Maria Cantwell

Reserving the right to object, can we modify that and ask for an additional 20 minutes so the Senator from Texas and I can also be heard?

Madam President, I know the floor has been busy this afternoon with people discussing the Protect College Sports Act, and I want to thank all my colleagues for participating in a debate.

That is what this institution is supposed to be about. It is supposed to be about an amendment process, and it is supposed to be about a product that comes out of committee, and it is supposed to be about our colleagues showing up. So I want to thank my colleagues, particularly Senator Booker and Senator Murphy, who came to the floor to express their views on this bill.

I want to thank both of them. You know, I certainly agree with Senator Murphy on his long-standing effort to think about collective bargaining in college sports. He has been very outspoken on that for many years. And I want to thank Senator Booker for working with me for many, many years on this issue, and that doesn't mean that he still doesn't have reservations, but it means that he is committed to this issue writ large.

But we do see a different conclusion here tonight. And I want to thank my colleagues for passing a bill out of committee and now getting it to this threshold because, unlike my colleagues' comments before, there are several things in this bill that are really important to enshrine into Federal law at this time.

First and foremost, the Federal right to NIL and making sure that it is not State laws that have been quite onerous on athletes--that is, laws that say if you conflict with your university, your university wins and if you conflict with other issues, you don't get NIL. So creating a Federal standard is very important.

But compensation on revenue sharing is probably the most important thing we could possibly enshrine in Federal law today. This is saying, for the first time, that an athlete gets a percentage of the media rights, the ticket sales, and the sponsorship.

That has not been said before in a court case decision. It was agreed to in a settlement agreement--in a settlement agreement called Grant House v. NCAA. Now, that settlement agreement has had its ups and downs, and I hope it prevails, but I know this: We can put into Federal law that enshrinement so that the Senate is clear.

My colleagues have said: Why do this now? Well, because there was a difference of opinion, and even Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in the decision of NCAA v. Alston by the Supreme Court, said: Yes, I think athletes deserve a recognition of revenue, but Congress could step in and change that.

And my colleagues may know that the House of Representatives did try to change that. The House of Representatives did try to pass a bill that said: No, they don't deserve revenue sharing. They don't deserve revenue sharing. That is the bill the House came very close to passing.

And so tonight, we are taking a monumental step that I agree that maybe not all 100 people agree on, but I think the majority of our colleagues agree on these two principles that the Supreme Court also has spoken to, but that we are now putting in a Federal law because, as Brett Kavanaugh said, Congress could change its mind. Congress could do something differently. But tonight, we are speaking. We believe in these two things.

We also believe in a health and safety standard in Federal law, one that protects the athletes beyond the way the law works today and gives them the right to sue and hold these people accountable for any kind of health and safety violations.

This is something that my colleagues Senator Blumenthal and Senator Booker and I and others worked on diligently, and we want to continue to make sure it is enshrined in this statute. And then medical coverage for 5 years post-eligibility and capping agents' fees at 5 percent.

So my colleagues have said: Why do this? Why do this now? Well, that is because 94 percent of the DI--that is the biggest division of athletes; there are three divisions, and then other associations--94 percent of those DI programs are in the red. So that is a pretty big issue.

And the reason why it is so frustrating is there are four schools just in the State of Virginia that are putting exorbitant tuition fees on their students just to pay for college education. There are people that are cutting science programs, cutting professors, cutting other programs just to pay for college sports when, in reality, we need all those to beat China and compete--and not have an arms race in sports.

So right now, the median debt for schools in the Big Four conferences--their median debt is $120 million. What are they doing? Now, I know everybody would like to blame it on coaches, and I guarantee you there are a few coaches that need to get called out. But the main reason for this is not because we are paying athletes. It is not because we have all agreed that they deserve to have part of this revenue. This number exists because there are no sound rules that prohibit an arms race from taking place and people who are billionaires

and millionaires putting any amount of money into their school program. And our bill fixes that and creates rules across the board for everyone to follow, so that we don't have this exorbitant arms race.

Now, I will be the first to admit there is more to do on stadiums. There is more to do on other aspects of spending college sports. But we need to pass a bill tonight because we need to stop stealing money out of college and university institutions for education, for tuition, for professors, and putting it into an arms race on sports.

It is time to make sports about playing sports again and not about the money. So this bill stops the cuts to women's and Olympic sports. Why? Because who is paying the bill right now?

