to respond to those questions. And again, thank you to all the witnesses, thank you to the Senators and with that, that concludes today's hearing. [Whereupon, at 12:13 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] A P P E N D I X Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John Thune to Nick Saban Question 1. Please discuss the importance of the one-time transfer limit and its potential, if imposed, to enrich the student athlete experience, promote competition, and ensure that programs across divisions continue to thrive. Answer. I believe a reasonable one-time transfer rule is important to the long-term health of college athletics. Unlimited transfers create serious problems for the student-athlete in the following areas: Education--each time a student-athlete transfers they risk losing credits and falling behind in their path to obtaining a degree, which results in material reduction in their likelihood of graduating. Development--my entire program was built around developing student-athletes by teaching them the skills they needed to succeed in life such as commitment, discipline, effort, toughness and pride. If student-athletes fail to develop those skills during college because they can transfer repeatedly, the lack of development will impact them the rest of their lives. Connection--for those of us who have been part of a team, having the lifelong connection to your teammates, your university, and the fans is something that is irreplaceable. By jumping to multiple teams during a college career, those connections are severely diminished. For these reasons, I support giving student-athletes the ability to transfer one time without an eligibility penalty if it is done in accordance with contractual commitments. Such a rule strikes the right balance by giving student-athletes meaningful freedom, complying with valid contractual commitments, and creating stability. That stability will help student-athletes return to the high graduation rates we achieved before the transfer portal, develop through adversity rather than immediately looking for the next opportunity, and maintain a connection to their teammates, university, and fans. It will also help schools outside the largest conferences because they are less likely to become year-round feeder systems for programs with more resources. Question 2. Can you further explain the importance of codifying the House Settlement's revenue share cap, as well as positive effects this may have on mid-major Division I and Division II schools competing outside the major power conferences? Answer. Codifying the House settlement, which includes a clear revenue-share cap, is important because college athletics needs a stable and predictable financial structure. The current environment has created uncertainty for schools, student-athletes, coaches, conferences, and families. Because schools and student-athletes have been allowed to bypass the regulatory system created through the House settlement by relying on preferable state laws and friendly courts, the system has become an unchecked spending race, and that is not healthy for the long-term future of college sports. The House settlement allows schools to compensate student-athletes in a meaningful way while also maintaining some discipline in the system. That is important because athletic departments have many obligations. They support scholarships, women's sports, Olympic sports, academic services, medical care, facilities, travel, and many other opportunities for student-athletes. If all available resources are pushed into a bidding war for a small number of athletes in football and basketball, many other student-athletes and programs will be harmed. For mid-major Division I and Division II schools, a consistent regulatory system including an enforceable revenue-share cap can be especially important. Those schools generally do not have the same media revenue, donor base, or commercial resources as the largest programs. If there is no national standard, the financial gap between the largest programs and everyone else will continue to grow. That can make it harder for mid-major and Division II schools to retain athletes, build competitive programs, and continue providing broad- based athletic opportunities. College athletics is much like an iceberg. What most see above the surface are the high-profile bidding battles for football and basketball players. Beneath the surface is a larger foundation of college sports--women's sports, Olympic sports, scholarships, academic support, and opportunities for thousands of student athletes. Today that iceberg is quickly melting as resources are increasingly concentrated at the top. An enforceable revenue-share cap helps preserve the entire structure by preventing an unchecked spending from consuming resources that are needed to support the broader college athletics ecosystem that develops future leaders, graduates, and Olympians. ______ Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to Nick Saban Women's and Olympic Sports. Women's and Olympic collegiate sports generate tremendous value for this Nation. These sports are the bedrock for developing American excellence. Thousands of students have attended college to compete in women's and Olympic sports to emerge as our Nation's leaders and Olympic champions. However, given the ongoing financial pressures and incentives within college sports, women's and Olympic sports programs are being cut as schools prioritize football and basketball. Question 1. You have warned that this country will lose women's and Olympic college sports if all the money in college sports consolidates into basketball and football. I am concerned about the loss of academic opportunities and shattering our Olympic pipeline. Do you believe this bill will help protect women's and Olympic sports opportunities for future generations? Answer. Yes, I do. One of my biggest concerns is that if the current system continues unchecked, more resources will be concentrated in football and basketball at the expense of women's and Olympic sports. This bill helps address that issue by placing reasonable limitations on spending and establishing clear parameters for collectives and NIL activity. By bringing greater structure and accountability to the marketplace, the bill helps curb the escalating financial arms race in football and basketball. That, in turn, can allow more resources and donor support to flow back to athletic departments and can be invested across all sports programs, not just a select few. Women's and Olympic sports provide invaluable educational opportunities and serve as the foundation of our Nation's Olympic success. This bill helps create a more sustainable model that protects those opportunities for future generations of