[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


  ATHLETES AND INNOVATORS: ANALYZING NIL'S IMPACT ON ENTREPRENEURIAL 
                          COLLEGIATE ATHLETES

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
                             UNITED STATES
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION
                               __________

                              HEARING HELD
                           SEPTEMBER 20, 2023
                               __________

                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
                               

            Small Business Committee Document Number 118-026
             Available via the GPO Website: www.govinfo.gov
             
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
53-333                     WASHINGTON : 2023              
             
             
                   HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS

                    ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas, Chairman
                      BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri
                        PETE STAUBER, Minnesota
                        DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
                         BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas
                         MARIA SALAZAR, Florida
                          TRACEY MANN, Kansas
                           JAKE ELLZEY, Texas
                        MARC MOLINARO, New York
                         MARK ALFORD, Missouri
                           ELI CRANE, Arizona
                          AARON BEAN, Florida
                           WESLEY HUNT, Texas
                         NICK LALOTA, New York
               NYDIA VELAZQUEZ, New York, Ranking Member
                          JARED GOLDEN, Maine
                         KWEISI MFUME, Maryland
                        DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
                          GREG LANDSMAN, Ohio
                       MORGAN MCGARVEY, Kentucky
                  MARIE GLUESENKAMP PEREZ, Washington
                       HILLARY SCHOLTEN, Michigan
                        SHRI THANEDAR, Michigan
                          JUDY CHU, California
                         SHARICE DAVIDS, Kansas
                      CHRIS PAPPAS, New Hampshire

                  Ben Johnson, Majority Staff Director
                 Melissa Jung, Minority Staff Director

                            C O N T E N T S

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page
Hon. Roger Williams..............................................     1
Hon. Nydia Velazquez.............................................     3

                               WITNESSES

Mr. Jeremiah Donati, Director of Intercollegiate Athletics, Texas 
  Christian University, Fort Worth, TX...........................     7
Mr. Gene Smith, Senior Vice President & Wolfe Foundation Endowed 
  Athletic Director, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.....     9
Mr. Gino Torretta, Heisman Trophy Winner, 2-Time National 
  Champion, College Football Hall of Fame Inductee...............    10
Ms. Madeline Salamone, Vice President (Attorney & Athlete 
  Advocate), College Football Players Association (CFBPA), 
  Sarasota, FL, testifying on behalf of CFBPA....................    11

                                APPENDIX

Prepared Statements:
    Mr. Jeremiah Donati, Director of Intercollegiate Athletics, 
      Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX.................    39
    Mr. Gene Smith, Senior Vice President & Wolfe Foundation 
      Endowed Athletic Director, The Ohio State University, 
      Columbus, OH...............................................    41
    Mr. Gino Torretta, Heisman Trophy Winner, 2-Time National 
      Champion, College Football Hall of Fame Inductee...........    44
    Ms. Madeline Salamone, Vice President (Attorney & Athlete 
      Advocate), College Football Players Association (CFBPA), 
      Sarasota, FL, testifying on behalf of CFBPA................    46
Questions and Answers for the Record:
    Questions from Hon. Bean to Mr. Gene Smith and Answers from 
      Mr. Gene Smith.............................................    57
Additional Material for the Record:
    Article - Senator Ted Cruz - Austin American-Statesman.......    58
    H.R. 9698....................................................    61
    myNILpay, Inc................................................    67