The No. 1 person paying the bill is a hundred programs and a thousand women and Olympic athletes because they don't make money, so the easiest way to save money in an institution is to cut them right now. And so we are trying to stop that. Our legislation says, yes, we are willing to give the college teams an antitrust exemption to pool their media rights and make more money, but only if they protect women's and Olympic sports. And just to be clear because there is a little misunderstanding about this: You don't get to have the antitrust exemption and then later cut these programs. You only get the antitrust exemption if you keep the women's and Olympic sports.

If you don't do a pooling of media rights, we also have a provision for the next several years that makes people keep their women's and Olympic roster slots--so very important aspect of the bill.

There is this big complaint about the amount of money going to coaches, and I welcome any discussion about how to fix this issue. And I want to thank my colleague Senator Lujan for the brilliant amendment that he offered in committee because, basically, it says you can only pay a coach--with fees from the education system--$500,000 a year and if you want to pay them any more than that, you have to go get somebody in the private sector to go pay that. So we are not going to be held hostage, as taxpayers, to these coaches' salaries. And in addition, we make it a requirement that you cannot transfer in the middle of the year.

Now, a lot of people have said: Well, what are you going to do about the HBCU infrastructure because they are part of Division I football? You know, the SEC and others came along and said: Oh, just kick them out of Division I. We are like: No, that is a really bad idea. We are not going to push them out of Division I football. We are going to grow their capabilities in communication because, just like other people, they want their games seen, they want their broadcast, they want their broadband, but they don't have it. So this bill includes a $900 million authorization to help upgrade the schools that have been most impacted without the communications capabilities.

A lot of my colleagues would say: Well, where is that student athlete support? I am very excited about a commission that we create in this bill to hear more from student athletes. But student athletes and their committees--and these are all the letters from student athletes from various conferences across the United States.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that those letters be printed in the Record.

So the American Conference Student Athletes Advisory Committee, Rocky Mountain Athletic Association Student Athletes Advisory Committee, American Rivers Conference Student Athlete Advisory Committee, the New England Conference Student Athletic Advisory Committee--I could keep going and going and going.

So there is support by athletes for this bill, but it is also endorsed by the United Negro College Fund because they believe that this bill will help stabilize one aspect of DI football that is really challenging, and that is the system.

It is also endorsed by the U.S. Olympic Committee, and the reason it is endorsed by the U.S. Olympic Committee is because they know we are going to help preserve Olympic sports. Now, what are we going to do when we have the next Olympics or the one after that and you literally have not trained and skilled the athletes? Some of our biggest institutions are the ones who provide 70 percent of these athletes, and so if we don't stabilize and say ``stop cutting women's and Olympic sports,'' then we are going to be standing at an Olympics where we are not winning and going to ask why.

I didn't want to deal with this issue, but when a kid from my State-- from a famous part of our State, White Pass, where the Mahre brothers won gold skiing in the Olympics because they grew up on that pass-- basically, this kid couldn't snowboard for us and went and snowboarded for Russia and won medals. I was like, this is a problem. So I am not for us losing in the Olympics because we undermine college athletics in an arms race because we don't want to put rules in place.

So the Thurgood Marshall Fund also supports this. Team USA athletes all support this.

And it is just time for us to get this issue over the top. That is really what we are talking about. It is not the final solution. It is putting a pin in the problems to stabilize the loss of women's and Olympic sports and to create the opportunity to discuss the larger structure moving forward. That is why I think we have so much support. It doesn't mean that we have solved every problem, but it means that we are on our way to solving the problems that exist and preserving the opportunities for the future.

So let's get it over the top. I am very proud of this athlete, and she is a perfect example. Okay. She is No. 1 in the world right now, and she is the pole vaulter at University of Washington.

But what if we continue to undermine the efforts of women's and Olympic sports? What if she doesn't have

that roster slot because we are too busy letting billionaires run the race and basically leave people behind? That is not what sports is about. It is about, any given day, the competition. So let's get back to playing sports again, and let's pass this legislation.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, speaking in opposition to the amendment, this would simply strike the entire bill and give a major antitrust exemption to the NCAA to write whatever rules they want.

I think all of us can agree here that this process isn't working with the NCAA, and Congress has intervened to set rules.

I want to applaud our colleagues for the 96-to-1 vote we just had on the Baldwin-Schmitt amendment--a very complicated part of the law, but nonetheless we can all agree. So it says to me this body can figure this out.

I urge our colleagues to continue and not strike the majority of the bill but implement it so we can get on at protecting college sports.

I urge a ``no'' vote.