student-athletes while preserving the broad-based athletic programs that are essential to college sports. Athletes' Health and Safety Protections. The Protect College Sports Act establishes a Federal requirement that schools adhere to health and safety standards to protect athletes from brain injury, heat exertion, and other critical conditions. These standards must be overseen by a health and safety officer who is independent from the coaching staff. The Act also requires that medical professionals must be independent from the athletic department so that coaches cannot require an athlete to return to play before the athlete has recovered from an injury. For Division 1 athletes, schools are required to offer 5 years of post-eligibility medical coverage for sports-related injuries. The Act also requires the creation of a $60 million dollar trust to fund health care costs for athletes that are suffering from significant, long-term conditions, like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), that are incurred from playing sports. Question 1. In your experience as a coach, what are your thoughts on these Federal health and safety requirements? Answer. Athletes' access to specialized, high-quality care is essential. Medical professionals--physicians, athletic trainers, physical therapists, specialists--not only treat injuries & guide recovery but also play a critical role in injury prevention and helping athletes compete safely. In my experience as a head coach, our medical staff and medical professionals always made the determination as to whether an athlete was able to perform. Coaches, agents, or boosters should never be in a position to override medical decisions. The autonomy and independence of medical professionals must remain a top priority. I am hopeful that each Coach takes this approach to player safety. One concern is the growing challenge of attracting and retaining qualified sports medicine professionals. Rising legal and financial risks, including liability exposures tied to NIL policies, are making it more difficult to recruit experienced physicians and other medical personnel to serve college athletics programs. The erosion of this workforce is a serious concern as it threatens not only athletic performance-but overall development, educational opportunity and future potential. Most importantly, medical autonomy must be protected. The national conversation around college sports often highlights athletes, money, and media rights. However, the health professionals who work behind the scenes are among the most important people in any athletics program. Their expertise protects athletes not only during competition, but throughout their development as students and young adults. These professionals must have independent authority over medical evaluations, treatment plans, and return-to-play decisions. Student-athletes deserve access to high-quality care, and medical professionals must be insulated from outside pressures so they can make decisions based solely on the health and safety of the athlete. ______ Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Tammy Baldwin to Nick Saban 1. Media Markets Across the country, residents who live in border areas may be placed in out-of-state media markets. As a result, this can lead to these residents receiving out-of-state TV broadcasts. In Wisconsin alone, nearly 415,000 people live in 13 counties that have been assigned to an out-of-state market, in either Minnesota or Michigan. In total, Wisconsinites are spread out into seven media markets. The Protect College Sports Act would require that live college football and basketball games be broadcast for free for residents of the media market home to the participating institution and up to one additional media market if the institution and local media network opt- in. A) In your experience, would you say that fans of collegiate sports live within close proximity to the University or would you say fans reside across the state and beyond? Answer. College sports fans do not live only near campus. In my experience, the connection between a university and its fans extends across the entire state, throughout the region, and often across the country. That is especially true for institutions with long traditions, large alumni bases, and multi-generational fan support. B) How many institutions and local media networks would you anticipate opting-in to provide free broadcasting of sports games to a second media market? Answer. It is difficult for me to predict how many institutions or local media networks would opt in because those decisions would depend on existing media contracts, conference agreements, network relationships, local market economics, and the particular fan base involved. The key is to expand access in a way that does not unintentionally reduce the media value that supports athletic departments, including non-revenue sports, as well as the additional expenses imposed by this bill. C) How would requiring free broadcasting across the entirety of an institution's home state benefit residents and sports teams? Answer. Broader in-state access would benefit fans by allowing more residents to follow teams that are important to their communities and state identity. It would also benefit teams and institutions by strengthening fan engagement. At the same time, any requirement needs to be designed carefully. College athletics relies heavily on media- rights revenue to support not just football and basketball, but also women's sports, Olympic sports, scholarships, facilities, medical care, and other student-athlete benefits. The goal should be to improve access for fans without undermining the revenue streams that make broad-based college athletics possible. 2. Sports Agents In recent years, reports of individuals who are not certified sports agents or attorneys, often called ``street agents,'' taking advantage of student athletes have notably increased. Do you believe that the Protect College Sports Act provides adequate protection for student athletes from street agents? Answer. Yes. The Protect College Sports Act provides important protections for student-athletes by requiring agents to be certified and by placing reasonable limits on the fees they can charge. These provisions help ensure that athletes are working with qualified representatives and reduce the risk of exploitation. In addition, the legislation includes measures designed to curb tampering and protect both student-athletes and institutions from improper recruiting and inducement practices. ______ Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to Pete Bevacqua Women's and Olympic Sports. Women's and Olympic collegiate sports generate tremendous value for this Nation. These sports are the bedrock for developing American