U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville said he will oppose the Protect College Sports Act backed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and advocate for his own NIL bill on the Senate floor next week, arguing the bipartisan legislation goes too far into the weeds of college athletics.
Cruz and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) introduced the bill last week. Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban testified in support of it Wednesday before the Senate Commerce Committee, calling the current NIL landscape “a race to the bottom.”
Tuberville (R-Auburn) was unpersuaded in an interview this week on WVNN’s “The Dale Jackson Show.”
“It’s not a good bill. I won’t vote for it the way it is,” Tuberville said. “This bill gets into the weeds about everything. We don’t need to get in the weeds in the federal government. We ruin everything we touch.”
President Trump signed an executive order mirroring Tuberville’s bill earlier this year, limiting athletes to five years of eligibility and one transfer.
Tuberville said his own bill takes a simpler approach: five years of eligibility, no exemptions, and one transfer. He said the Cruz-Cantwell bill’s reach into scheduling, conference realignment, and antitrust will kill its chances of passing and hand the federal government control over college sports.
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“If you get into scheduling and conference realignment and antitrust, it’s not going to pass. And then the federal government’s got control of it, and it’ll make it worse,” Tuberville said.
He also flagged the growing threat to Olympic sports, noting Arkansas recently dropped men’s and women’s tennis as money concentrates in football and basketball.
“I don’t care how much money these kids make, they can make all they want, but this transferring every year and not getting an education is not what college athletics is about,” Tuberville said.
Sawyer Knowles is a state and political reporter for Yellowhammer News. You may contact him at [email protected].