Vote on Amendment No. 6758

Mr. President, urging my colleagues to support this amendment. There is nothing in the bill that says that you have to take one from the other. What this bill is about is being responsible to athletes and responsible to their injuries.

I think the Senator from New Jersey has articulated, as we know from anybody here who is on the Senate floor who is a physician, that this does happen to people much later in their lives, and they are dealing with it. This is the responsible thing to do, to set up

this fund; and it is the responsible amount that the Senator from New Jersey is suggesting. I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Vote on Amendment No. 6805

Mr. President, the Senate has worked its will tonight, and that is a rare occasion on something this complicated but this important for America's future.

I thank all my colleagues. I urge a ``yes'' vote and will speak after the vote in more detail.

Mr. President, I rise to clarify that the effect of the antitrust exemption in section 118 of the Protect College Sports Act in the event that the House settlement expires or terminates and Congress does not extend the revenue share cap.

To be clear, the antitrust immunity for enforcing and complying with sections 114 and 115 applies only to the extent that the provisions of those sections continue to have force or effect.

Senator Coons, do you agree that this is the intent of the legislation?

Mr. President, I note that the Protect College Sports Act is also critical to local broadcasters.

Right now, too many college football games are trapped behind paywalls. The Protect College Sports Act aims to change that by supporting consumers' access to TV.

And I understand Senator Moran has entered a statement in the record on this topic; and I agree with him on this, in putting college football on free TV on local broadcasting stations instead of in paywalls.

I did not, before the vote, take time to thank all the people involved with this legislation, and I would like to take that opportunity now.

First of all, I want to thank Senator Cruz for his partnership on this legislation and working to create a bipartisan bill that I think the majority of our colleagues showed tonight that they support, and I hope that we will get our colleagues in the House of Representatives to also agree on that before the end of the year.

Obviously, this legislative process is a challenging one, and we would not have been here at this moment without a lot of help from a lot of different people.

I want to thank especially Senators Schmitt and Coons for their tremendous leadership in being partners with Senator Cruz and I on this legislation. The two of them provided key input, support--debatable, argumentative points of view at various points of time. But there is no way we would have gotten this legislation over the goal line without Senator Schmitt and Senator Coons, and I just want to thank them immensely for their long partnership in working with Senator Cruz and myself.

And I also want to thank James Barton, who is with Senator Coons, because he played a key role in all of this, and I very much appreciate his support. I also want to thank key members of the Commerce Committee because they played very important roles in this: Senator Hickenlooper drafting the language and negotiation as it related to the U.S. Olympic provisions of the bill; Senator Lujan for drafting and getting amendments accepted related to the coaches; Senator Baldwin on a key amendment that we just adopted tonight by, as I said earlier, a record 96 to 1 vote, which shows that this place, when you let the right people in the room, can come to a conclusion--not just that, but that our colleagues also trust that that process can work too and rewarded that with a big, big vote tonight. So very much appreciate that.

I also appreciate the President's sports council--Randy Levine, Cody Campbell, Jack Swarbrick--all played big roles in this, probably nobody more than Randy Levine in constantly pushing the White House point of view on this legislation and Cody Campbell making sure that everybody understood that opening up the Sports Broadcasting Act was a great idea. That also seconded, obviously, by Jack, who added an AD perspective to the debate.

I also want to thank a couple of big Washingtonians who played a key role in this. Mark Few, the famous--now Hall of Fame--Gonzaga coach who was just constant--now I know what it would have been like to play for Gonzaga because he was constantly saying: Maria, it is just about getting the basics done, about eligibility, about transfer, and about basic rules. And he reminded me of that all the time. I also want to thank Washington AD Pat Chun, who took endless phone calls from us.

I want to thank WSU President Cantwell, who was in a trying situation of her own. Literally, the Pac-12 blew up, took $35 million of revenue out of her institution, and she had to figure out a path forward and engage on this legislation and try to help us all think about what is a fair way to move college sports forward, and she did that. And I appreciate her time.

And certainly Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould, who testified before the committee and added a lot of input about what not to do next, and I just can't thank her enough because I see even tonight some of this debate veered into the realm of what not to do.

And I hope that we can continue to make corrections on that as we dialogue with our House colleagues because the last thing that we need to do is have another Pac-12 incident. But we need to grow regional sports, grow the regional system, and make it stronger.

I also want to thank the many people on the Commerce Committee staff who--oh, I have to thank Senator Welch. Senator Welch also signing on early to the legislation, Senator Peters helping us with the Big 10, Senator Klobuchar doing the same, all of them were so helpful in this legislation.