excellence. Thousands of students have attended college to compete in women's and Olympic sports to emerge as our Nation's leaders and Olympic champions. However, given the ongoing financial pressures and incentives within college sports, many women's and Olympic sports face being cut as schools prioritize football and basketball. Question 1. In your testimony you stated that the Olympic movement will ``take a major step backwards'' if there are no requirements to invest in Olympic sports and that the bill could a better job at protecting Olympic sports. Why you think the bill could better protect Olympic sports while balancing financial pressures for schools? Answer. A part of my testimony pointed at the potential of creating a ``luxury tax'' of sorts that for every dollar over a raised cap, a percentage of what is spent must be spent on women's sports and/or Olympic sports at your university. This works if we collectively pass common sense legislation that removes the funneling of money to prospective and current student-athletes through collectives and multimedia rights partners with zero valid business purpose. Additionally, it would allow better transparency across the industry as most of the money going to student-athletes would be coming directly from the University. Athletes and Agent Protections: The Protect College Sports Act requires agents to register with a state or professional league and certify with the NCAA before they can represent an athlete. The Act also caps agent fees at 5 percent and prohibits agents from misrepresenting NIL delas to induce an athlete to enroll or transfer. Question 1. In your testimony you raised concern about high schoolers being taken advantage of when navigating commission contracts with agents. You advocated for a registration database for agents and a cap on agent commission. Do you believe that college athletes would benefit from the agent protections provided in the Protect College Sports Act? Answer. Amending SPARTA is helpful in protecting both prospective and current student-athletes. ______ Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Tammy Baldwin to Pete Bevacqua 1. Media Markets Across the country, residents who live in border areas may be placed in out-of-state media markets. As a result, this can lead to these residents receiving out-of-state TV broadcasts. In Wisconsin alone, nearly 415,000 people live in 13 counties that have been assigned to an out-of-state market, in either Minnesota or Michigan. In total, Wisconsinites are spread out into seven media markets. The Protect College Sports Act would require that live college football and basketball games be broadcast for free for residents of the media market home to the participating institution and up to one additional media market if the institution and local media network opt- in. A) In your experience, would you say that fans of collegiate sports live within close proximity to the University or would you say fans reside across the state and beyond? Answer. At Notre Dame, we have a broad national/international fanbase. Our largest markets each Saturday, where all of our home games this year will be broadcast nationally on NBC, are Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Tampa/Fort Myers, etc. B) How many institutions and local media networks would you anticipate opting-in to provide free broadcasting of sports games to a second media market? Answer. I can't say for certain as each individual school has their own set of needs. C) How would requiring free broadcasting across the entirety of an institution's home state benefit residents and sports teams? Answer. Doing this could have both pros and cons to the state and the institution--If you provide free broadcasting across the entirety of the home state, it provides a local benefit of being able to tune in no matter what organization owns the broadcast rights. However, this also complicates media deals and would most likely lower the value of most. If the majority of a certain schools fans are in their state, there is far less upside for the broadcaster and therefore less competition for that particular school's media rights as a majority of their viewers must be provided the broadcast free of charge. 2. Sports Agents In recent years, reports of individuals who are not certified sports agents or attorneys, often called ``street agents,'' taking advantage of student athletes have notably increased. Do you believe that the Protect College Sports Act provides adequate protection for student athletes from street agents? Answer. Amending SPARTA is helpful in protecting both prospective and current student-athletes. 3. Women and Olympic Sports Mr. Bevacqua, in your testimony, you noted the need for continued growth for women's and Olympic sports. A) Do you believe the Protect College Sports Act provides adequate protection for women's and Olympic sports? If not, what would you recommend be changed in order to better protect these sports? Answer. I believe it is a great step in protecting these sports-- although the burden it puts on schools over $50M-$80M may be too steep. Personally, I would put the number at $100M in revenue to mandate the protection of women's and Olympic sports due to the overall costs associated with supporting student-athletes and running programs at a high level. Additionally, as I wrote above, a part of my testimony pointed at the potential of creating a ``luxury tax'' of sorts that for every dollar over a raised cap, a percentage of what is spent must be spent on women's sports and/or Olympic sports at your university. This works if we collectively pass common sense legislation that removes the funneling of money to prospective and current student-athletes through collectives and multimedia rights partners with zero valid business purpose. Additionally, it would allow better transparency across the industry as most of the money going to student-athletes would be coming directly from the University. B) Are there any consequences to limiting the required protections for women's and Olympic sports to only institutions that opt-in to the collective media rights revenue? Answer. Protections for women's and Olympic sports shouldn't be something you ``opt in'' for--it should be a requirement. C) What would be the consequences to current media rights deals that require broadcasting of women's sports under a new government entity that is focused on men's football broadcasting? Answer. The current value of women's and Olympic sports in college sports is dwarfed by football due to the viewership and ratings that each bring in. I believe there will still be engagement by media companies to broadcast a variety of sports on multiple platforms. ______ Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to