 
  ATHLETES AND INNOVATORS: ANALYZING NIL'S IMPACT ON ENTREPRENEURIAL 
                          COLLEGIATE ATHLETICS

                              ----------                              


                     WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

                  House of Representatives,
               Committee on Small Business,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in Room 
2360, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Roger Williams 
[chairman of the Committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Williams, Stauber, Meuser, Van 
Duyne, Ellzey, Molinaro, Bean, LaLota, Velazquez, Mfume, 
Landsman, McGarvey, Scholten, Thanedar, Davids, and Pappas.
    Also Present: Representative Carey.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Before we get started today, I want to 
recognize Congressman Ellzey from the great State of Texas to 
say the Pledge of Allegiance and a short prayer.
    ALL. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States 
of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one 
nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for 
all.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Please bow.
    Mr. ELLZEY. Heavenly Father, we thank you today for the 
many blessings in our lives. We thank you for the opportunity 
to come together and respectfully share our thoughts and ideas 
for this dialogue. We pray for open hearts and open minds as we 
listen to each other and participate in this Committee hearing. 
May we engage in meaningful discussion today and remember to 
honor your will in all that we do. We ask these things in your 
name. Amen.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Also, I want to say, as we go through 
the hearing, you are going to see people coming, you are going 
to see people going. We have other hearings going on today, and 
Members are also Members of other committees. So when they get 
up and leave, don't let that alarm you. All right?
    Good morning. I now call the Committee on Small Business to 
order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the Committee at any time.
    I now recognize myself for my opening statement.
    Welcome to today's hearing which will focus on the impact 
of the NCAA's name, image, and likeness policy across college 
athletics. I would like to thank all of our witnesses here 
today for their time as we discuss this potential issue.
    For the first 115 years of the NCAA's governance over 
college sports, the individual college athlete had no legal 
right to earn a profit from their athletic performance and was 
entitled to nothing beyond room and board, meals, and 
education.
    In 2021, after a series of court cases forced the NCAA to 
change their policies, college athletics were allowed to 
monetize their name, image, and likeness overnight without 
affecting their playing eligibility, resulting in sanctions 
against their university.
    While we are still in the early years of this new NIL era, 
I think it is necessary to take a look at the positive and 
negative consequences of this drastic change in policy.
    To start with the obvious good, student-athletes can now 
profit during their time playing college sports. Of the roughly 
480,000 student-athletes, fewer than 2 percent go on to play 
professional sports, and in the first full year of NIL, there 
were almost $1 billion in deals made.
    NIL has opened up fantastic new opportunities for 
entrepreneurial college athletes to look for different avenues 
to partner with big and small businesses. This not only allows 
these students to earn money, but also allows them valuable 
business lessons that they can utilize after a time playing 
college sports. Whether it be negotiating contracts, navigating 
regulations, or being exposed by paying taxes for the very 
first time, all of these skills are extremely valuable as we 
build up a new generation of entrepreneurs.
    Additionally, small businesses have been able to utilize 
the student-athletes as a new way to market their business. 
While we often hear about high-profile athletes with their 
massive deals, this is not the norm. Many of these deals are 
made between small business in the community and athletes that 
do not have a national presence. This symbolic relationship 
helps strengthen the bonds that tie together many of these 
college towns.
    Now, while a lot of good has come from these changes for 
athletics, it has not come without some negative repercussions. 
Since there is no uniform set of regulations, individual States 
are stepping in and passing their own rules governing their 
universities. This patchwork approach is putting all the causes 
of students who compete in different States in an awkward 
position of choosing to comply with the State law, NCAA 
guidelines, or conference regulations that might be 
conflicting.
    I am glad that we have two athletic directors here today 
that understand the complexity that this is forcing their 
universities and students to navigate, who will be able to 
shine some light on what will happen if we continue that 
overreaching set of rules and regulations that everyone 
follows.
    Additionally, with so much money changing hands, there has 
been an increased number of bad actors looking to take 
advantage of these high school and college athletes. NBC News 
conducted an investigation where they reviewed dozens of NIL 
contracts offered to high school athletes. They describe many 
of the deals as exploitive, with commissions upwards of 40 
percent, along with complex fee structures meant to confuse the 
athlete. In one instance, the contract was put in front of the 
student was simply a $100,000 loan.
    While I am leery whether the federal government will be 
able to step in and to stop some of these bad actors, I think 
it is important to bring attention to this side of the issue to 
show that there is real damage being done to these kids when 
promises are being made but not kept. Without transparency 
surrounding these deals, it is hard to know who is truly 
working in the best interest of the student-athlete.
    I played college athletics myself and take this issue very 
personally. When I was in college, I received $10 a month that 
was called laundry money. I am not angry that the system has 
changed and think it has opened the door for many positive 
developments for student-athletes, but I am passionate about 
keeping the system functioning for generations to come so the 
students will be able to experience what it means to truly be a 
student-athlete.
    There are many reasons for having this hearing, but I want 
to list a few. I want to know how we can inspire student-
athletes to utilize the skills they learn navigating NIL to 
start their own small business. I want to hear about the best 
practices that universities are doing to teach the student-
athletes everything they need to know to take advantage of the 
amazing opportunity that wasn't available for millions of 
athletes that came before them.
    And I want to discuss the appropriate role for the NCAA 
moving forward. I want to know how collectives are helping 
student-athletes and allowing their schools to compete. I want 
to know how non-revenue generating sports will fare if all 
money gets funneled to the sports that make money. I want to 
know if Olympic and women sports are going to be negatively 
affected if revenue sharing models are implemented. And I want 
to understand how these changes are affecting graduation rates 
if student-athletes are constantly changing schools in search 
of the largest NIL deal. And I want to know how smaller market 
schools will fare if they are constantly having their players 
lured away by NIL deals. I want to know what we can do to stop 
predatory agents and bad actors from taking advantage of 
student-athletes.
    And, finally, I want to know the appropriate role that the 
federal government should play, if at all, in all of this.
    I greatly look forward to today's discussion, and I hope we 
will bring to light the different challenges and opportunities 
presented by the NIL. And it is my hope that all NIL policy 
changes are beneficial for student-athletes above all else.
    So before I yield to the Ranking Member, I would like to 
submit an op-ed from Senator Cruz on this issue into the 
record.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    I also ask unanimous consent to waive on Representative 
Mike Carey from Ohio for the purpose of giving an opening 
statement.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    With that, I yield to the distinguished Ranking Member from 
New York, Ms. Velazquez, for her opening statement.
    Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The success of America's college students has been top of 
mind ever since I began teaching courses at New York's Hunter 
College many years ago. The NCAA's 2021 decision to allow 
college athletes to make a living off their own names, images, 
and likeness, or NIL, was welcome news.
    College athletes from underserved communities, even with 
modest deals, could finally begin building savings on 
generational wealth. Many players suddenly had a way to cover 
rent and living costs. In recent years, the launch and growth 
of the multimillion dollar collegiate athletic market has 
raised question about the way that our society treats our 
college athletes.
    Stakeholders from across the political spectrum have voiced 
concerns about gender inequity, predatory agent practices, and 
the patchwork of confusing regulations. I am concerned with the 
growing trend of booster collectives steering the largest deal 
to the top athletes in football and men's basketball. Booster 
collectives, who often closely coordinate with individual 
schools, can undermine the gender equity progress made by Title 
IX and allow the collectives to shortchange our women athletes.
    The hastily drafted and inconsistent restrictions have 
suddenly thrown college athletes into their first business 
experience. To protect them, it is critical that these students 
are well equipped with resources, know-how, and a stable 
environment to succeed and build strong brands. Otherwise, we 
run the risk of distracting our students from their educations 
and endangering their financial well-being.
    Today is our chance to learn more about the opportunities 
and risks that name, image, and likeness have created for our 
college athletes so we can understand how best to support them.
    I look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses.
    And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you very much.
    I now recognize Representative Mike Carey from the great 
State of Ohio for his opening remarks.
    Mr. CAREY. I want to thank the Chairman, I want to thank 
the Ranking Member for giving me this opportunity to make 
remarks. NIL is an extremely important issue, and I appreciate 
the Small Business Committee for holding this very important 
hearing.
    Thank you to the witnesses for your time today. We have an 
impressive lineup of witnesses that includes Gene Smith, who is 
a good friend of mine and who has done a tremendous job leading 
``the'' Ohio State Athletic Department over the past 18 years. 
As some of you know, Gene has recently announced his 
retirement, and although we are sorry to see you go, I would 
like to congratulate you on an incredible career.
    Mr. SMITH. Thank you.
    Mr. CAREY. Being from Columbus, Ohio, which is the home of 
the The Ohio State University, I have taken great interest in 
the implementation of NIL in college sports, leading me, along 
with my dear friend and fellow Ohioan colleague, Greg Landsman, 
to introduce the Student-Athlete Level Playing Field Act.
    In addition to earning money to help support themselves and 
their families, NIL allows student-athletes to learn about 
personal finance, marketing, taxes, and business in general. 
All of the lessons learned through NIL will supplement their 
learning in the classroom and will help set them up for a life 
after college.
    This is not to say that there aren't problems with the 
current state of the NIL. Without the proper education and 
guidance, there is a potential for student-athletes to be taken 
advantage of. And by no means am I saying that predatory 
practices are commonplace in the NIL, but it would be 
disingenuous to say that they are nonexistent.
    Another problem is that numerous States have implemented 
conflicting NIL laws, therefore, making the landscape for the 
NIL hard to navigate for both the universities as well as our 
students.
    Congress needs to pass legislation that will create a 
federal standard for NIL, focused on protecting the recruitment 
process, increasing transparency in the marketplace, and 
implementing through enforcement mechanisms against those bad 
actors. This legislation, my legislation and Greg Landsman's, 
this legislation would include the prohibition of inducements, 
a registration requirement for agents, congressional oversight, 
and the establishment of a clearinghouse for NIL deals to be 
uploaded.
    And I look forward to working with my colleagues on passing 
legislation that would create one federal standard to even the 
playing field, protect our student-athletes and the future of 
all college athletics. I feel confident in a bipartisan way 
that the House will be able to pass NIL legislation this 
Congress.
    Listen, I just want to thank you for waiving me on the 
Committee today and for holding this important hearing.
    Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, I yield back.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you, Congressman.
    I will now introduce our witnesses. Our first witness here 
with us today is Jeremiah Donati. Mr. Donati is the director of 
intercollegiate athletics at Texas Christian University located 
in Fort Worth, Texas. Under him, the 2022-2023 season was the 
most successful in TCU's 150-year history. They were the only 
school to make it to the College Football Playoff national 
title game, College World Series, and the NCAA basketball 
tournament in the same academic year.
    While these are the most high-profile sports, TCU also saw 
success in a number of other sports with men's tennis, 
equestrian, rifle, and beach volleyball, all ranked number one 
in the nation over the course of the year.
    Prior to being appointed as director of intercollegiate 
athletics at TCU, Mr. Donati served as the Horned Frogs deputy 
athletic director. He attended the University of Puget Sound, 
earning his bachelor of arts in politics and government, then 
attended Whittier Law School where he earned his jurisprudence 
in sports and entertainment.
    Mr. Donati, thank you for being with us today, and we look 
forward to hearing from you.
    Our next witness here with us today is Mr. Gene Smith from 
a school called ``the'' school. I don't understand that. But, 
anyway, Mr. Smith is the senior vice president and athletic 
director at the The Ohio State University. Mr. Smith is only 
the eighth athletic director in Ohio State history and has had 
the third largest tenure, having served in the position since 
2005 and being promoted to senior vice president and Wolfe 
Foundation athletic director in May of 2016. Prior to his time 
at Ohio State, he served as athletic director at Arizona State 
University, Iowa State University, and Eastern Michigan 
University.
    Mr. Smith also serves in the NCAA NIL Working Group and is 
on the board of directors of the National Football Foundation, 
among others.
    Mr. Smith was a college athlete himself and attended the 
University of Notre Dame, where he received his bachelor's 
degree in business administration.
    Mr. Smith, thank you for joining us today, and we look 
forward to the conversation ahead.
    Mr. SMITH. Thank you.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Our next witness here with us today is 
Mr. Gino Torretta. Mr. Torretta is a Heisman Trophy winner and 
a two-time national champion, as well as a Member of the 
College Football Hall of Fame. Mr. Torretta attended the 
University of Miami where he played for the Miami Hurricanes 
football team, winning the national championship in 1989 as 
well as in 1991. He then went on to win the Heisman Trophy in 
1992. After his time attending the University of Miami, Mr. 
Torretta played for several teams in the NFL, including the 
Minnesota Vikings, Detroit Lions, and Seattle Seahawks.
    Following his time playing for the NFL, he joined Wachovia 
Securities as a senior financial advisor and is Chairman and 
CEO of Touchdown Radio. Mr. Torretta graduated from the 
University of Miami with a degree in business management.
    Mr. Torretta, thank you for joining us today, and we look 
forward to discussing this important topic with you.
    Mr. TORRETTA. Thank you.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. I now recognize the Ranking Member from 
New York, Ms. Velazquez, to briefly introduce our last witness 
appearing before us today.
    Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I would like to welcome Maddie Salamone, the Vice President 
of the College Football Players Association. Ms. Salamone is an 
attorney and college athlete advocate. In her college years, 
she played lacrosse for Duke University and entered her first 
year ranked number six nationwide by Inside Lacrosse. However, 
her college career also involved many battles with injuries, 
resulting in three knee surgeries. These challenges gave her a 
deep understanding of the physical, mental, and emotional 
issues that many college athletes endure.
    Ms. Salamone also Chaired the NCAA's Division I Student-
Athlete Advisory Committee, serving on rules, legislative, and 
leadership groups. Her tireless advocacy led to the granting of 
voting power for college athletes at all levels of NCAA's 
governance. As an attorney she has represented college athletes 
on matters related to athletic eligibility, scholarship 
appeals, abuse, restricted transfer, and mental health issues.
    Ms. Salamone holds a bachelor's degree in public policy 
from Duke University and a juris doctorate from the University 
of North Carolina School of Law.
    Welcome, and thank you.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you. And we appreciate all of you 
being here today.
    So before recognizing the witnesses, I would like to remind 
them that their oral testimony is restricted to 5 minutes in 
length. If you see the light turn red in front of you, it means 
your 5 minutes have concluded and you should wrap up your time.
    With that, I now recognize Mr. Donati for his 5-minute 
opening remarks.

STATEMENTS OF MR. JEREMIAH DONATI, DIRECTOR OF INTERCOLLEGIATE 
ATHLETICS, TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY (TCU); MR. EUGENE (GENE) 
    SMITH, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT & WOLFE FOUNDATION ENDOWED 
 ATHLETIC, DIRECTOR, THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY (OSU); MR. GINO 
TORRETTA, HEISMAN TROPHY WINNER AND TWO-TIME NATIONAL CHAMPION, 
 MEMBER OF THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME; AND MS. MADELINE 
     (MADDIE) SALAMONE, VICE PRESIDENT (ATTORNEY & ATHLETE 
    ADVOCATE), COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYERS ASSOCIATION (CFPBA)