Now to the committee staff. Senator Cruz talked a lot about how this negotiation went on for months and months and months and hours and hours a day, and he talked about Cuban coffee. All that was true.

It took a lot to keep us in a room discussing immense legal terms with a variety of conferences and individuals and athletes from all over the country. But I want to thank staff director Lila Helms, our general counsel Melissa Porter, Nicole Frazer, Phil Murphy, and Ramesh Nagarajan. Those individuals right there spent the majority of time working on this legislation.

But Shannon Smith, who served on the committee for 5 years and recently retired, she deserves a jersey all by herself. I kid with her about saying it is going to say ``Jaxon Smith-Njigba,'' but instead, it is just going to say ``Shannon Smith'' and then some name because she deserves a new title for the immense amount of effort. We would just not even have a bill on the floor tonight if it weren't for her efforts.

But Nicole and Melissa and Lila, I can't say enough about their leadership and patience in driving a process that was just fraught with different opinions. That is just all there is to it, fraught with different opinions and a lot of negotiations.

So I think it will go down in history as one of the most challenging issues because, unlike a lot of policy issues that we deal with here in the U.S. Senate, you have different issues and they follow a certain path. They follow a construct. It might be consumer versus business; it might be various things. In this case, we had a lot of different viewpoints across the entire ecosystem of sports. And if there was a characterization here, it was definitely that nobody wanted the two big divisions to run away and be a super league and continue to X out the revenue and that everybody wanted to drive some sanity back into the system.

But that sounds simple compared to what these individuals went through. So I really can't thank enough Lila Helms, Melissa Porter, and Nicole Frazer for their incredible work on this. Phil and Ramesh, great work, challenging policy, appreciate their efforts.

I want to thank Elizabeth Cuttner; Erik Eykel; Kate Sprague; Connor Jennings; Tricia Enright; Rob Blumenthal; Ciara O'Donoghue; Josephine Laing; Zoe Garrett; and Amit Ronen from our staff, who is here on the floor tonight; Ansley Lacitis, who I think got to know the entire press corps for sports across the United States and took all their questions and probably has some to feed back to them; Lauren Bazel; Seth Kolloen.

And I want to thank Senator Cruz' staff because, obviously, they worked very hard on this legislation. Brad Grantz, his staff director; Nicole Christus; Joel Wellum--I want to thank Joel specifically because Joel obviously took a lot of direct questioning, a lot of pushing by us and me particularly, and I appreciate his hard work--Michael Spierto; Ryan Cannon; and Justin Adams and Casey Contres.

So there is no way to really sum up all of the thanks in one statement. I do want to thank my colleague Senator Moran, who is on the floor tonight, because he started this effort in the committee many years ago and had great thoughts on what we needed to do and got us all pointed in the right direction and kept the dialogue moving through myself and Senator Wicker, and then as Senators Booker and Blumenthal and I continued to dialogue, and then ultimately Senator Schmitt and I, and Senator Coons and Schmitt and I, and then ultimately this legislation with Senator Cruz and I. So this long, challenged situation of figuring out how to make more sense out of college sports, I want to thank him as well.

So we definitely made the will of the Senate work tonight, and I hope we can do more of that. I hope we can find where there is the ability to solve problems. We obviously have a very big difference of opinion, but there probably isn't a bigger gulf and difference of opinion.

I say Senator Cruz and I probably disagree on 25 different issues, and that is just in the Commerce Committee, but if we can do that tonight and produce a product, I guarantee you the rest of us can.

And tonight, it is about making sports about sports again. So I thank my colleagues for this legislation and now on to working with our colleagues in the House.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the floor because we are going to be voting shortly on two things this afternoon: one on a judicial nominee and, second, on cloture on the underlying substitute of the Protect College Sports Act. I just wanted to make sure that we were talking to colleagues about changes that were in that underlying substitute that we have been able to make.

I think earlier today, at 3 or 3:30, was the deadline for filing amendments. So we obviously have been working all weekend and processing amendments that were filed last week, and now we will work on amendments that are filed this week and, hopefully, make progress with our colleagues on a bipartisan basis.

But as we continue to move through the legislative process on the Protect College Sports Act, we have sought to clarify and improve the bill in ways that make clear to our colleagues the intent of what the Senate Commerce Committee and now those here on the Senate floor have tried to achieve in this legislation.

The substitute makes clear that medical coverage and healthcare and safety standards in the bill are a floor and not a ceiling. So it amends sections 106 and 107 to clarify that it cannot be construed to preclude provisions of additional medical coverage or establishment of additional health, wellness, and safety standards in the bill.