Gordon Gee Athlete NIL Rights: Sports Broadcasting Act: College athletics are in a financial arms race, and so much of what we care about--competitive sports, regionalism, women's and Olympic sports--are being left behind. I released a report last year that showed that the schools in the Power Four received about $43 million more in revenue from conference TV rights than the Group of Five mid-major conferences--compared to a gap of just $6 million in 2002. That growing gap has led to real-world consequences. Disputes over media rights led to the Pac-12 losing 10 of its members and blew a hole in the budgets of the remaining schools. WSU had to pull $20 million out of its endowment to keep its athletic program afloat. And since May 2023, at least 41 Division I Olympic sports programs have been cut, affecting at least 1,000 athletes. The Protecting College Sports Act of 2026 takes a multipronged approach to stemming this arms race. We've talked a lot about reducing pressure on the spending side. But we also need to be creative about bringing more money into the system. The NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL benefit from pooling their media rights, which is allowed by the Sports Broadcasting Act--but college sports cannot do so under current law. Even though college football has far higher viewership than NBA and any sport other than the NFL, it brings in only about half as much in media rights as the NBA. That's why Senator Cruz and I created a structure that would amend the Sports Broadcasting Act to allow college sports to pool their media rights and earmark some of the increased revenue to raise all boats and to support women's and Olympic sports. Question 1. Mr. Gee, you've led several universities in your career, including members of the SEC, Big Ten, and Ivy League. Do you think this structure would benefit all schools? Answer. This structure will benefit all schools and all programs within those schools. College sports deserve the same protections as professional sports to consolidate media rights for marketing and sale. Doing so will allow all schools and programs to generate more revenue. This helps everyone, from the upper levels of the Power 4 to small-to mid-sized Division I schools. More money means more stability and more opportunity. Question 2. One of the harms of the college sports arms race is that women's and Olympic sports are facing cuts. We've lost more than 107 Women's and Olympic sports programs since 2023. Would pooling media rights and requiring schools that benefit to preserve women's and Olympic sports help stem these cuts? Answer. Yes. The result of pooling media rights will be more money for the institutions that opt-in. By requiring that schools maintain a certain number of opportunities with that money, the legislation goes a long way in addressing the threats to Olympic and women's sports. Importantly, this is not an unfunded mandate; it is a requirement that schools earmark a certain amount of their additional revenue to support the Olympic and women's programs that are so central to the student-athlete experience. Coaching Salaries: Coaching salaries have increased a reported 370.4 percent from 2005 to 2024. The combined cost of coach buyouts in 2025 was reported to be around $228 million dollars, hitting a new buyout record by almost $100 million dollars. Question 1. In your testimony you stated that schools have agreed to ``outrageous salary contracts.'' Given the soaring cost of coaching salaries and buyouts, do you support salary caps or restrictions on buyouts for coaches? Answer. I would support tying coaching salaries to a certain multiplier of faculty salaries, as adjusted by inflation, as a way of effectively capping costs. Buyouts are challenging to limit, as most are paid for by donation money rather than institutional or public funds. As I noted in my own testimony, university leaders are not blameless here. We agreed to massive contracts in hopes of producing winning teams and championships that would benefit our schools. That has spiraled out of control. A reasonable approach would be to tie coaching payments to faculty payments moving forward. ______ Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Tammy Baldwin to Gordon Gee 1. Media Markets Across the country, residents who live in border areas may be placed in out-of-state media markets. As a result, this can lead to these residents receiving out-of-state TV broadcasts. In Wisconsin alone, nearly 415,000 people live in 13 counties that have been assigned to an out-of-state market, in either Minnesota or Michigan. In total, Wisconsinites are spread out into seven media markets. The Protect College Sports Act would require that live college football and basketball games be broadcast for free for residents of the media market home to the participating institution and up to one additional media market if the institution and local media network opt- in. A) In your experience, would you say that fans of collegiate sports live within close proximity to the University or would you say fans reside across the state and beyond? Answer. Fans live across the state (and often, far beyond, as a matter of fact). Schools often have fans that live beyond the immediate market area. B) How many institutions and local media networks would you anticipate opting-in to provide free broadcasting of sports games to a second media market? Answer. Many of them. This is a way to expand the base and generate support for athletic programs and the university. This is another lifeline for institutions that need to generate additional athletic revenues. C) How would requiring free broadcasting across the entirety of an institution's home state benefit residents and sports teams? Answer. Fans would be benefited by obtaining more efficient access to games. Institutions get access to a whole new base of support. As I've said, I have not yet been able to convince 100,000 people to attend a chemistry lecture. Sports are an open door through which millions of college sports fans walk through each year. By expanding access beyond a small home market, we would be in a position to create and promote truly state-wide fan bases that will help develop revenue and support for our student-athletes and institutions. 