                  STATEMENT OF JEREMIAH DONATI

    Mr. DONATI. Chairman Williams, Ranking Member Velazquez, 
and distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for 
allowing me to be here today.
    As someone who is passionate about college athletics and 
the opportunity to positively impact young people's lives, it 
is an honor to testify before you at a time of great change in 
our industry. Not since the creation and implementation of 
Title IX over 50 years ago have we seen such changes of this 
magnitude. It is my hope that any experiences I can draw from 
may be helpful as we collectively seek solutions to very 
complicated issues in front of us, none larger than NIL.
    I have over 15 years of experience working in college 
athletics, and I have been the athletics director at TCU for 
the past 6 years. I also have experience working in the sports 
agency business representing the interests of professional 
athletes and coaches. I believe these experiences have given me 
a unique perspective on many aspects of our business and 
especially NIL.
    The concept of allowing student-athletes to receive 
compensation for the use of their NIL makes great sense. After 
all, the vast majority of college student-athletes will not 
play professionally, and it only seems fair that they should be 
able to monetize their skills and talents.
    In 2021, when NIL became permissible, student-athletes 
could now enjoy the same rights as ordinary college students. 
Overnight they became entrepreneurs, and almost immediately we 
began seeing them signing endorsement deals with companies and 
products. Other NIL activities soon followed: autograph 
signings, personal appearances, and community services work, 
for example. In many cases it became apparent that they were 
using this additional income to better support their families. 
This is a reality for some many of our young people that I 
believe is often overlooked and is another reason why NIL has 
been very beneficial.
    But simply putting money in the pockets of student-athletes 
is not the only value that NIL brings to their lives. There is 
a tremendous opportunity to educate and give student-athletes a 
set of tools more valuable than any NIL payment. Following 
NIL's enactment, many athletics departments, including TCU's, 
unveiled educational programs focused on financial literacy, 
contract negotiation, business formation, entrepreneurship, 
brand management, social media promotion, and taxation.
    Like others, we saw this opportunity to further our mission 
and formed a partnership between the athletics department and 
the business school to educate student-athletes on these key 
aspects of entrepreneurship. To illustrate our commitment we 
created an endowed professorship in support of NIL education, 
created courses for credit, office hours of business school 
faculty, and also dedicated a football suite in the stadium and 
converted its day-to-day use for the teaching and instruction 
of NIL entrepreneurship.
    At TCU we currently support 22 sports and over 550 student-
athletes. To date, over half of our student-athletes have 
reported NIL deals. While football, basketball, and baseball 
have dominated national NIL headlines, I have been encouraged 
to see many other sports at TCU, especially women's sports, 
participating at a much higher level than anticipated.
    Despite the positives that have come from NIL, it has also 
come with a significant number of challenges. From the outset, 
the lack of uniformity has caused confusion amongst NCAA 
Members, respected donor bases, and student-athletes. NIL was 
implemented without the proper guardrails or mechanisms 
necessary to effectively manage these changes and, 
unfortunately, none of these shortcomings have improved, and 
the legal challenges facing the NCAA have made it difficult to 
find sustainable solutions.
    Bad actors or those who break the rules and exploit 
student-athletes for their own personal gain, pay-to-play from 
third parties, recruiting and transfer portal inducements are 
among the unintended consequences that have largely gone 
unchecked to date. We now find ourselves in a wild wild west 
environment across college athletics with little 
accountability.
    Sadly, there are countless stories of student-athletes and 
their families being exploited, deceived, and harmed for 
others' personal gain in these NIL pursuits. And while NIL 
collectives have provided universities with an efficient tool 
to fulfill NIL opportunities from donor support, the governance 
and oversight of these organizations has been inconsistent and 
in desperate need of uniform oversight.
    The good news is that there are solutions available. 
Recently, we have seen progress from federal legislative bills 
and discussion drafts. I know I am not alone in my belief that 
Congress does have the power to bring uniformity, transparency, 
and fairness to the administration of NIL through enacting 
legislation that should include, one, agent oversight; two, 
standardized contracts; three, a national clearinghouse or 
registry; four, elimination of inducements and pay for play; 
and, five, rule enforcement mechanisms.
    I speak for my athletic director colleagues when I say that 
the current model is not sustainable and that we all desire to 
see student-athletes competing under the same fundamental and 
enforceable rules. I strongly encourage this Committee and 
other Members of the House to support legislation that will 
help provide sustainable solutions to NIL while preserving the 
opportunity for student-athletes to financially benefit from 
their skills and talents during their college careers.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today, 
and I am happy to answer any questions you have.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you.
    And I now recognize Mr. Smith for his 5-minute opening 
remarks.

                STATEMENT OF EUGENE (GENE) SMITH

    Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Chairman Williams and Ranking 
Member----
    Mr. BEAN. Your microphone, Mr. Smith.
    Mr. SMITH. Sorry.
    Thank you, Chairman Williams and Ranking Member Velazquez 
and distinguished Members of the Committee. Thank you for the 
opportunity to testify today. I will try not to be repetitious. 
I reduced my opening comments significantly as a result of what 
has been said.
    At Ohio State we have 36 athletic programs and more than a 
thousand student-athletes. We are committed to providing our 
athletes what they need to grow academically, athletically, and 
socially, and graduate with skills that transfer to success in 
life. We are focused on recruitment to career, which is 
evidenced by our over 95 percent of our graduating seniors 
moving right into jobs, graduate school, or professional 
sports.
    I significantly believe that NIL is beneficial to the 
student-athlete experience and has been more successful than 
portrayed. It was intended to allow student-athletes to enjoy 
the same privileges that other students on our campuses have, 
including the ability to monetize their personal brand or 
business acumen.
    NIL is a great educational tool, as my colleagues share. 
Student-athletes learn about a host of important 
entrepreneurial skills, such as fiscal responsibility, income 
tax management, personal brand development, and marketing. I 
believe the lessons learned from NIL further strengthen the 
holistic development of a young person and fills his or her 
toolbox for success in life.
    Our mission at Ohio State related to NIL is to inspire 
entrepreneurial and innovative thinking and ensure that 
student-athletes have the resources to create, leverage, and 
promote their personal brand. Over 420 of our student-athletes 
have at least one NIL deal. They have made over 2,000 NIL deals 
among all sports, with football and women's volleyball 
attracting the most.
    Not all student-athletes are on full scholarships. In fact, 
most Olympic sport student-athletes are on partial 
scholarships. Historically, many partial scholarship student-
athletes graduated with debt. NIL opportunities offer the 
opportunity to possibly mitigate that debt.
    NIL implementation hasn't been without challenges, as has 
already been stated, so I won't go through my speeches on that.
    Since institutions cannot manage NIL on behalf of student-
athletes, collectives have formed, largely 501(c)(3)s, with the 
intent of soliciting funds from passionate fans in developing 
NIL deals. As a result of an IRS interpretation, many 
collectives are now shifting to limited liability corporations. 
In many markets, the efforts of the LLCs are in direct 
competition with athletic departments. While these efforts for 
sure are beneficial to student-athletes in the short run, 
athletic directors are now finding themselves making funding 
decisions based upon declining income streams which could in 
turn hurt our student-athletes in the future.
    As has been stated, many States have created legislation to 
support their institutions' NIL activities, but there is no 
uniformity to these State laws. As you all know, we do not have 
a federal law regarding NIL.
    NIL offers tremendous opportunities for student-athletes to 
learn and grow their resources; however, protections need to be 
put in place. Like my colleague, I believe Congress needs to 
enact NIL legislation as soon as possible.
    An effective bill, in my opinion, should include: A 
national NIL standard. NIL agent registration. You commented on 
the bad actors. There are great agents out there, but there are 
some unscrupulous characters who are taking advantage of young 
people.
    Standard NIL contracts. Prohibition of inducements. The 
difference between athletics at our level and the pro sports is 
we recruit. We do not draft. Draft makes it impossible for the 
bad actors to enter that space like they do in our space.
    An NIL public registry to bring transparency to the 
marketplace. No other industry doesn't have a marketplace where 
you can actually evaluate the marketplace and make good 
decisions as you move forward in your business.
    And strong enforcement measures.
    Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify. I 
appreciate it. Thank you.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you very much.
    And now I recognize Mr. Torretta for his 5-minute opening 
remarks.

                   STATEMENT OF GINO TORRETTA

    Mr. TORRETTA. Chairman Williams, Ranking Member Velazquez, 
and distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the 
opportunity to testify today.
    As one who has been engaged in college athletics since 
1988, as an athlete and broadcaster, I am honored to provide 
you my insights on NIL and the impact on entrepreneurial 
athletes.
    Collegiate athletics afforded me unique opportunities to 
help me be where I am today. I grew up in a small town, Pinole, 
California. At 17 years old I decided to leave California and 
go to the University of Miami for a chance to compete for a 
national championship and earn a degree.
    I spent 5 years there, was a Member of two national 
championship teams. After my senior season in 1992, won the 
Maxwell Trophy, the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, the Walter 
Camp Player of the Year, Toyota Leadership Award, NCAA Top 6 
Award, and every award that I could win or you could win as a 
offensive player in collegiate football. Spent 5 years in the 
National Football League.
    But during my time as a Miami Hurricane, the NCAA had rules 
in place regarding transfers, and there was no ability to 
monetize name, image, and likeness. With the passage of NIL and 
the creation of the transfer portal, athletes are able to work, 
monetize their success in their sports, essentially allowing 
all athletes to create their own small business and capitalize 
on their time competing in college.
    This NIL window provides athletes with a head start in 
earning and saving before graduation and entrance into their 
chosen professional field, which for the majority will not be 
in professional sports. These experiences will be beneficial in 
their lives going forward.
    In college athletics, one can always find examples of a 
player and/or institution not following the rules. When these 
rules have been broken in the past, it led to an athlete losing 
eligibility, schools being placed on probation, fines, bowl 
bans, et cetera. With the current NIL system, there is no 
standard set of rules. The NCAA lacks the enforcement teeth, 
and they only place guidelines on schools, and they are 
following State laws that are essentially different.
    Coaches in any sport do not devise game plans within a 
different set of rules. They create game plans to follow the 
rules, one set of rules that are set for all of them to follow. 
And because the NCAA has failed to issue one set of rules for 
these schools to follow, I believe it is important that 
Congress needs to step forward and give a level of the playing 
field across the board with all universities amongst all 
sports, male, female, football, basketball, baseball, 
gymnastics, whatever sport it is.
    And I think that is really why we are here today, to hear 
the testimony. And I, again, thank you for the opportunity, and 
I look forward to answering any questions you may have.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you very much.
    And I now recognize Ms. Salamone for her 5-minute opening 
remarks.