It requires that the NCAA take more responsibility in school compliance with health, safety, and wellness standards; and I appreciate this very much because I think these actions do need to have someone who can continue to improve the accountability of our academic institutions and how they are performing or not performing. It requires a Commission that we put into

the legislation to also study further health, wellness, and safety standards and consider ways to improve them.

It is making progress in a couple of other areas: the academic progress requirement, which I think is really important. This bill is to make sure that we still have student-athletes and they meet and achieve academic performance. So this requires an institution to comply with the uniform benchmarks established by the Intercollegiate Athletic Association or conference related to graduation rates and the academic process of student-athletes in order to be eligible for this retention fund.

So we are putting in more safeguards and accountability. If these institutions want to continue to have additional resources, they are going to have to prove that they are meeting academic performance.

It prevents the NCAA from weakening its standards for qualifying as a full-time student by cross-referencing terms and definitions.

So, again, there are lots of eyeballs on this legislation, and it is good because we are making and perfecting and ensuring that the language does what we think it does; and, if not, we are improving it by making changes.

The substitute also includes a role for the House and Senate Education and Labor Committees in the selection of Commission members. It does this by requiring the House and Senate leadership and the Senate Commerce and House Energy and Commerce leadership to work with the Senate HELP and House Ed and Workforce leadership in appointing the members of the Commission.

Now, this legislation does try to stabilize the college environment today as it relates to sports, but it also says we need to have a big discussion about how this continues to play out in the future. And this Commission needs to be well represented by a variety of interests. So we are very happy to add both HELP and House Education and Workforce leadership to be part of that.

And it requires the Commission to study how and whether students should get a financial stake in their own teams. Now, this is a novel idea but something I think the Commission should consider. One of the things I am very proud of in the underlying bill is the fact that we say to broadcast entities who bid on college sports--most of the time just to show football or just to show basketball--that if you are not using your rights for those same institutions to help support other programs--like, say women's volleyball or track and field--that you have to allow that institution to come up with other ways that they might enhance their revenue by doing streaming media.

Now, we think this is really important because we think there are a lot of great--I am very proud of, right now, that, I think, our UW women's pole vaulter is No. 1 in the world right now. I think I just saw that headline. But why can't the University of Washington promote their track and field if, in fact, their football Huskies contract, which--I would just say, I saw a lot of Big Ten football this weekend, trying to engage and understand, but you didn't see anything about the Huskies other than if you tried to watch that game. Why? Because nobody on the east coast even reports about what happens to west coast football. After a certain time, they just don't report about it. This bill is about trying to empower these other sports--particularly that drive women and Olympic sports--to make their own revenue streams.

So one of our colleagues here wanted an improvement to the bill that said that students should even think about how to get a bigger financial stake. I welcome it. I welcome that as part of a Commission requirement.

We also did a few things to make sure that we are covering pending cases, that the underlying bill does not wipe out pending cases. And so we took language recommended by a variety of our athletes working on this prior to us even moving the bill out of committee, since the bill moved out of committee, and this, I think, helped us perfect this language to make sure that existing pending cases are not wiped out by our legislation.

And it obviously also narrows the broad field of preemption provisions for eligibility to just those covered in this legislative section.

So this legislation before us today continues to make improvements. As I said, I think there are about 15 or 20 amendments that were filed last week and maybe another 20-plus amendments filed today. So we are going to continue to work through our colleagues on that but continue to push forward on the very challenging environment that college education is facing and the huge amounts of add-on fees that they are adding to nonstudent-athletes to pay for athletics, taking money out of a general fund to pay for athletics--basically, taking out an endowment to pay for athletics. The majority of these are not even making money anymore for themselves.

So we have to bring some order to the system, and I urge my colleagues to continue to improve the situation so that we are not balancing the books on behalf of larger education just for sports but that they have a system that will work for all of us.

So I encourage my colleagues to continue the dialogue with us, and I hope that we can move forward on this important legislation.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to proceed in continuing an important discussion on the Protect College Sports Act.

This historic, sweeping legislation, formed in a bipartisan fashion by my colleagues Senator Schmitt, the Presiding Officer, Senator Coons, Senator Welch, Senator Capito, Senator Hickenlooper, Senator Ricketts, Senator Lujan, Senator Hoeven, and Senator Cruz and myself, is a bipartisan effort to try to bring some reason to the craziness that has basically been plaguing the most important aspects of college sports.

