WASHINGTON (AP) — A bill that high lawmakers and athletic leaders have described as the perfect likelihood to stabilize school sports cleared a key vote within the Senate on Thursday with bipartisan help after weeks of enter from faculties, conferences and athletes.
The bipartisan Protect College Sports Act goals to control funds to gamers, restrict them to at least one free switch over their careers and create a rule to limit coaches from altering jobs throughout a season. It superior out of the Senate Commerce Committee on a 19-9 vote Thursday and now heads to the complete Senate for consideration.
The laws is the product of months of negotiations between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the highest lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee, and comes as lawmakers in each chambers of Congress are grappling with whether or not it is time for them to intervene in school sports.
“The greatest risk facing college athletics today is not any single controversy, court decision, or headline. The greatest threat to college sports is inaction,” Cruz mentioned in opening remarks.
Bill strikes ahead with out Big Ten and SEC help
The committee vote advancing the bill — which included Senate Majority Leader John Thune voting in favor — adopted endorsements from a number of athletic conferences, the NFL and its gamers union, and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee. The Olympic committee backed the revised measure after lawmakers added extra protections for ladies’s and Olympic sports.
Yet the 2 strongest conferences in school sports — the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten Conference — will not be supporting it. In a joint assertion launched Thursday morning, the 2 conferences wrote that “revisions are needed to secure our support for the bill.”
“What we did today was say we’re not going to let the most powerful, richest conferences dictate to the rest of America what’s going to happen to 500,000 athletes,” Cantwell mentioned after the committee vote.
Earlier this month, the Congressional Black Caucus additionally urged the Senate to droop motion on the bill within the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that successfully disabled a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Democratic Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, a member of the CBC, voted in opposition to the laws Thursday.
Support and opposition for the bill doesn’t fall neatly alongside occasion strains, reflecting the nationwide attain of SEC and Big Ten faculties and broader divisions in Congress.
While President Donald Trump has backed the bill, a number of Republicans opposed the laws Thursday, whereas a number of Democrat supported it.
Some of the senators who voted in opposition to the bill characterize states which might be house to distinguished SEC and Big Ten packages, together with Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat, and Republican Sens. Todd Young of Indiana and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.
“We nonetheless are attempting to get some adjustments that the Big Ten wish to see,” Peters advised The Associated Press late Wednesday.
A protracted street forward
Clearing the committee is simply step one in an extended course of.
Passage via the Senate is much from assured, as leaders have already got a packed schedule and a dwindling variety of legislative days left earlier than the November election. The bill would want to clear a 60-vote threshold within the 53-47 Republican-controlled chamber.
The bill may also nonetheless have to clear the House. Earlier this yr, House Republican management had been working towards a vote by itself school sports bill, often known as the SCORE Act, earlier than the Congressional Black Caucus introduced its unanimous opposition.
Still, supporters on Thursday touted the committee motion as an enormous step ahead.
“Today we are proving that we are resilient in keeping this product moving,” Cantwell mentioned.
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AP National Writer Eddie Pells in Southampton, N.Y., contributed to this report.
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Follow the AP’s protection of faculty sports at https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports.