Joint statement from The University of Alabama and Auburn University regarding the Protect College Sports Act

4 weeks ago 10

The University of Alabama and Auburn University reason the Protect College Sports Act and impulse the Senate not to beforehand it successful its existent form.

The measure is presented arsenic a mode to “stabilize” assemblage athletics, but it would bash the other by perpetuating the precise instability it claims to cure done provisions that would:

Undermine implementation and enforcement of the rules established nether the House settlement, including by narrowing the disclosure and enforcement tools needed to clasp each programme to the aforesaid standards;
Allow for caller litigation undercutting efforts to make uniformity and consistency successful rulemaking and enforcement connected the nationalist level due to the fact that of inadequate antitrust extortion and preemption standards excessively constrictive to displace the existent patchwork of conflicting authorities laws, portion simultaneously creating caller forms of liability done expanded backstage rights of action;
Establish an expansive national programme — reaching into roster decisions, crippled scheduling, and interior governance — to micromanage assemblage athletics; and
Advance private-equity interests, who basal to nett from a redistribution of media-rights revenue, by pressuring institutions to involuntarily excavation media rights successful a mode that punishes occurrence alternatively than rewarding it.

Auburn University and The University of Alabama some admit Congress’s attraction to these challenges and stock the goals of creating opportunities for and protecting student-athletes, sustaining women’s and Olympic sports, and promoting just contention done a single, wide nationalist acceptable of rules. But this measure does not conscionable that standard. In its existent form, it solves small of what genuinely challenges assemblage athletics and leaves the cardinal questions to the courts, inviting the precise litigation it claims to prevent.

Alabama and Auburn basal acceptable to enactment with their Congressional delegation and Members of some parties connected a durable solution that protects student-athletes and preserves the quality of universities to vie and run responsibly.