This legislation is historic in the fact that it puts into law 12-- more than a dozen, I should say--important provisions that help athletes and protect them for the future.

First and foremost, it recognizes in a Federal law that athletes deserve not only NIL--which is name, image, and likeness--rights and to protect those rights, but athletes deserve to have revenue sharing. This is so critical, and I will expound on it in a while.

It also gives athletes 5 years of eligibility for the first time, which is historic in us giving that at the Federal level.

It requires women to have the same comprehensive standards as men do, when you are talking about championships and playoffs.

It preserves women and in Olympic roster slots that are the large percentage of athletes that we are trying to protect in this bill.

While we are very happy that there is a first Federal law recognizing revenue sharing and recognizing NIL rights, we also have to understand that there are lots of athletes--500,000 athletes--that are part of this ecosystem, and we care a lot about the women in Olympic sports, and we don't want to see those slots cut, which is exactly what has been happening.

It requires college sports to make content available, not behind a paywall. If there is nothing else in this bill that you should vote for, you should show your anger at the fact that your favorite college sport content keeps getting put behind a paywall, and somebody is making you pay for it. This says that that content needs to be available to you regionally, in your local area.

It has a $900,000 authorization for Black colleges to help them and their broadcasting of sports be more competitive for the future.

It has whistleblower protections, including first-time ever whistleblowing protection for title IX.

It grants athletes scholarship and health protections for the 5 years that they are in their college academic environment and for the 5 years after that.

It protects the future of college sports by creating a Commission made up of athletes to talk about how we move forward on issues like collective bargaining, revenue sharing, and making sure that we don't see more cuts.

It basically puts transfer sensibility into law so that it makes sure that we are keeping students focused on academics and education.

It does constrict coaches and where the money for coaches can come from--not from taxpayers--but, instead, making sure that they continue to only receive from endowments or other revenue.

It makes sure that there is transparency in the law because right now the problem with the rising costs in college athletics is not the fact that we were willing to pay athletes because we said: Here, we are enshrining in law for the first time NIL rights and athletes' revenue rights. But what we are not going to put up with is booster backdoors that basically inflate with no rationale for why and where the money is coming from. We are bringing transparency to the system.

We are also saying you can't go back. You can't play in the pros and go back to college. We are not interested in having some 27-year-old pro college player beating up on a 19-year-old who is basically just entering his college academic career.

And, yes, we have regulations on agents, agents who now like to call themselves athlete advocates. It is just a euphemism because what they really want is money. They are taking advantage of high school athletes, making them sign a contract, and then repossessing their cars--this is what Coach Bowles has told us--when they can't get them an NIL deal.

We allow for the prosecution of misrepresentation by agents, by the FTC, and our attorneys general. And we continue to put the language into the bill that makes sure that only legitimate deals recognized in the settlement agreement, based on market value, are recognized so we can bring stability to this situation.

So let me go over this for a second, starting with women and Olympic sports. I became very moved by the story of college and Olympic sports. In fact, I am glad to see Senator McConnell back on the Senate floor because he and I have been having this conversation now for about 3 or 4 years.

He kept saying to me: Maria, what are you going to do to protect women in Olympic sports?

Why? Because when the United States doesn't shine at the Olympics, then guess what. The United States doesn't shine. And I am so proud to represent the State of Washington and to know this historic story of the ``Boys in the Boat,'' who basically fought everything that people threw at them--threw at them, basically rearranging lanes, threw at them all sorts of difficulties. But guess what. Hardscrabble workingmen--including a Jewish coxswain from Montesano, WA--went there and stuck it to Adolf Hitler and what a moment for the United States of America--what a moment, what a statement for our Nation because we participated and we won.

But guess what is happening now. Thousands of those roster spots are being cut. Hundreds of those programs are being cut. I swore I wasn't going to focus on this issue if I ever got into a position on the committee, but when a kid from my State--written up by Eddie Pells from the AP--told the story of how at White Pass, WA, where the Mahre brothers had skied and went on to win gold, all of a sudden a snowboarder from White Pass, WA, couldn't get covered by the Olympic team because there was no revenue. And he went and he snowboarded for Russia, and he won medals. That is when I started paying attention to this issue.

I am not going to have women in Olympic sports undermined by this system. In fact, there is a poll that shows that 87 percent of the public, when polled, what do they care about this issue, 87 percent agree women and Olympic sports need to be preserved because they know that is what is unique by the system.

So we are not going to let runaway boosters, who basically want no rules, and runaway agents, who want to prey on high school kids, decide what is going to happen here.

