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How Blowing Up College Sports Became a Rallying Cry for Some in Washington The N.C.A.A. is under scrutiny on Capitol Hill and at the Supreme Court. T

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HR King
May 29, 2001
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Ramogi Huma, a former college football player, had been at a Justice Department lectern for eight seconds when he began an excoriation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
The governing body of college sports was, he declared, “a predatory economic cartel that treats players like university property rather than people.”
Huma had long used similar language as the leader of the National College Players Association, an advocacy group. But his 2019 speech to a roomful of antitrust experts at the Robert F. Kennedy Building signaled a shift in Washington. Less than a decade earlier, Huma recalled, federal law enforcement officials had told him that the capital’s political climate did not support action against the N.C.A.A. Now he was being invited to speak on Pennsylvania Avenue.
“More and more people find what the N.C.A.A. is doing is just patently unacceptable in terms of their treatment of athletes,” said Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, who played football at Stanford University and has championed a proposal that would compel colleges to share athletics profits with some players. The association, he added, was “not realizing the moral view of this has really grown or shifted.”
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The N.C.A.A. is embroiled in perhaps the most crucial stretch of its long relationship with Washington, where top government officials have increasingly voiced doubts about the management and restrictions of college sports.
On Wednesday, the 115th anniversary of the N.C.A.A.’s founding under pressure from President Theodore Roosevelt, the Supreme Court will hear the association’s appeal in a case about caps on certain benefits for student-athletes. This summer, around the time the justices could announce their ruling, a Florida law is scheduled to take effect and allow players to profit off their fame, disrupting the uniform rules that have regulated college athletics for generations.


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Michigan’s Isaiah Livers wore a T-shirt that read “#NotNCAAProperty” during the N.C.A.A. tournament.

Michigan’s Isaiah Livers wore a T-shirt that read “#NotNCAAProperty” during the N.C.A.A. tournament.Credit...Robert Franklin/Associated Press
Those potentially seminal developments were brewing before this month’s N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments demonstrated unequal treatment between the men and women competing in them, prompting new outrage from members of Congress. And, encouraged by Huma, star athletes at both tournaments called attention to what they condemned as overly restrictive N.C.A.A. rules that have remained in place even as the industry’s financial might swelled.
The confluence of events could ultimately push Washington toward a few outcomes, including national protections for student-athletes or sustained scrutiny on the N.C.A.A. from Capitol Hill and the Justice Department. What lawmakers say is already clear, though, is that the N.C.A.A.’s political standing has eroded in recent years, diminished by protracted internal debates and bipartisan, coast-to-coast pressure for changes that benefit athletes.
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N.C.A.A. officials contend that they are still a force in Washington and that they are committed to new rules to allow players more financial opportunities, especially through social media platforms where many athletes command large followings. Change has been slow, however, because of the association’s byzantine design and because the Justice Department, in the waning days of the Trump administration, expressed misgivings about the N.C.A.A.'s plans.
The association’s president, Mark Emmert, acknowledged in an interview this month that there were “significant concerns about some of the dynamics in college sports right now, and that’s neither inappropriate nor unfair.” But he bristled at more than a year’s worth of assessments by current and former lawmakers, regulators and college sports executives that the N.C.A.A. had become less formidable in the capital.
“We’re talking about these issues, working them through, trying to make sure everybody understands the views of the universities that are the members of the association,” said Emmert, who noted that he had spoken with a senator perhaps an hour earlier. “Are there disagreements? Of course. Are we open to the input, thoughts and ideas of members of Congress? Of course.”



The N.C.A.A. has long been a favored target for frustrated fans, incredulous boosters and, from time to time, senators. But only in the last few years has the association also become such a lasting political target, a status it has been especially unable to shake since 2019, when California passed a law to allow players to pursue endorsement deals and hire agents. The measure, scheduled to take effect in 2023, passed unanimously and amounted to a direct challenge to the N.C.A.A.’s restrictions on players.
After California’s move, elected officials elsewhere — some motivated by moral outrage, others perhaps by the prospect of losing a prized recruit to a California school, and just about all sensing an issue that defied traditional partisan lines — joined the chorus demanding new rules. Confronted with a sea of statehouse uprisings, the N.C.A.A. shifted its focus toward Washington and promised its own changes.
There has been significant reason to seek federal intervention: Different rules from one state to another, N.C.A.A. officials warned, would allow some universities to dangle better benefits toward recruits and give certain schools unfair advantages. But some in college sports also believed that buttoned-up Washington could be something of a safe harbor, especially compared with restive state capitals where the N.C.A.A.’s concerns were being proudly defied.
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In Washington, though, some prominent lawmakers were wary after years of delays and mixed signals from college sports leaders. They were hardly ready to shut out the N.C.A.A., many said, but the association would not go unquestioned.
“There’s no question that the N.C.A.A. has a lot of power,” Representative Lori Trahan, Democrat of Massachusetts, who played volleyball at Georgetown University. “I know my office and I have had plenty of communication with them. But what you’re seeing right now is a bipartisan recognition that the current system is broken, it has been for a long time, and it needs to be fixed.”
Lawmakers, she added, feel “like they’ve got a role to play in all of this. Would we have liked the N.C.A.A. to come up with a proposal that met the need and met the inequity? Of course.”
Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, noted that it was “kind of impossible for them to represent the interests of both Auburn and Amherst,” but suggested that the sprawl of the N.C.A.A, which includes about 1,100 colleges and universities, left its message muddled and inconsistent.


“The power of the status quo in this debate is going to flow directly through the schools and conferences, not the N.C.A.A., and I think the N.C.A.A. has made it pretty clear that they are not able to articulate a consensus point of view but that they’re also not terribly interested in policing student safety and student economic rights,” he said.
Although the N.C.A.A. has a lobbying presence in Washington, powerful leagues have increasingly stepped up their efforts to shape policy. Federal records show that the five most influential leagues in college sports — the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern conferences — combined to spend more than $1.7 million on lobbying in 2020, up from $300,000 in 2019.

More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
 
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