            STATEMENT OF MADELINE (MADDIE) SALAMONE

    Ms. SALAMONE. Chairman Williams, Ranking Member Velazquez, 
and Members of the House committee, thank you for having me 
here today.
    Our other vice president, Justin Falcinelli, is also in the 
audience today, and I just want to recognize him as well.
    My time as Chair of the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory 
Committee taught me that the only time there is real change was 
when the NCAA felt public pressure after media coverage 
revealed the truth of what was going on in college sports. This 
is the reason I continue to advocate for athletes, and I have 
become a leading voice for NCAA reform and college athletes' 
rights over the years, speaking out publicly, consulting with 
leaders and lawmakers across the country, and providing insight 
into the ongoing major issues within college sports.
    The Committee convened this hearing to discuss name, image, 
and likeness in college sports and its impact on 
entrepreneurial athletes. My understanding is that Members of 
this Committee are concerned about a number of news reports and 
the overall impact of NIL. Though I will also address the main 
topic at hand, the truth of the matter is that the continual 
discussion about NIL, antitrust exemptions, and even employment 
status of athletes are a distraction created by the NCAA and 
member schools and exacerbated by the media's constant coverage 
of the topic.
    The most important issues that must be addressed in college 
sports are the abuse, mistreatment, and lack of attention to 
player health and safety at the hands of coaches and support 
staff. Even in the wake of recent allegations of mistreatment 
that demonstrate a cultural issue within college sports, it is 
incredible how quickly the focus has shifted back to NIL being 
the most important issue at hand. No matter where we land with 
NIL, we will have failed college athletes if we continue to 
ignore the much more important issues of player health and 
well-being, which impacts players' lives both during and after 
college.
    The primary remedy for athlete mistreatment is to have 
external independent oversight by individuals who are not 
employed by the schools. Schools have repeatedly demonstrated 
that they can cannot be trusted to police themselves. There are 
countless stories of individuals who have reported problematic 
coaches and staff and are subsequently silenced, fired, or 
otherwise ignored and pushed out. It usually follows that the 
more powerful and successful a coach, the more people's jobs 
are at risk if they speak out and the harder schools will work 
to silence anyone making noise.
    For every scandal that has been made public, there are 
countless others that remain an open secret on campuses across 
the country. Players need accessible help they can trust with 
roles clearly defined. There must be independent oversight of 
practices, team meetings, and medical care. Players need access 
to individuals from whom they can seek advice and help without 
the fear that that individual break confidences and cause more 
harm. They need someone whose obligation is to them and not to 
the school, someone who can act as a mediator whenever 
necessary and advise players on the best course of action. And 
they must have independent authority to take appropriate action 
with the information once they have it, including the ability 
to investigate reported issues and bring issues to the 
attention of the administration without risking their jobs. 
Those individuals need to be trained to handle confidential 
information and exercise discretion and tact in addressing 
matters.
    I hope we get a chance to discuss these very important and 
more pressing matters of college athlete health, safety, and 
welfare during this hearing.
    What is interesting to me about the reason we are all here 
today is that we are discussing NIL as if it is a new, 
complicated subject, but it really isn't. Nothing about this 
area of the law is new, only how it applies to college 
athletes. It is really just the right of publicity, which is 
another way of describing a person's right to control the 
commercial use of their identity and image.
    For years, the names and likenesses of professional 
athletes, models, actors, and artists have been used to promote 
and endorse products and services or to raise awareness about 
an issue. Past NCAA rules were simply preventing athletes from 
exercising the same rights already available to everyone else.
    Now something we don't talk about is the additional 
benefits NIL actually gives beyond the financial. In addition 
to the nearly limitless entrepreneurial opportunities that 
athletes have and can now pursue, NIL has tremendous 
educational value as well. Athletes are developing skills that 
are directly applicable to the modern job market, including 
content creation, direct sales, promotions, contract 
negotiation, brand development and management, and social 
media.
    Athletes more than ever are encouraged to think about what 
they want to do after their playing days are over and to start 
setting themselves up for the future they want while they are 
in school. Previous generations of athletes had nowhere near 
the same opportunities to gain real-world experience or prepare 
for their futures as current athletes.
    I outlined in my written testimony areas where the NIL 
space could be improved for college athletes, particularly 
around education, assistance with review of contracts, and 
agent regulation. But I believe these are relatively minor 
concerns within the overall landscape of college sports reform.
    As I have discussed, it is time to finally focus on the big 
picture in college sports. We cannot allow any more athletes to 
be negatively impacted by issues that are so preventable with 
the right oversight. Schools must be required to direct 
spending towards resources that will address the biggest issues 
these students are faced with, which is their mental and 
physical health. These issues have the potential to negatively 
impact the rest of their lives, way beyond college.
    With the influx of revenue from the college football 
playoff expansion, in addition to revenue pouring in from 
massive media rates deals----
    Chairman WILLIAMS. The witness' time is up.
    Ms. SALAMONE. Apologies. Thank you.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you.
    I now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
    My first question will be to Mr. Donati. There has been a 
lot of concern about the patchwork regulatory framework that 
student-athletes need to navigate in order to play by the new 
rules. In addition to the NCAA policy, students have to abide 
by State law as well as rules set by their school and their 
conference.
    Some have asked for a federal solution to this problem in 
order to simplify compliance. Now, while I agree that a uniform 
standard would provide certainty so that everyone is playing by 
the same rules, finding that appropriate solution is a 
difficult task. So my question is: What do you think the role 
of the federal government should have in the NIL space, if any?
    Mr. DONATI. Well, I would say it would be to work with the 
NCAA. I don't think any of my colleagues or I expect the 
federal government to supplant the NCAA, but the nature of NIL, 
the complexities that come with it--and you mentioned the 
patchwork State laws have made this unmanageable. And so my 
colleague, Mr. Smith, and I believe the federal government can 
be involved in a number of ways.
    You mentioned the agent issue. I think that is an easy one 
to address. I think there is a need for a national 
clearinghouse or transparency into these deals that I think the 
federal government can be involved with. And then the big 
question regarding the NCAA is how you enforce these rules, and 
I think that the federal government could play a major part 
there as well.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. With the time remaining, Mr. Smith, 
would you like to add to that?
    Mr. SMITH. Yeah, I would agree with my colleague that those 
are the areas where the federal government can help the most. 
But the single most important element, in my view, is the 
inconsistency across the country relative to State laws.
    The NCAA, even if we had the ability or the model to come 
up and address the other issues, I think it would be difficult 
for the NCAA to come up with a strategy to create a level 
playing field across this country when it comes to the multiple 
State laws. I believe it is 18 States that have State laws that 
are different today. So I think we certainly need help in that 
particular area.
    And then my second one is around agents. I will just refer 
directly to what Ms. Salamone said. Student-athletes are being 
taken advantage of, and that is saddening. It is sickening to 
read some of the reports where we allow all the unscrupulous 
characters to enter the space--and you refer to as bad actors--
and ultimately take advantage of families and young people, 
particularly people from disadvantaged environments. So that 
area is one that I think the federal government can help us in, 
big time.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. All right. Thank you.
    The first year of the NIL era saw nearly a billion dollars' 
worth of deals, and there is nothing to hint that this number 
is slowing down anytime soon. The explosion of money and lack 
of uniform guardrails has led to what some describe as 
America's new wild west, and we have heard that today. 
Unfortunately, there are some bad actors that are exploiting 
the system at the expense of young athletes.
    We have heard horror stories, such as contracts giving a 
company the right to use an athlete's name and image in 
perpetuity for their brand. And one student-athlete moved from 
Georgia to California on an NIL promise, only to be suspended 
by California governing bodies and suspended from playing for a 
year. Further, a recent lawsuit filed by a former University of 
Florida athlete alleged that a predatory loan was disguised as 
an NIL deal that included turning over 15 percent of any future 
professional football earnings.
    So, Mr. Smith, my question to you: What can be done to 
improve NIL's guardrails to ensure that student-athletes are 
not being taken advantage of by these bad actors?
    Mr. SMITH. Yeah, I think, again, that is where law needs to 
come into play. And those people who take advantage of--in 
particular the one you mentioned, the Florida student-athlete, 
who now is looking at a lawsuit where he has signed to pay 16 
percent of his future earnings to a collective, that requires 
national law. That is not something that the NCAA can deal 
with.
    So, in my view, you know, we need governmental help in that 
particular space.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Okay. Thank you.
    Real quick, Mr. Torretta, you have got one of the most 
impressive resumes any college football player could dream of. 
Can you walk through real quick through your time playing 
football at Miami, from your first start to winning the Heisman 
Trophy, and describe to us how your story might have played out 
differently in NIL?
    Mr. TORRETTA. Well, in 1989, we had an injury, so I started 
four games in the middle of our national championship year, 
broke the school record for passing in my second start, which 
is still considered QBU, I think. And at the end of the four 
games, I went back to the bench and knew I was going to sit the 
bench the following season.
    So in today's day and age of a transfer portal, I would 
have probably looked elsewhere, because back when I was in 
school, you had to sit out a full season. There would have 
probably been inducements of NIL money of come to whatever 
school, pick your school. And my story probably doesn't turn 
out like it has today.
    So for the good of NIL and transfer portal, there is 
probably also the bad. The grass is not always greener on the 
other side.
    I think in all of these questions, it is going to take an 
adult to step forward and to protect--I will call these kids, 
because from 18 to 22, you are still a kid in my eyes. And, you 
know, whether that is Congress or the NCAA, an adult needs to 
