alt=Dennis RomboySALT LAKE CITY — Members of a Senate working group agree that Congress should set national guidelines for how college athletes may be compensated.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., sat down with NCAA President Mark Emmert in the group’s first meeting Tuesday in Washington. Romney said they invited Emmert to share his “preliminary perspectives” on the issue and to learn about the process he’ll need to undertake for the NCAA to consider some of the changes it might recommend.
“This is the right first meeting to have. But, of course, there are lots of other voices that need to be heard: first and foremost, student athlete voices,” said Murphy, a vocal critic of the current structure of college sports.
The senators and Emmert agree that there should be one federal standard rather than disparate state laws for student-athlete compensation and related issues.
“Having in the end 50 different state laws is a challenge to anything that’s trying to be operated at a national level around the country,” Emmert told reporters after the meeting, adding he welcomes congressional involvement.
Last week, Emmert told a sports forum last week that it’s “highly probable” Congress will set guidelines for how college athletes can be compensated for the use of their names, images and likenesses.
California’s Fair Pay for Play legislation sparked similar proposals in at least 20 other states, though not in Utah. In October, the NCAA board of governors voted to allow student-athletes to be paid for the use of their name, image and likeness once its three divisions decide on rules for such opportunities.
“I think it’s very hard to have colleges competing across state lines and each state has different rules about how the athletes are able to participate financially in the sport,” Romney said.
There are questions about whether coaches and athletic directors would be able to offer endorsement deals to players as part of recruiting and how that would impact competition between schools, Romney said. Top athletes are not the only ones who should benefit, he said, but those in less prominent sports or who play less visible positions in popular sports should as well.
“If you’re the left tackle at a Division I school that may not be the most prominent school in the country, you’re probably not going to see a lot that’s going to come from name, image and likeness,” he said.
Emmert agreed that any changes should not “blow up” the recruitment process and that college sports shouldn’t become a pay-for-play model for schools that can offer the largest endorsement deals.
The NCAA board, he said, wants to make sure college sports remains about students playing other students, not hired employees playing other hired employees.
Murphy said a working group is trying to find a way forward that he thinks most Americans desire, which is to have “more of the bounty coming out of college athletics accrue to the benefit of the kids who are showing up every day, working hard, and putting on a pretty good show for an increasing fan base all around the country,” Murphy said.
He said he wants to work with the NCAA and student-athletes to find a federal solution to compensate athletes more broadly and fairly than relying on name, likeness and image and simply making money from endorsements.
“I’m very open to a number of different ways to get there, and I’d rather do that in concert with the NCAA than without them,” Murphy said.
He said he also wants to keep the conversation about the issue in the Senate bipartisan.
“I think there’s not a lot of ideological division over some of the questions about what the future of college athletes’ rights should be,” he said.
On Monday, Murphy released the third and final report in a series looking at problems in college athletics, this one focused on health care. Athletes’ health is not well served, particularly in football, he said.