2. Sports Agents In recent years, reports of individuals who are not certified sports agents or attorneys, often called ``street agents,'' taking advantage of student athletes have notably increased. Do you believe that the Protect College Sports Act provides adequate protection for student athletes from street agents? Answer. I do. For too long agents have taken advantage of student- athletes who often lack the sophistication to understand or negotiate complex deals. The legislation creates clear rules, sets a stable fee cap, and requires agent registration. It remains to be seen how the industry responds to such actions, and certainly more congressional action may be required as the market adapts. But the Protect College Sports Act goes a long way in reigning in the kind of abuse that has characterized the early NIL era in college sports. ______ Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John Thune to Teresa Gould Question 1. Why is it vital that Congress works to protect the future of Olympic and women's sports, especially regarding hurdles such as rising costs? Answer. Without Federal oversight to ensure our universities continue prioritizing Olympic and women's sports, unchecked spending on football and men's basketball will systematically weaken the U.S. Olympic sports model. The value lost in this financial arms race significantly outweighs the revenue these sports produce. What is at stake is a uniquely American institution: tens of thousands of yearly athletic opportunities for our youth, and the global prowess and national pride delivered by Team USA. Today, financial pressures continue to accelerate as athletic department debts grow. Olympic and women's sports face disproportionate risks as institutions scramble to manage escalating costs. Simultaneously, the widening structural and financial advantages afforded to select conferences and institutions further disadvantage institutions across the country that remain deeply committed to broad- based sports programs, as well as to investing to compete and win at the highest levels in football and men's basketball. For the Pac-12 Conference, advancing and protecting Olympic and women's sports remains a foundational priority, historically setting the standard for investing in the student-athlete experience. For over a century, the Pac-12 has led collegiate athletics, with our student- athletes winning more NCAA team championships than any other conference and collectively earning more Olympic medals than all but a handful of countries. Furthermore, our commitment to equity and visibility has been unmatched, including through the Pac-12 Networks--a media company we owned and operated for over a decade where more than half of all game broadcasts featured women's sports. This is an achievement no other network has approached, reflecting our enduring belief that all student-athletes deserve a platform to compete and be celebrated. We are encouraged that the Protect College Sports Act decouples the protection of roster spots and scholarships from the triggering of the Sports Broadcasting Act (SBA) provision. However, we must balance this critical baseline requirement with institutional flexibility should these mandates prove financially untenable for certain universities in the future. We also support the Act's establishment of a framework that preserves important optionality for pooled media rights. This mechanism has the potential to generate crucial alternative and additional revenue streams to support Olympic and women's sports, providing conferences and institutions eager to invest with an equitable and genuine opportunity to compete at the highest levels, and maintain broad-based athletic programs. Because the most significant challenges facing college sports cannot be resolved in a single moment, the Act's Commission on the Future of College Athletics provides a thoughtful, critical framework for structural reform. We must utilize this commission for sustained analysis and stakeholder engagement to build a broad consensus. Ultimately, this framework should secure long-term protections for Olympic and women's sports by proposing innovative approaches to conference alignment and scheduling--such as the regionalization of Olympic sports--to reduce travel burdens, protect student-athlete health, and preserve competitive opportunities. ______ Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to Teresa Gould Question 1. Women's and Olympic Sports. Women's and Olympic collegiate sports generate tremendous value for this Nation. These sports are the bedrock for developing American excellence. Thousands of students have attended college to compete in women's and Olympic sports to emerge as our Nation's leaders and Olympic champions. However, given the ongoing financial pressures and incentives within college sports, many women's and Olympic sports face being cut as schools prioritize football and basketball. At the hearing you testified that the Protect College Sports Act provides certainty that can support the decisions of athletic directors and conference commissioners to fund ``broad-based programs.'' How do you think that the Act, as a whole, will help protect women's and Olympic sports? Answer. By establishing the Commission on the Future of College Athletics, preserving important optionality for pooled media rights, and directly protecting roster spots and scholarships, the Protect College Sports Act takes a multipronged approach to stemming a financial arms race that threatens to devalue and weaken Olympic and women's sports. Without a Federal framework to ensure our universities continue prioritizing Olympic and women's sports, unchecked spending on football and men's basketball will systemically weaken the U.S. Olympic pipeline and our unique, American institution of collegiate athletics. In particular, the Act addresses this holistic crisis by targeting several distinct pressure points: Financial Relief through Pooled Media Rights. The Pac-12 strongly supports the Act's framework for preserving optionality of pooled media rights. This mechanism has the potential to generate crucial alternative and additional revenue streams to support Olympic and women's sports, providing conferences and institutions eager to invest with a genuine opportunity to compete at the highest levels. Baseline Structural Protections. The Pac-12 is encouraged that the Act decouples the protection of roster spots and scholarships from the triggering of the Sports Broadcasting Act (SBA) provision. This provides athletic directors and college sports leaders with a stable baseline, though we must balance this requirement with institutional flexibility should these mandates prove financially untenable for certain universities in the future. Protection from Litigation. Inconsistent state laws and a seemingly endless cycle of litigation have created a fragmented and uncertain regulatory environment and resulted in the industry spending hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees. By providing relief from certain future legal challenges, money previously used on legal fees can be used for other purposes, including investing in Olympic and women's sports. Long-Term Strategic Reform. Because the most significant challenges facing college