step forward, put up some guardrails, and give some enforcement 
teeth to actual rules.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. All right. Thank you very much.
    I now recognize the Ranking Member for 5 minutes of 
questions.
    Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ms. Salamone, as you wrote in your testimony, many booster 
collectives tend to steer NIL deals primarily to male college 
athletes. Could you confirm for us whether this distribution is 
proportionate among men and women?
    Ms. SALAMONE. I would say that primarily the collectives 
are steering money towards football athletes over every other 
sport, and so that is disproportionately male as compared to 
female.
    You know, I had someone explain a collective to me in, I 
thought, a very good way, and it was described as a fan club 
and that these collectives basically operate at the behest of 
the coaches to direct funds to specific players that they sort 
of identify.
    Ms. VELAZQUEZ. This is happening because booster 
collectives aren't regulated by Title IX, correct?
    Ms. SALAMONE. In part. I think that the collectives came 
about as a result of schools not wanting to deal with the funds 
because they were concerned about having to comply with Title 
IX, and this is sort of a workaround. I think the relationship 
is so closely knit at this point that Title IX should apply to 
collective funds.
    Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Would you agree that booster collectives who 
coordinate closely with their school ought to be considered 
extensions of their school outright and, therefore, subject to 
Title IX regulations?
    Ms. SALAMONE. Yes. Collectives at this point effectively 
are extensions of the schools.
    Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Ms. Salamone, some stakeholders worry that 
the predominance of social media influencing deals in the NIL 
market for women college athletes is incentivizing them to post 
suggestive content.
    Ms. SALAMONE. So I think that this is maybe a greater 
societal issue. I know that there are certainly athletes--it is 
an issue with female athletes feeling pressure to post certain 
types of posts that might gain more attention. I think that 
what that comes down to is a greater need for messaging around 
that and conversations with female athletes in particular 
about, I think, staying authentic, doing things that make you 
feel comfortable, not feeling pressured by an agent or anybody 
else.
    You know, there are a lot of social media branding 
specialists that are encouraging athletes to do all sorts of 
things on social media, and I think it is becoming a pressure, 
and I think that schools should step in and kind of remind 
athletes that they should not feel added pressure to do those 
things.
    But, again, I think females in society on social media feel 
the same pressure. I don't think that it is unique to female 
athletes at this point. So that is maybe a greater debate about 
whether we feel comfortable with, I think, the pressures on 
women in general to post certain posts on social media if that 
is not what they are comfortable with.
    Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Race and sexual orientation play immense 
roles in this dynamic, as I see it. Is there a correlation 
between successful female NIL earners and more traditional race 
and sexual orientation identification?
    Ms. SALAMONE. So I think what you are asking is are they 
feeling pressured because they see the success of other people 
making money on social media. Certainly. And, again, I will go 
back to I think that is a greater pressure that content 
creators in general feel when they see things that are working 
for other content creators. And I think it goes back to 
athletes needing to be reminded to stay true to themselves, not 
to feel the pressure, to focus on their sports. But they are 
going to feel it. They are part of--this new generation, they 
grew up in the social media world. It is a reality. They have a 
different mindset than we do when it comes to that. And so that 
has to be taken into consideration. But certainly I think that 
when anybody sees what someone else is doing as being 
successful, they are inclined to want to copy that.
    Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you.
    You placed great emphasis in your testimony upon the need 
to prioritize health, safety, and well-being for college 
athletes and any congressional action in this space. Can you 
explain why this is critical to the success of the NIL 
businesses?
    Ms. SALAMONE. Yes. If an athlete is being abused, if they 
are mentally suffering, just like any normal person in 
business, if they are not taking care of themselves and living 
a well-balanced life being taken care of, their businesses are 
going to suffer. They go hand-in-hand.
    Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Based on your experience, can you tell me 
and the Committee if colleges are putting resources into 
helping athletes?
    Ms. SALAMONE. I think that many schools are putting 
resources. I think there is a tremendous gap in the education, 
and I will touch on my fellow panelists here. I think one of 
the ways that we can address some of the contractual issues and 
the agent issues is to educate about things to look for in 
contracts, what kind of practices to watch out for and how to 
guard against them.
    Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you.
    I now recognize Representative Meuser from the great State 
of Pennsylvania for 5 minutes.
    Mr. MEUSER. I thank the Chairman very much.
    Gentlemen, lady, thanks for being with us. It is always 
enjoyable, it seems, to talk about football, particularly in 
the middle of the day or late morning on a Wednesday. But these 
are some pretty important subjects we have got here, and the 
idea of us having congressional legislation seems to be agreed 
upon by all.
    So when I conclude, I am going to ask you, who has got the 
plan? You clearly are all the specialists in this and have 
great experiences and tenure, but, you know, think about that a 
little bit. Who else do we go to for the gaining and 
developing, creating the right plan moving forward?
    Because the thing is that I think no one disagrees that a 
student-athlete--I have always felt, I mean, from the days of 
Tim Tebow, for instance, right, he was great in college and 
made it to the NFL, but the idea that he couldn't get a Nike 
contract, whatever it might be, never made any sense to me.
    My son actually plays at Bucknell, 1A. They have a good 
time. But the idea that they couldn't use their name for, say, 
a local business or car dealership perhaps to help promote 
never really made any sense, kind of having a side job.
    But this has gone further, right? Now we have alumni 
basically coming together, my understanding, putting millions 
of dollars into a pot or some schools maybe tens of thousands, 
where one is tens of millions, and doling that out to gain the 
best quarterbacks, the best team possible with contractors that 
really have no regulations or jurisdiction, where some States 
are putting themselves in the middle of it.
    So the first question is: Do you think we have got a 
problem just with that amount of money going for this purpose, 
yet the revenues from the football cannot be used--you know, 
for the football programs cannot be used. Are we--with that 
funding from generous donors or donors who just want to win 
football games perhaps, but either way, would it be going 
elsewhere? That is question number one. I mean, is it being 
pulled from other funding that would build a library perhaps, 
Mr. Donati?
    Mr. DONATI. Absolutely, to answer your question directly. 
The money that is being put into NIL is--there are donors 
making a decision of how they are going to best support the 
university, whether it is through supporting NIL with the 
student-athletes or funding a building or a scholarship. And so 
we are seeing that in real time, and we are having to--as 
athletic directors having to make adjustments of our budget 
accordingly.
    Mr. MEUSER. Okay. Okay. So that is a big yes.
    Mr. Smith--sorry, my glasses aren't working so great here--
do you agree with that?
    Mr. SMITH. Yeah, I agree with that. And I think one thing 
we have to recognize is that there are over 350 Division I 
schools in this country, and the diversity in how they are 
financed is significantly different. Many of the schools that 
we are blessed to have in our country who educate our children, 
the athletic departments are funded through the university 
general funds or student fees. They are not like Ohio State. 
You know, we generate $250 million externally through our 
revenue generation plan which covers our expenses, and we 
contribute dollars back to the institution. So we are a 
different beast.
    Part of the realities is that we are listening to comments 
about places that don't do it right. We educate our student-
athletes. We do not have the same issues relative to 
fundraising that my colleague mentioned, because our donors are 
going to support us at the end of the day.
    So the diversity in our business is significant. And so I 
think we need to recognize that and pay attention to that 
because, in my view, the plan is represented in some of the 
bills that have been offered, support--well, Mike Carey's bill 
significantly, but there are other plans that the NCAA is 
working on that I think, you know, need to be put in place to 
allow more institutional involvement. It gets to the Title IX 
question.
    Mr. MEUSER. Yeah.
    Mr. SMITH. At the end of the day, I am going to make sure 
we meet Title IX. That is not some outside entity that is going 
to make that determination.
    So it is a long speech to your question.
    Mr. MEUSER. No, I appreciate it.
    Mr. SMITH. But that is the reality.
    Mr. MEUSER. I will just go to Mr. Torretta real fast, same 
question.
    Mr. TORRETTA. I would just say under the current system the 
universities are getting free labor still, because the 
additional cash is coming from boosters to the players and the 
student-athletes. So I think that is where--you know, is it a 
percentage of revenue to the student-athletes? But under the 
current system, really, the student-athlete doesn't cost the 
university any more.
    Mr. MEUSER. I am out of time. I would like to follow up and 
ask you what problems are created from that, some unintended 
consequences.
    But I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you.
    I now recognize Representative McGarvey from the great 
State of Kentucky for 5 few minutes.
    Mr. MCGARVEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And being from Kentucky, we love our college sports, so 
this is of particular interest to me. I am going to say, 
though, this is the first time on our Committee I have seen an 
organization come forward before us who doesn't have its act 
together and is so inept that they are actually asking the 
government to take over what is going on and regulate this.
    You know, I was the senate minority leader in the State of 
Kentucky. I was the first person to introduce the name, image, 
and likeness bill in Kentucky. I worked with our university to 
author it. Passed it. Within 6 months it was basically 
obsolete. We had good things in their, including registry of 
agents which you are talking about. We had good things in their 
protecting the players. I am very much about the players, their 
safety, their well-being.
    We had a provision in there which I liked that I haven't 
heard anybody talk about today, which is if you sign the 
contract as a student-athlete in college, it was void if you 
wanted it to be when you went professional. Therefore, you 
know, we have got some 17-, 18-year-old kids who are signing up 
for contracts when they go to college. If they are one and done 
in basketball, they are not obligated to that after they go. I 
think there is some good things we can do.
    But here's the thing, right? The NCAA is the best 
institution to handle this. The next best institution is us. 
The last institution are your State legislatures, which I am a 
State legislator at heart. I love what they do. But you saw an 