So we basically are making sure, as I said, that agents have to register. They have to have documentation. They cannot misrepresent themselves. They have to comply with both the FTC and the AG and, obviously, the NCAA.

This, alone, is constricting the unsavory behavior of these people, and they are the primary opposition to this bill. They are because they don't like that we are capping agent fees at 5 percent.

We have to continue to make progress. Let me talk about what we are saying here about the wins in this bill as it relates to the rights of these athletes.

As I said, it is a Federal recognition of NIL rights and revenue sharing, and it will be the first time that Congress, on record, is endorsing both of those.

Now, I know that people think the Supreme Court decided and helped on NIL, but a court decision and a settlement agreement actually moved this along in what is called Grant House v. NCAA. That settlement agreement can disappear. That settlement agreement has had a very rough road over the last year. Many times, the parties have said they are going to pull out of the agreement.

Well, it is very hard, if you have that agreement blow up, to continue to move forward. But if we pass this bill, we will--Congress-- be recognizing revenue sharing for athletes.

I can't tell you how much athletes have suffered in the past, starting with

athletes who basically were prohibited by the NCAA from even going into the pros--oh, and they didn't have 4 years of college--or a famous case where they said: OK. Well, we will let you have this food for athletes. You can have bagels, but you can't have the cream cheese.

So I do not believe the NCAA is the proper institution to continue to regulate this sector because, yes, I agree with my colleagues who have concern. They haven't proven that they can have just recognition of these rights for athletes, but we can. We can put them into law. We can recognize them, enshrine them today, and make sure these athletes are protected forever--including the rights to not have their contracts screwed with, their rights to not have their school override them, the rights to have any amount of money that some business wants to pay them as long as it is for a valid business purpose.

So these protections--along with the fact that they get a record 5 years of eligibility, 5 years of scholarship, 5 years of healthcare, and then 5 years after that on both of those--it is helping them for the future.

And we are trying to help the poorest institutions meet these requirements--so medical coverage for out-of-pocket costs and helping with a $100 million fund for smaller schools to help with the significant costs that can occur in this legislation--in sports. So this is an important piece of legislation in protecting athletes.

But we also have to protect the cost and the public besides women in Olympic sports. What we are seeing today is a record amount of taxpayer dollars and literally university professors being cut to pay for the unending arms race.

In fact, Rutgers leads the charge, may have had 38 faculty members cut because--and people going to the institution, and they are part of the Big Ten.

The reason the arms race exists is because there are rules on billionaires throwing money into the system without adhering to the settlement agreement. So, yes, our colleagues all work together to recognize the settlement agreements to help make sure that there are fair rules.

I think it would be like saying: OK. Here in the U.S. Senate, let's just have each State say what members of your staff should be paid.

Now, I might like that because in Washington, there are a lot of wealthy people, and I am pretty sure they could say: We could make a lot of money here representing the State of Washington. OK? But some other State--Mississippi--doesn't have a chance.

And so I am going to move to proceed to this bill because I want these rules put in place because sports is about any given Saturday. It is not about whether you have a billionaire in your backyard.

It is about whether you can coach and recruit and develop and maintain and have academic performance and have fairness across the pages and have everybody compete and keep the ecosystem in place.

But that fairness does not exist today without this bill, and people who don't want those rules--don't want those rules in place--to me, are hurting us in our overall efforts.

Now, let me say something about transparency in this bill. This bill creates a public database with itemized information for all revenue sharing and NIL agreements over $600. The additional database will contain information on the total number of agreements, payments, average value of the agreements, payments on the total value of the agreements, payments on each sports program at the school. And, finally, a database will contain information about the revenues and expenditures with each sport at each school as well as the overage hours and academic outcomes for the student-athletes.

So that means this bill will allow the public to see what is going on. This transparency will help us make athletic departments and their spending and this discussion much clearer. I want it to be clear because I am not for cutting university professors and having an arms race. I want to win the innovation race against China and make sure that we are investing.

I want to thank my colleague Senator Lujan for his important piece of this legislation. There has been a lot of concern about skyrocketing coaches' salaries, and I welcome any amendment that anybody wants to offer on this, but so far no one has offered one that I know of. But Senator Lujan did in committee, and we did implement it.

In 2025, nine football FBS coaches were paid $10 million a year, more than $100 million annually. And at the top of the market, Kirby Smart was listed at roughly $13 million in annual school pay. Ohio State's Ryan Day was at $12.5 million--eight-figure salaries that would have been almost unimaginable a generation ago in college athletics.