sports cannot be resolved in a single moment, the Act's Commission on the Future of College Athletics provides a thoughtful, crucial framework for structural reform. We must utilize this commission for sustained analysis and stakeholder engagement to build a broad consensus. Ultimately, this framework should secure long-term protections for Olympic and women's sports by proposing innovative approaches to conference alignment and scheduling--such as the regionalization of Olympic sports--to reduce travel burdens, protect student-athlete health, and preserve competitive opportunities. For the Pac-12 Conference, advancing and protecting these programs remains a foundational priority. For over a century, our student- athletes have won more NCAA team championships than any other conference and collectively earned more Olympic medals than all but a handful of countries. The financial pressures facing athletic departments are real, and debt is growing. But the value lost in a race to the bottom significantly outweighs the revenue football and basketball produce. What is at stake is a uniquely American institution: tens of thousands of yearly athletic opportunities for our youth, and the global prowess and national pride delivered by Team USA. Question 2. College athletics are in a financial arms race, and so much of what we care about--competitive sports, regionalism, women's and Olympic sports--are being left behind. I released a report last year that showed that the schools in the Power Four received about $43 million more in revenue from conference TV rights than the Group of Five mid-major conferences--compared to a gap of just $6 million in 2002. That growing gap has led to real-world consequences. Since May 2023, at least 41 Division I Olympic sports programs have been cut, affecting at least 1,000 athletes. The Protecting College Sports Act of 2026 takes a multipronged approach to stemming this arms race. We've talked a lot about reducing pressure on the spending side. But we also need to be creative about bringing more money into the system. The NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL benefit from pooling their media rights, which is allowed by the Sports Broadcasting Act--but college sports cannot do so under current law. Even though college football has far higher viewership than NBA and any sport other than the NFL, it brings in only about half as much in media rights as the NBA. That's why Senator Cruz and I created a structure that would amend the Sports Broadcasting Act to allow college sports to pool their media rights and earmark some of the increased revenue to raise all boats and to support women's and Olympic sports. Ms. Gould, would your conference and its member institutions benefit from pooling media rights? Answer. Yes. The Pac-12 Conference strongly supports the Act's amendment of the Sports Broadcasting Act to establish a framework that preserves vital optionality for pooled media rights. Your report, Senator Cantwell, highlights a trend that is of tremendous concern to our membership: a widening revenue gap that threatens to create massive, irreversible competitive separation in the revenue-sharing era. If professional sports leagues utilize pooled media rights to maximize their market position, it would be irresponsible for college athletics not to at least explore and consider the same structural advantages. College football ranks second only to the NFL in television viewership. It is a premium media product and its revenue capabilities should reflect that reality. When conferences compete purely against one another in a fractured market, it fails to optimize value for anyone and prevents our industry from strategically scheduling events to maximize the value of key television widows. This provision is a forward-thinking mechanism to grow the overall pie for the benefit of all student-athletes, particularly those in Olympic and women's sports. Crucially, the Act's approach works because it prioritizes two key principles: True Institutional Optionality. Preserving optionality is the appropriate path. It should ultimately be up to conference leaders to determine whether pooling rights is an advantageous business strategy for their unique membership. This framework empowers each league to decide its own course. Value-Driven Growth, Not a Subsidy. We respect and understand that not all conferences and institutions garner the same media value, and the Act accounts for that. This is not about higher-value conferences subsidizing others. Rather, it is about giving conferences and institutions a genuine opportunity to evaluate if there is a better way to do business, increase collective value, and secure new, alternative revenue streams to protect broad-based sports programs. By allowing college sports to modernize its media architecture, this legislation provides conferences eager to invest with an equitable and genuine opportunity to compete at the highest level while safeguarding the future of Olympic and women's sports. Question 3. Coaching Salaries. Since the Grant House settlement was finalized, the conversation about spending in college sports has focused on revenue sharing for athletes. There has been less discussion about runaway spending on coaches' salaries, which have increased a reported 370.4 percent from 2005 to 2024. The combined cost of coach buyouts in 2025 was reported to be around $228 million dollars, hitting a new buyout record by almost $100 million dollars. Given the soaring cost of coaching salaries and buyouts, would you support salary caps or restrictions on buyouts for coaches? Answer. We certainly recognize that coach compensation and buyout structures are critical topics that must be addressed as we navigate the new landscape of college athletics. Historically, and preceding the House settlement that introduced direct revenue-sharing with student- athletes, there has been a significant financial imbalance between head coach compensation and direct economic value to student-athletes. We also recognize that any recommendations or structural changes related to the topic of coach compensation or buyout structures require careful consideration, including economic, contractual, and legal navigation. For this reason and others, we believe this topic is best suited for the Commission on the Future of College Athletics as established by this Act. The Commission provides the appropriate framework to analyze these spending pressures more thoroughly and responsibly, ensuring any proposed changes do not result in unintended consequences. Furthermore, as a membership organization, any formal position on this issue from the Pac-12 Conference or myself as its commissioner requires thorough, collective discussion among our universities. The Pac-12 