arms race and this patchwork of laws which has led us to being 
hear today.
    But here is my warning. Just like what we did in Kentucky, 
when you needed a change, you have got to go back to the State 
legislature. When you all are asking the United States 
Government where it will literally take an act of Congress to 
change something once we let it out loose in the wild, is the 
NCAA so inept right now that this is something Congress must 
legislate?
    Mr. TORRETTA. Somebody needs to step forward, and 
apparently they are not stepping forward to create some--like, 
I mean, essentially what we all want is a level playing field 
amongst TCU, Ohio State, Miami, Kentucky, Texas where the 
athletes and athletic departments are playing by the same set 
of rules. I mean, like--you know, you line up on Saturday. You 
know there is going to be 11 on defense. Is Kentucky going to 
play with 12 without the same set of rules as Florida?
    So that is what I think everybody wants to protect, you 
know, the games that they all play. And it is apparent the NCAA 
isn't going to step forward, so I think that is why we are here 
to say, maybe Congress can, you know, put the impetus on the 
NCAA to say here are things that need to happen; do it.
    Mr. MCGARVEY. And I appreciate that. And I will take some 
of the silence as an answer. And so I think we do need to step 
forward, and we have got to make sure that we are protecting 
players, that we are creating that level playing field, that it 
is a national standard. We are missing the national standard 
right now. That is something we need.
    Ms. Salamone, I have a question for you specifically. How 
can we use a name, image, and likeness? If we are going to do 
this, let's do it. Let's do it right. Let's do it for the 
players. Let's not try to come back here and fix it. How do we 
improve player health and safety standards including in the 
years after their careers are over?
    Ms. SALAMONE. I mean, I think that we start with 
independent oversight, as I mentioned in my testimony 
previously, and you need organization of players. They need to 
be able to collectively bargain. That is what we are trying to 
do at the College Football Players Association. I think it 
would take care of a lot of the issues that the NCAA is 
concerned with when it comes to issues of antitrust, because if 
players are given a seat at the table and are able to talk 
about the issues that are most important, nobody has to guess. 
And legislators don't have to come in and create legislation 
that really doesn't quite hit on the issues that actually 
matter to players. The only way to know that is to talk to the 
players themselves. So that is the answer.
    Mr. MCGARVEY. I appreciate that. And, you know, I wish we 
had a ton more time because this is an important topic. There 
are a lot of things we have to deal with, including the fact 
that the transfer portal has basically become an extortion 
market as we see it today. How do we make this so it is right?
    Regards to student-athlete well-being, though--and one 
thing about athlete well-being, I see this conference 
realignment stuff going on right now. If you have got an 
athlete at the University of Louisville who is flying now to 
Cal or to Stanford, how does that impact player well-being? 
What does that do for player athletes?
    Ms. SALAMONE. I mean, I will comment that I didn't go to 
Stanford specifically. I wouldn't go on a recruiting visit 
because for lacrosse it meant traveling so much to play anybody 
good at the time that I was in college. It has a tremendous--it 
adds--it means for most of the sports that don't have chartered 
flights, flights in the middle of the night. It is exhausting. 
It is going across time zones. Athletes can't get any work 
done. They are barely in class. You know, it doesn't make any 
sense. And the fan bases are then all over the place. It is 
actually fun to be able to go kind of local to play and have 
rivals that are nearby.
    So, I mean, it makes absolutely no sense to have coast-to-
coast conferences.
    Mr. MCGARVEY. Thank you.
    Unfortunately, I am out of time because I have got a lot 
more questions, as you guys can probably tell. I want to get 
this--I think we do have to step in. I think we do have to step 
up, and I want to make sure we get it right because you 
literally will have to get Congress to act again if you want to 
change something.
    Thank you, guys.
    I yield back.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you.
    I now recognize Representative Van Duyne from the great 
State of Texas for 5 minutes.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    And thank you to our witnesses for coming today.
    I just have a few questions. I did not go to a competitive 
athletic school. Mr. Meuser and I went to the same 
undergraduate school. We are not known for our football team.
    Fair statement?
    Mr. MEUSER. Fair. Very fair.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Can I just ask, though, how difficult will 
it be for smaller schools to be able to stay competitive when 
the larger schools can afford to pay athletes more?
    And I am not quite sure which of you would like to answer 
that question. But how? How are some of the smaller schools 
going to be able to compete with a school that can raise $250 
million like that and know that they are going to be able to do 
that?
    Mr. DONATI. Well, I will take that.
    Well, that is not new, right? I mean, The Ohio State 
University--did I say that right?
    Mr. SMITH. Yes.
    Mr. DONATI.--has always been one of the largest State 
institutions in our country, and so schools have found other 
ways to compete. I think what is different here is the amount 
of money that is going unchecked into the NIL world and to the 
NIL business.
    So it is a reality. It is a--but there are ways--there is a 
lot of talent in our country. So I don't--while there are some 
competitive inequities with the money, you know, I am more 
focused on the rules by which we are playing by and finding one 
set of rules. Because we had talked about the difference, the 
patchwork in State laws; those are providing the competitive 
inequities, in my opinion.
    So the money is--that is not new. There is going to be 
large schools with larger donor bases and alumni bases----
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Yeah.
    Mr. DONATI.--and smaller schools----
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Mr.----
    Mr. DONATI. Sorry.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Okay. So you are just saying it is not new.
    Mr. DONATI. Yeah.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Mr. Smith, do you have--nothing?
    Mr. SMITH. No, I agree. It is----
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Okay.
    Mr. SMITH.--not new. It is just a----
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. It is just another tool?
    Mr. SMITH. Yeah, it is just another tool.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Okay.
    Mr. SMITH. One of the challenges, using your words--if the 
institutions had this model and they were paying the money, 
then the challenges will be at those smaller schools, how do 
they afford to do it, even at their level, regardless of where 
we are.
    You know, if you are looking at the Mid-American 
Conference--and I know my colleagues are here from the Mid-
American Conference. If you look at the Mid-American 
Conference, those presidents will have to make a decision on 
whether or not they continue to fund athletics at the level 
that they have been funding them.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Uh-huh.
    Mr. SMITH. Because the majority of their money for those 
athletic programs comes from their general funds. Students on 
the campuses will have to decide whether they want to continue 
pay students' fees to support athletics, because, now you are 
paying the athletes that I go to school with?
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Yeah.
    Mr. SMITH. So there are a lot of dynamics at that level 
that will come into play if we end up there.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Speaking of dynamics, how difficult do you 
think it will be to coach students that are actually making 
more money than the coaches?
    Nobody wants to answer that one.
    Mr. TORRETTA. I don't think that is going to happen at Ohio 
State or TCU. So. That is all I am saying. If I may answer your 
question, ma'am, they can't, those smaller schools.
    But I would say this----
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Yeah?
    Mr. TORRETTA.--You know, if a school like Harvard, with the 
largest endowment in the world, wanted to really invest in 
their football program, they could probably spend as much as 
Gene.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Harvard beats my alma mater, by the way.
    Mr. DONATI. I would just say that I think our coaches 
recognize this is a different environment.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Okay.
    Mr. DONATI. So it hasn't been a challenge we have seen yet.
    Ms. SALAMONE. I would also add that I think that there 
needs to be mindset shift and the coaches need to get over 
their own egos when it comes to that and be encouraging their 
athletes to set themselves up for a future of success. That 
should be the focus.
    It is an educational institution that they are coaching at. 
If they want to coach in the pros, then they should do that. 
But that is not the role of a coaching college.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. So you don't think, though, that students 
would get more full of themselves if they were making a lot 
more money and being very difficult to coach? And still being 
students, as opposed to professional athletes----
    Ms. SALAMONE. They might very well be. But I think that if 
a coach demands the respect of their team, it doesn't matter 
how much the team is making. And I think that is the deeper 
issue, is that these coaches haven't figured that out.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. Okay.
    Quick question. Mr. Smith, can you explain what collectives 
are and the impact that they have had on college sports? And do 
you agree with Ms. Salamone's description as ``fan clubs''?
    Mr. SMITH. Yeah, I don't disagree with her description.
    You know, they emerged as 501(c)(3)s, and now they are 
switching to--a great deal--to LLCs. And they are creating 
activities and events and podcasts and things of that nature, 
with memberships and things of that nature.
    And then--but some of them are legitimately helping 
student-athletes connect with local businesses and are actually 
doing real good NIL work. But they are largely fan clubs, yes.
    Ms. VAN DUYNE. All right. Thank you.
    I yield back.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. I now recognize Representative Landsman 
from the great State of Ohio.
    Mr. LANDSMAN. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And thank you all for being here.
    As Mr. Carey said before he had to leave, also from Ohio, 
the two of us have a bipartisan bill, the student-athlete Level 
Playing Field Act, which I believe is straightforward and, you 
know, would be a win for this Congress.
    It creates the kind of structure and transparency that we 
have been talking about in this hearing. The three things that 
have come up--the national oversight, the national 
clearinghouse; making sure that folks who are part of these 
transactions, these agents, are registered; and that the deals 
are disclosed, that kind of transparency.
    Question for all of you: Thoughts on the bill? My hope is 
that we take this bill up as a Congress, that it gets passed, 
and it provides meaningful structure and transparency. I am 
just curious what your opinions are on those three aspects of 
the bill or the bill itself.
    Mr. DONATI. Well, I will take it first.
    Those were some of, I think, the critical aspects--and, 
first of all, thank you for bringing this forward. But those 
are some of the critical aspects that we are all looking for.
    Mr. LANDSMAN. Yeah.
    Mr. DONATI. So I commend you for bringing that forward. I 
would definitely support that.
    Mr. SMITH. Yeah, I concur. I thank you as well. I think the 