If you had a winning team, a lot more people might get notice about your school. You might want to go to that school. I get it. But we cannot have runaway costs on athletics and basically undermine the competitiveness for only the richest schools, in which the richest donors are able to compete.

This bill--thanks to the leadership, as I said, of Senator Lujan-- includes a provision that says schools with more than $80 million in athletic revenue cannot pay coaches or managers more than $500,000 unless it comes directly from donations or from the athletic department revenue.

That means you can't take our taxpayer money, which is what people are doing--schools like Connecticut, schools in New Jersey, the Virginia schools, which basically have a record number of tuition costs--literally put on tuition for nonathletes--and basically you cannot do that to pay for exorbitant coaches' salaries.

This bill also addresses the, frankly, outrageous practice of providing a golden parachute for fired coaches and, even if they were fired, cause their teams' loss and loss of games.

In 2025--the sports reporter Ross Dellenger--a total of 15 fired coaches in 2025 was $280 million. That is why we call this the Kiffin rule, to protect college sports.

What this provision does is stop a coach from abandoning one college football team in the middle of a season and start working for another one. This is unacceptable behavior.

So this important legislation is making progress. This 322-percent increase in recruitment costs is not about paying athletes. These athletes deserve revenue. These athletes deserve to have their NIL deals, but we do not need to go blind to either outrageous agent contracts or outrageous boosters trying to distort the market.

If these institutions and the athletes being represented in a settlement agreement can come to terms and make sure that we have rules in place, then we need to enshrine those rules in this legislation and move forward. If we do, our college athletics will be stabilized.

Is this the end of this discussion? No. It is the beginning of how we continue to stabilize this. This bill also includes the future of sports Commission. The future of sports Commission, made up mostly of athletes, will discuss--once we get additional revenue into the system--how we can best protect athletes for the future and think of issues like collective bargaining or other issues that might help us best preserve this important--important--monumental contribution to our Nation.

Let us not destroy the 500,000 athletes in our effort to just make sure that the 1 or 2 percent also get their financial due. Let's put rules in place and pass this important law and make sure of these protections.

I know my colleagues are here, and I do want to emphasize--but maybe I will let them have their moment--how important the health and safety standards being met in this legislation are.

They do allow you to take action. They do allow a State to basically help enforce these health and safety provisions.

I know there's been a lot of people who say something counter to that, but trust me, this legislation is about protecting the athletes. It is about making sure they are not undermined. And it is about making sure that we move forward on legislation instead of ignoring a problem that is sucking revenue right out of our institutions that should be going for cheaper tuition and should be going to keeping our most skilled academic leaders to help our Nation be competitive.

I yield the floor.

I do.

Thank you so much. I did not want to interrupt your speech, and I certainly appreciate your--Mr. President--

Mr. President--

Thank you, Mr. President. I did not want to interrupt

the Senator from New Jersey because I do respect his work and passion on this issue. And I do respect that he was an athlete who had various experiences himself.

For the last 5 years, I have done nothing but to try to work on this. But I did want to point out that we are, in this, recognizing revenue sharing, which is different. So I just wanted to understand if the Senator understood that point.

Revenue sharing is not recognized in Federal law. It is not. Revenue sharing has only been part of a settlement agreement. But we are taking that settlement agreement and agreeing with it and putting that into law.

Yes.

Because the settlement agreement could expire, I am asking the Senator if he recognizes that us putting revenue sharing--the rights for an athlete to have a percentage of media, ticket sales, and sponsorship--is an important investment.

Thank you.

Again, I appreciate the Senator from New Jersey's passion about this issue. As he knows, he and I have worked on this for more than 5 years, and since he has testified before the committee, I know he knows that this is not something that has just come up. And since he and I have put up a bill that was 75 percent of what this bill is, I know that he also knows there are good things in here.

But I would say to my colleague--

I am asking a question.

I would respectfully say to my colleague, without the $2.8 billion record revenue-sharing agreement in what is called Grant House v. NCAA, there would not be revenue sharing. The Court has not recognized revenue sharing. If you read the decision by Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh said Congress can decide these are not employees and they do not deserve revenue. Kavanaugh's decision on NIL basically says: Congress, you can come back and say they don't deserve a damn thing.

A settlement agreement by injured athletes basically got that right, but that settlement agreement is tedious and could fall apart. Our recognizing that money and recognizing the revenue-sharing rights is a historic first. So I don't know if you understand that $2.8 billion on behalf of athletes won in a settlement agreement is not a permanent right, but it will be after we pass this law.