is currently undergoing a historic transition as we launch our next era for the 2026-27 season with seven new members. We look forward to engaging in these important internal discussions with our full membership, while also supporting the Commission's efforts. ______ Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Tammy Baldwin to Teresa Gould Question 4. Media Markets Across the country, residents who live in border areas may be placed in out-of-state media markets. As a result, this can lead to these residents receiving out-of-state TV broadcasts. In Wisconsin alone, nearly 415,000 people live in 13 counties that have been assigned to an out-of-state market, in either Minnesota or Michigan. In total, Wisconsinites are spread out into seven media markets. The Protect College Sports Act would require that live college football and basketball games be broadcast for free for residents of the media market home to the participating institution and up to one additional media market if the institution and local media network opt- in. In your experience, would you say that fans of collegiate sports live within close proximity to the University or would you say fans reside across the state and beyond? Answer. In our experience, while local communities form the foundational heart of any university's fanbase, a premier institution's community routinely stretches across the entire state and the Nation. We agree that fan access is a critical issue, and we are pleased to see it addressed in this Act. For the next era of the Pac-12 Conference, we have made it a core pillar of our media strategy to focus on partnerships that maximize brand elevation and fan engagement for our universities. As a direct result of this strategy, we have secured agreements that ensure 100 percent of our home football games-- the inventory over which we control broadcast rights--will be available via national linear television across the country, as well as the vast majority of our men's basketball home games. While we recognize that comprehensive national linear distribution may not be achievable or viable for every conference or institution, we agree that protecting local community access to these broadcasts is important. Question 5. How many institutions and local media networks would you anticipate opting-in to provide free broadcasting of sports games to a second media market? Answer. Given that the media landscape is undergoing rapid, unprecedented shifts, the scale of this opt-in would depend on the unique geographic footprint, regional viewer demand, and existing contractual obligations of each individual institution and local affiliate(s). For this reason, rather than speculating on an initial scale of opt-in, we believe it would be most responsible to work collaboratively with national and local media networks to properly assess what an optimal and sustainable opt-in framework would look like. Question 6. How would requiring free broadcasting across the entirety of an institution's home state benefit residents and sports teams? Answer. College athletics serves as the primary ``front porch'' for a university, and maximizing free statewide broadcasting would certainly offer impactful benefits. For residents, it would democratize access to their state's flagship institutions, fostering community identity and inspiring the next generation of student-athletes. For individual programs, it would drive brand elevation opportunities, expand fanbases, and deepen statewide engagement, which are factors that directly feed into university-wide enrollment and support. At the same time, we must recognize the complex economic realities of modern sports distribution. Media rights revenue is one of the largest drivers of an athletic department's budget, directly funding student-athlete scholarships, medical care, and academic support services across all sports. We would hope any structural changes would be responsibly and thoroughly evaluated so as to not inadvertently devalue these rights or cause adverse financial shortfalls that would ultimately harm the very student-athletes we are trying to promote and protect. Because it is incredibly difficult to decouple the societal value of free public access from the critical financial dependence on media revenue, we believe structural changes to local broadcast provisions must be handled with extreme care. Question 7. Sports Agents. In recent years, reports of individuals who are not certified sports agents or attorneys, often called ``street agents,'' taking advantage of student athletes have notably increased. Do you believe that the Protect College Sports Act provides adequate protection for student athletes from street agents? Answer. Yes, we believe the Protect College Sports Act introduces a much-needed, transparent structure that provides substantial and overdue protections for student-athletes against predatory individuals or entities. The Pac-12 Conference strongly supports the Act's enhanced safeguards, including the implementation of a mandatory agent certification process and the five-percent cap on agency fees. We frequently hear from our member institutions about student-athletes being taken advantage of by uncertified individuals--both in terms of exorbitant, unregulated commissions and poor advice that can jeopardize a student-athlete's long-term prospects, and create legal risk. Unscrupulous actors often entice student-athletes into the transfer portal with promises of impactful third-party NIL deals that simply do not exist. National transfer portal data reveals a sobering reality: nearly half of all student-athletes who enter the portal never find a new institutional home. This statistic underscores the profound danger of an unregulated marketplace and highlights why we must build a collegiate athletics model that prioritizes stability, academic progress, and long-term student-athlete support over short-term exploitation. The framework established by this Act is a massive improvement over the status quo. While the Pac-12 and our membership do not have additional specific recommendations to propose at this time, we remain open to collaborating on further safeguards. As our conference undergoes a historic transition to launch our next era for the 2026-27 season with seven new members, protecting our student-athletes from exploitative bad actors remains a foundational priority, and we commend the committee for addressing this issue. ______ Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to Lance Holtzclaw Athletes' NIL Protections. The Protect College Sports Act grants student athletes a new Federal right to earn compensation for their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). This Federal right would create a strong national NIL standard for all