bill has all the elements that are needed to help us in this 
space, so I support it wholeheartedly. I think it is a good 
bill, and I believe many of my colleagues would as well.
    Mr. TORRETTA. I mean, I think transparency, registration is 
what the world needs, but I also think you need some 
enforcement. And who is going to do the enforcing? Is that 
going to be the NCAA? Is that--you know. If they are not going 
to step forward, then Congress has to step forward and say----
    Mr. LANDSMAN. Yeah.
    Mr. TORRETTA.--``You have to enforce it.''
    Mr. LANDSMAN. Yeah. Agreed.
    Ms. SALAMONE. Yeah, I would agree that I think some of the 
issues with the bills that I have seen are the mechanisms by 
which they accomplish the goals that they say. Because they are 
not bad goals, necessarily; it is just the ``how''----
    Mr. LANDSMAN. Yeah.
    Ms. SALAMONE.--and whether it really is more appropriate 
for that to happen through collective bargaining and figuring 
that out, some of these issues.
    Mr. LANDSMAN. Can you say more on that?
    Ms. SALAMONE. So some of the issues that are being 
addressed in many of these bills, it is like ``everything and 
the kitchen sink.'' And it is what I alluded to earlier, with 
legislators trying to put in things that they think will be a 
good idea and in practice work but may not actually address the 
deeper issues that athletes have and what they really want 
fixed.
    Mr. LANDSMAN. Yeah. Yeah.
    So, to that point, I mean, you talk about, rightfully so, 
the safety, health, the well-being of athletes being critical, 
most important, and supporting efforts to create structure, 
transparency in the NIL space, but to also appreciate that 
there are these other issues.
    This may be a dumb question. Should those be taken up 
separately? I mean, you know, I--or, how related are they?
    Ms. SALAMONE. I am generally of the opinion that they 
should be separate. I think that these bills are trying to do 
too much----
    Mr. LANDSMAN. Yeah.
    Ms. SALAMONE.--and they are ineffective and will not pass. 
So that is my opinion.
    Mr. LANDSMAN. And, then, on the health and safety piece----
    Ms. SALAMONE. Uh-huh.
    Mr. LANDSMAN.--I mean, it is, I would think, something very 
similar. I mean, it is national oversight.
    Ms. SALAMONE. Yeah. And those are deeper issues that 
require more attention. And I think that many of these bills 
have been kind of rushed through, and I think more thought 
needs to be given into the ``how''s of the bills.
    Mr. LANDSMAN. So, just as we wrap up, with a minute to go, 
this bill, I suspect, will get combined with others, but my 
hope is that we get something passed. It has been several years 
where we have been living in this Wild West world.
    The most important aspects, I am assuming, are the national 
oversight, the transparency, and then, ultimately, the right 
enforcement mechanism. Is that right? Wrong?
    Mr. DONATI. Yeah, absolutely. And I would just add, the 
agent oversight as well.
    Mr. LANDSMAN. Yeah. Yeah.
    Gene?
    Mr. SMITH. Agree.
    Mr. TORRETTA. Well, the other, inducements of a kid 
transferring from----
    Mr. LANDSMAN. Yeah.
    Mr. TORRETTA.--one institution to the other, and even 
inducing a 17-year-old to say where they are going to go to 
college, which is part of the whole problem.
    Ms. SALAMONE. I would add, to the inducements, though, I 
think that the NCAA can actually step in. And I think they have 
kind of abdicated the throne in an effort to get an antitrust 
exemption, rather than just enforcing the rules that they can 
enforce.
    Mr. LANDSMAN. My time has expired, but I appreciate you 
all. That is very helpful. Thank you all.
    I yield back.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. I will now recognize Representative 
Ellzey from the great State of Texas.
    Mr. ELLZEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all for being here today. This is an important 
hearing.
    And, you know, I don't know if the Chairman mentioned it or 
not, because he is always very humble about this, but he is in 
the TCU Hall of Fame. And I won't tell you what year that he 
got inducted.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Your time is up.
    Mr. ELLZEY. Okay.
    But, you know, he is great at telling stories about how it 
was, being drafted by the Braves and being a college athlete 
and how little money they made.
    My grandfather, Drew Ellis, was in the class of 1937 with 
Slingin' Sammy Baugh and was in the draft, 21st in the draft, 
in 1937. Played for the Eagles for 2 years, 1938 and 1939. Was 
cut short. Don't know why. He probably got injured.
    But, you know, as we talk about this subject, it is--how 
much could it have helped Roger? How much could it have helped 
my grandfather? How much can it help these young men and women 
that are going through this today.
    And I agree with the Chairman that we don't want Congress 
making the rules here, but it is clear that there needs to be 
some definite readjustment of how we do this. Because so many 
of these young men and women--I know at 18 I wouldn't have had 
any ability--or 20 or 22, 25--had any ability to handle the 
amount of massive money that these kids are dealing with.
    So I would just like to suggest and ask Director Donati: 
Having been an agent before and now being an athletic director, 
holistically, how do you guide these young men and women? What 
do you automatically do, but what do you think should be done 
system-wide, to ensure that these young men and women, who may 
not have any background or guidance from home or direction in 
their lives, learn how to manage that money and how to prepare 
themselves for the future, for the 2-year football player who 
suddenly doesn't have a degree, or much of one, and no ability 
to make a living after that.
    So they monetize their college years, but then they are out 
on the street, and then they are doing construction later on. 
We see it all the time in the pros.
    How are we going to do that with these young college 
students?
    Mr. DONATI. Well, it is to double-down on education. And 
that is a key aspect of this. And you heard my colleague bring 
it up, as well, as a Hall of Fame Chairman.
    One of the first things that we lead off our semester with, 
or lead out the school year with, is the NIL education. Because 
we realize that, in these transfer portal days, if students 
feel like they are misadvised or not given appropriate advice, 
they have other options, which I think is a good thing.
    So we take it very seriously, because they are--you know, 
one of the things that keeps me up at night is April 15th, 
because that is when taxes come due. And so we spend a lot of 
time with our young men and women to make sure that they have 
done the appropriate work, they are filing their taxes, and 
that they are not getting themselves in future trouble.
    So I would just say, we take this very seriously. I draw on 
my time from being an agent, part of the NFL PA here, when we 
were certified in Washington, D.C. There are rules in place in 
which you can weed out the bad actors. And so I think that kind 
of standard, that kind of uniform standard, at the federal 
level would do massive good in our world right now.
    Mr. ELLZEY. Okay. Thank you.
    Director Smith, you are from which OSU?
    Mr. SMITH. Would you like me to spell that for you?
    Mr. ELLZEY. Sorry. I had to.
    Mr. SMITH. I am on the way out, so I can--you know, be 
careful.
    Mr. ELLZEY. In deference to you, The Ohio State 
University----
    Mr. SMITH. Yes.
    Mr. ELLZEY.--are you all doing something similar to TCU?
    Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir. We do the same thing.
    But I want to address a little bit, kind of, nuance to your 
question.
    Mr. ELLZEY. Okay.
    Mr. SMITH. Let's be clear: We do a lot of education, all of 
our schools do, but it is the third party that impresses that 
individual. It is an ``uncle who is not an uncle'' that is very 
difficult for us to get to. And many of these deals are cut by 
them. And so that is a challenge that we have in our space and 
why we need help.
    Mr. ELLZEY. Do you know, would you have benefited from that 
kind of guidance?
    Mr. TORRETTA. Well, I think you read about it in 
professional baseball, basketball, football, all kinds of 
issues that you are talking about, where a player has made 
significant amounts of money and they weren't wise with it or 
they were taken advantage of. And I think that it is happening 
now to, like you said, a 17- to 21-year-old kid.
    And you can try to educate as much as possible, but, like 
Gene said, you may have somebody that is close to you, maybe a 
family member, that, you know, when money is involved, some 
decisions are made not in your best interest. And you try to 
protect and educate as best you can, but you are not going to 
have that in 100 percent of the cases that we are going to get 
rid of the bad actors, even with registration. The NFL has 
registration with financial advisors and players' agents, and 
there are still issues with people that are registered.
    So I think you can educate all you want and do what you 
can, and you hope that--you hope that they listen. Because even 
if you are 32 years old in the NFL making a lot of money, a lot 
of them, you know, some, they don't listen.
    Mr. ELLZEY. Thank you.
    Chairman, my time has expired. I yield back. Thank you.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you very much.
    I now recognize Representative Mfume from the great State 
of Maryland for 5 minutes.
    Mr. MFUME. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate 
the opportunity to be a part of this. I am glad we are dealing 
with it. And for some of us, we have been dealing with it for 
some time.
    But allow me, on a point of personal privilege, just to 
call the attention of the Chair and the Committee to the fact 
that we have been joined by Tom McMillen, who many of you will 
recall his great years at the University of Maryland, you will 
recall him as a Member of our 1972 U.S. Olympic team, and some 
of you will recall him as a Member of this body, having gotten 
elected in the 100th Congress.
    Tom, it is good to see you. Thank you for being back up on 
the Hill. Really good to have you.
    Mr. Chairman, I have been listening. I think there are two 
aspects that continue to come at me about what we are dealing 
with today. One is a police aspect of what has to be done. In 
other words, who is going to set the rules and enforce them.
    And then the other one is the information we heard from Ms. 
Salamone about, if I can use a better term, maybe prevention, 
the care of the athlete, what is going on and what is not going 
on, and why things seem to be as bad as they are in some 
respects.
    I spent 12 years on the Johns Hopkins Board of Trustees and 
then the last 30 on the Board of Regents at Morgan State 
University. And I can tell you from the public side and the 
private college side that colleges and universities really want 
guidance; they want information. And what they fear is 
litigation and liability, because there is so much that is not 
clear in many respects.
    Universities and colleges approach this in a diffuse 
manner, in a difficult manner, and definitely in a different 
kind of looking glass.
    So I know that there is some apprehension about Congress 
setting the law and setting the standard and enforcing it. But 
if somebody doesn't do it, it won't get done, and if it doesn't 
get done, things are going to happen.
    So I appreciate the discussions here that we have had about 
agent registration. I think we are all kind of in tune and on 
board with that. I would not refer to them as ``bad actors,'' 
the ones that are bad. They are more like leeches that take 
advantage of young kids, take advantage of their families, take 
advantage of their uncertainties. And they do it in a number of 
different ways. It has been going on, as we all know, forever.
    We do need, and I think we are all in agreement on, 
standard contracts--standard, so that what is here today is the 
same thing that will be there tomorrow and how we operate on 
issue A is how we operate on issue A 10 years from now.
