The House was set to vote on a bill to regulate college sports but members of the Congressional Black Caucus announced their opposition as part of a protest around political power for black voters.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The issues came to a head this week on Capitol Hill, the Voting Rights Act and college sports. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus pulled their support of a bipartisan bill to remake the relationship between student athletes and their schools.
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YVETTE CLARKE: The issue is whether institutions that benefit from Black talent, Black labor and Black communities are willing to speak out when Black political power is under attack.
SIMON: That’s Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke of New York. NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan and Congress reporter Eric McDaniel, join us in our studios. Thanks so much for being with us.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Good morning, Scott.
ERIC MCDANIEL, BYLINE: Happy to do it.
SIMON: And, Eric, let’s please begin with you. Representative Clarke mentioned Black political power under attack. Explain what she meant.
MCDANIEL: So the Supreme Court earlier this month gutted Civil Rights Movement-era protections for Black voters. They had to do with the Voting Rights Act. And then Republicans across the South race to eliminate House districts that represent majority-Black communities that was done in order to maximize Republican electoral chances. So the CBC, the Congressional Black Caucus – it’s this hugely influential group of Democrats – they looked at this bipartisan bill, the SCORE Act, to do with college athlete pay, and saw an opportunity to make a statement in an effort to rally more powerful societal pillars, like the NCAA and the big athletic conferences, to speak out. The bill itself was meant to preempt this chaotic patchwork of state laws governing student athlete pay. Two CBC members, actually, Shomari Figures of Alabama and Janelle Bynum of Oregon, were part of drafting the legislation, and their statement pulling support, along with the rest of the Congressional Black Caucus, essentially killed this bill.
SIMON: And, Becky, paying college athletes, these name, image and likeness deals have become big issues, haven’t they?
SULLIVAN: Oh, very much so. I mean, yeah, couldn’t be bigger. It’s the dominant issue in college sports right now – high-level college sports – over the past five years or so, since this Supreme Court decision back in 2021 essentially up ended the very long-standing system of amateurism in the NCAA. They opened the door for college athletes to get paid, as you say, on these NIL deals, as they’re known. And since then, you know, the chaos hasn’t stopped. Like, the NCAA has just been hammered by even more lawsuits that have chipped away at other regulations that the NCAA has long had that govern college sports, like not just compensation, but transferring between schools, eligibility, other major issues. And so essentially the situation now is that every big-time college football team, basketball team, every year, the whole team is essentially free agents who sign new deals year to year, transfer some schools. It’s this just very chaotic environment, and I’m not sure that anyone loves it.
SIMON: Well, is there an appetite for federal regulation to fix it, though?
SULLIVAN: Absolutely. I think it’s seen as the solution, a voracious appetite, I would say, for some sort of regulation, but there are competing interests, and obviously, the effectiveness of Congress has been an obstacle. You know, I would say, across the board, you see this desire from fans to the big schools, big conferences, small schools, small conferences, even players. But those are all, of course, very different constituencies. They all have different interests, and there is just this utter lack of agreement on the best path forward. This particular bill, the SCORE Act, was favored by the NCAA in the big conferences, like the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten, but it was just one option.
SIMON: And it was coming to a vote on the floor – right? – Eric, this week?
MCDANIEL: Yeah. I mean, I’m atrociously bad at odds-making. Basically, the only thing I know for sure, Scott, is that BJ Leiderman writes your theme music.
SIMON: (Laughter).
MCDANIEL: But Republican speaker…
SIMON: You have been sitting on that.
MCDANIEL: Yeah, I have.
SIMON: Thank you. OK. All right.
MCDANIEL: But Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has, in practice, a single vote majority instead of two votes. There’s a man who’s been out for a long time due to some medical absences, which means the House is basically as closely divided as it can be, so any one thing can tip the scales here. And this time, it happened to be that the Congressional Black Caucus decided they weren’t going to support this bill anymore. But the fact that it had been on the schedule at all for a vote meant that until this happened, Johnson was reasonably confident there was a path to passage in the House. And then after the Congressional Black Caucus statements, we’ve seen protests across the country related to the Voting Rights Act and college sports that have sprung up.
SIMON: Becky, is there another option for the regulation of college sports if this bill is gone?
SULLIVAN: Certainly, I think so. I mean, honestly, this bill had been hanging around for a while now. This isn’t the first time that it has sort of died on the vine. And so I think maybe even if it had somehow passed the House this week, it wasn’t going to necessarily sail through the Senate, because as we were talking about, there’s all these competing interests. You have labor. You have student athletes who want one thing, smaller conferences that want different things from the bigger conferences, etc. This bill was the NCAA’s preferred version. But there is another proposal that is actively being negotiated in the Senate. The two leaders on that are Republican Ted Cruz of Texas, of course, and then Maria Cantwell, who is a Democrat from Washington. That is perhaps more likely to pass, whatever they’re able to come up with. But, meanwhile, back in college sports, you know, these lawsuits galore continuing over these eligibility limits – five, six years – whether community college seasons played should count. Safe to say, I think the only thing that people can agree on is that this status quo is unsustainable.
SIMON: NPR’s Becky Sullivan and Eric McDaniel. Thank you. This is fun. Find something else to team up on for us.
MCDANIEL: Absolutely.
SULLIVAN: You got it. Thanks, Scott.
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