athletes, replacing the patchwork of state NIL laws. The Act requires that NIL contracts must include terms such as what is required of the athlete and how much the athlete will be paid. Question 1. As a student athlete, do you think all student athletes in this country should be granted a strong Federal right to earn NIL compensation? Answer. Yes, every student-athlete in this country should be provided protections and a Federal right to earn NIL compensation. Question 2. During your time as an athlete, you have competed at a Power Four school both before and after revenue sharing was implemented into college sports. Given your experience, what do you think can be done to provide athletes with the tools and resources to successfully navigate this new NIL and revenue share landscape? Answer. I believe it should be mandatory education surrounding NIL and revenue share, specifically surrounding financial literacy, taxes, agents/representation and establishing LLCs. If an institution wants to enhance with further tools that would also be a benefit to the student- athlete. Athletes and Education: The Protect College Sports Act creates an Office of Athlete Ombudsman at each athletic commission to provide free and independent guidance and advice to student athletes, including about the whether to engage legal counsel. The Ombudsman would also help athletes resolve disputes with schools and conferences and provide athletes with access to resources to educate athletes on their rights and protections. Question 1. In your testimony, you emphasized the importance of educating student athletes about their rights and available resources. Do you think that an office established to provide independent guidance and resources to student athletes would help student athletes navigate the college ecosystem and better understand their rights and protections under this Act? Answer. Yes, because there could be a conflict of interest and confidentiality of working with individuals at the institution on some of the aspects associated to our rights and protections. Athlete Transfer and Eligibility Requirements. The Protect College Sports Act sets clear standards for athlete transfers and eligibility. The transfer standard ensures that all athletes can transfer once without sitting out and can transfer again without sitting out if their sport is eliminated, their head coach leaves, if they have been sexually assaulted or harassed, or if they have completed their undergraduate degree and are transferring for a graduate degree. Question 1. Given your experience with coach transitions, do you believe it's important that athletes have the ability to transfer ifthere is a change in coaches? Answer. Yes, and it should only be applicable to head coaching changes. That effects culture and leadership of a program. Athletes and Agent Protections: The Protect College Sports Act requires agents to register with a state or professional league and certify with the NCAA before they can represent an athlete. The Act also caps agent fees at 5 percent and prohibits agents from misrepresenting NIL deals to induce an athlete to enroll or transfer. Question 1. In your opinion, would requiring agent registration, capping agent fees, and prohibiting misrepresentation of deals help protect student athletes? Answer. Yes, requiring agent registration will help keep legitimate agents and agencies active in a professional space. Capping agent fees will help student-athletes not be taken advantage of and provided their fair representation fee. Lastly it would help student-athletes with current and future status of their contracts. Athletes' Health and Safety and Scholarship Protections. The Protect College Sports Act establishes the first-ever Federal requirement that schools must adhere to health and safety standards to protect athletes from brain injury, heat exertion, and other critical conditions. These standards must be overseen by a health and safety officer who is independent from the coaching staff. The Act also requires that medical professionals must be independent from the athletic department so that coaches cannot require an athlete to return to play before the athlete has recovered from an injury. The Act also guarantees all athletes that they cannot lose their scholarships because of an injury or because of a bad game. Question 1. Based on your experience, do you think these protections will help student athletes? Answer. Yes, this would a strong protection for the student- athlete. Further, I believe it is a strong protection for a student- athlete not to lose their scholarship for an injury or a bad game. Performance in a game should not have an effect on an individual's scholarship. Further, game performance should not have an effect on the medical treatment a student-athlete receives. ______ Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Tammy Baldwin to Lance Holtzclaw 1. Media Markets Across the country, residents who live in border areas may be placed in out-of-state media markets. As a result, this can lead to these residents receiving out-of-state TV broadcasts. In Wisconsin alone, nearly 415,000 people live in 13 counties that have been assigned to an out-of-state market, in either Minnesota or Michigan. In total, Wisconsinites are spread out into seven media markets. The Protect College Sports Act would require that live college football and basketball games be broadcast for free for residents of the media market home to the participating institution and up to one additional media market if the institution and local media network opt- in. A) In your experiences as coaches, athletic directors, commissioners, and players, would you say that fans of collegiate sports live within close proximity to the University or would you say fans reside across the state and beyond? Answer. As a student-athlete, my belief is our college fan base spreads from across the state and beyond. B) How would requiring free broadcasting across the entirety of an institution's home state benefit residents and sports teams? Answer. I believe this gives all fans access to watch their state university no matter their means. It maximizes the amount of viewership for your team and your state institution and representative sports team should be open to any individual within the state to view and support. 2. Sports Agents In recent years, reports of individuals who are not certified sports agents or attorneys, often called ``street agents,'' taking advantage of student athletes have notably increased. Do you believe that the Protect College Sports Act provides adequate protection for student athletes from street agents? Answer. Yes because of the implementation of the agent registration and the agent fee cap that is built within the legislation. [all]