    We need a prohibition, obviously, against inducements, 
because those same leeches, for lack of a better term, find a 
way to roll in all sorts of things over the phone, in person, 
by third party, to kind of induce these kids to make a decision 
and to really do a hands-off afterwards except to say, ``They 
signed with us because they just like us.'' No, in many 
instances, they are being induced to sign, and they don't have 
any real defense of their own.
    And we need strong enforcement measures.
    So, if those things are the things that we can agree on, 
maybe that is what we ought to start looking at, going forward.
    And I think that there really do have to be two different 
approaches here. That is the police side.
    And while I am at it, let me also talk about these booster 
collectives, which operate outside of Title IX and find their 
own hocus-pocus to get things done and to get students signed 
in and locked in.
    Now, on the prevention side, I am glad, Ms. Salamone, that 
you brought up this whole issue about player health and well-
being and independent oversight.
    Five years ago at the University of Maryland, a kid by the 
name of Jordan McNair died after a practice because of a heat-
related illness that nobody cared about, and everybody told 
him, ``Get back out there. Get back out there. Oh, you are 
going to be okay.'' Well, he wasn't okay. He was taken off the 
field, hospitalized with heatstroke. They tried to give him an 
emergency liver transplant; it didn't work. Fifteen days later, 
he was dead.
    And, following an investigation, it was determined that 
there was a culture in the football program that led to this 
kind of tragedy.
    Those tragedies are happening everywhere. They don't get 
reported the same way. And those are something on the 
prevention side that I think we have to deal with.
    Now, I introduced, with the help of some of you in this 
room, the Jordan McNair Act just a couple of months ago here in 
the Congress that would put in place things that are really, 
really needed: requiring the use of external defibrillators on 
the field, requiring the use of cold-water-immersion equipment 
on the field.
    I just can't stress enough that, while name, image, and 
likeness are important, the health of the player also is 
extremely important. And we have a role, I think, Mr. Chairman 
and others, to find a way to protect that.
    So I would hope that we could keep both approaches in our 
mind as we go forward. Neither one is going to win all the 
votes that it needs, but this process of amending and 
maneuvering and managing and massaging these bills will 
hopefully get us to a point where we won't have to sit before 
this Committee and witnesses and others, still saying, what do 
we do, how do we do it, and when do we get it done?
    I yield back.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you for that.
    And I now Representative Bean from the great State of 
Florida.
    Mr. BEAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning 
to you.
    And good morning, Small Business Committee. It is a big 
deal to have everybody here.
    My first question is for Gino Torretta.
    Welcome. Gino, I can't really see you right now because the 
glare from your championship ring is just kind of blinding me 
up here.
    Mr. TORRETTA. It is the Heisman ring. I left the two 
championship rings at home.
    Mr. BEAN. It is just too much.
    And trust me, I know how hard it is to wear a championship 
ring. We won the Congressional Baseball Game under the 
leadership of Chair Williams. He presented us with our rings. I 
lasted 2 days; it was just too heavy, just too heavy.
    So I salute you for all that you have done.
    And I also, Mr. Chairman, I want to congratulate you. This 
is the largest Committee attendance that we have had. And we 
have outdrawn, I think, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is 
testifying downstairs. And so the interest of college athletics 
is certainly great around the country.
    Question. The elephant in the room is not Roger Williams; 
it is the fact that there is also another big impact to college 
athletics in--the name, image, and likeness, that is a big 
deal, but also this transfer portal. What is the greatest 
impact right now, or is it them together.
    Gino Torretta?
    Mr. TORRETTA. Well, I think you have had the convergence of 
two major changes in college athletics, where you are allowed 
to transfer, which a kid didn't have the right--or, an athlete 
didn't have the right, if a coach left, to change schools or--
you know, I came from northern California. Maybe I wouldn't 
have liked--maybe I didn't like Miami after one semester and 
would have gone home, but I couldn't transfer somewhere else 
without sitting out a year of my eligibility. So you have that. 
Now there is the freedom.
    And then, with the NIL, we have talked about, it is the 
inducements of: money is involved, and, ``Hey, Gino is a good 
player, and he is young. Maybe we can pay him or his people to 
transfer.''
    And I think the combination of that, yes, it is not good. 
Now, is the transfer portal good in and of itself? Sure. But 
add in the inducement piece; it is not good for any of us 
sitting up here.
    Mr. BEAN. 10-4.
    I was a State legislator too, and I remember, a few years 
ago, I got a call from then-head coach Dan Mullen of the 
University of Florida, and he said, if we don't pass a name, 
image, likeness bill in the State legislature, we are going to 
kill Florida schools, because everybody will go somewhere else.
    Is it a fair playing field among States? Are there more 
lucrative colleges in other States, or is it about equal? Do 
some States give you a better chance to make more money playing 
college ball?
    Mr. TORRETTA. There are differences amongst conferences. 
The SEC schools make a different amount of money than Big Ten 
schools, than the ACC, than Pac-12. That is why we are seeing 
conference realignment, and we have deemed the West Coast, of 
California, Oregon, and Washington, kind of irrelevant in 
college athletics. All those schools are moving to the Big Ten 
or the ACC or SEC.
    Mr. BEAN. Gene Smith, is it true, what he says? Does he 
preach the truth right now, Gino Torretta?
    Mr. SMITH. I don't know about preaching, but what he said 
was pretty good.
    You know, but I think the core issue there is in the 
transfer portal, those things coming together, with where we 
are with NIL. We have to remember, transferring is a good 
thing. Student-athletes deserve the same rights as other 
students.
    Now, with our institution, where student-athletes decide to 
transfer, we have to make sure we understand why. If they are 
transferring because we made a commitment that we didn't live 
up to, then we need to go look in the mirror. Don't point the 
finger at the student-athlete. So that is one.
    But the reality is, the SEC, the Big Ten, in particular, 
have done a great job over the years of creating a culture that 
everybody else wants to be a part of.
    Mr. BEAN. Gotcha.
    Mr. SMITH. And that is reality.
    Mr. BEAN. Gotcha.
    Here is a toss-up question for every panelist. I am going 
to ask you to give me a number, and that number is your 
confidence, on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being absolute 
confidence that the NCAA can handle this without congressional 
action, that would be a 10; zero, zero confidence and you 
definitely need Congress to jump in.
    Jeremiah Donati, what say you for that number?
    Mr. DONATI. Somewhere between zero and 10.
    Mr. BEAN. Yeah.
    Mr. DONATI. No. I would say this--I would say this. The new 
president, Charlie Baker, is--we have a lot of faith in him, 
but he needs help, and he need this Congress's help. We are 
firmly behind him, but this is a--the level of complexity we 
have----
    Mr. BEAN. Does that mean 6? Five?
    Mr. DONATI. Four.
    Mr. BEAN. Gene Smith?
    Mr. SMITH. Four. Three to 4. Four.
    Mr. BEAN. Gino Torretta.
    Mr. TORRETTA. Hope is eternal.
    Mr. BEAN. Gotcha.
    Maddie Salamone?
    Ms. SALAMONE. I think it depends what issue we are talking 
about, so I would take issue with the framing and plead the 
Fifth.
    Mr. BEAN. 10-4.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back--Coach, I should say. Coach, I 
yield back.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. All right. Thank you for that.
    And I now recognize Representative Scholten from the great 
State of Michigan for 5 minutes.
    Ms. SCHOLTEN. It is a great State, isn't it? With all due 
respect to the Ohioans here.
    Thank you all so much for coming and testifying today. This 
is such an important issue, as we see by the crowds gathered 
here.
    And, you know, I know this to be such an important issue. I 
am the daughter of a sports reporter. I was a student-athlete 
myself--never in a position for any of what we are talking 
about here today to be relevant. But the challenges of 
balancing the demands of school, of young adulthood, and the 
demands of the physical aspects of athleticism are so 
challenging and come together around this important issue.
    Ms. Salamone, my first question is for you. It was 
incredibly gripping to hear from your testimony how prevalent 
psychological abuse is for female athletes and the detrimental 
effects it can have on mental health. Continuing on some of my 
colleagues' questions about putting the health and safety of 
student-athletes front and center, I want to talk about the 
mental health aspects.
    Can you talk more about what systemic changes might need to 
be made for student-athletes to have the mental health support 
and resources that they need, both in general but particularly 
at this changing time? We know that social media plays a huge 
role in mental health components for young people today.
    And, also, more broadly, what enforcement mechanisms need 
to be in place so that this toxicity can be reported and 
tracked and monitored?
    Ms. SALAMONE. I mean, I will start with the enforcement. I 
think, again, it is independent oversight.
    Schools--there are very good people that work at schools 
who very much care about the athletes. But when it comes to 
stepping up for an athlete, if it puts the school at risk of, 
you know, being exposed for some scandal, they have to put the 
school first. And especially depending on who is involved, that 
can be an issue.
    So independent oversight, as a starter.
    I think, in terms of addressing mental health, there are so 
many different components. You know, number one, there is 
tremendous pressure to be an athlete alone. You add on top of 
that social media in general, which came before NIL, and that 
already created a different world.
    And I think that there needs to be--you know, these are 
young, impressionable individuals that are learning who they 
are and learning how they exist in the world and trying to 
figure out what they are going to do with their lives. And all 
of that feels enormous at that age.
    And so I think they need--in addition to mental health 
resources that are independent and that are not reporting to 
coaches what is being talked about, they need people that 
actually understand what it is like to be an athlete at that 
level. They need people who they can talk to and have some kind 
of validation and perspective given to some of the issues to 
kind of counsel through on a one-on-one basis more.
    I think that there have been a lot of efforts put in around 
mental health, and athletes are talking about it more than 
ever. But I think it still has a little bit of a stigma, where 
you can identify it in other people but not so much see it in 
yourself.
    I think, when you have injured athletes, that needs to be a 
top priority. Injured athletes face a hurdle, in many respects, 
and can start to feel very isolated from their teams, whether 
because their coach kind of starts to push them out and deems 
them less important and tries to get them to leave, which 
happens, or if it is just they feel removed, they feel like 
they are trying to put on an act, and it takes a lot of effort 
to keep that brave face up and try to be a good and positive 
teammate while you are dealing with something like that.
    So it is so many pressures, that they need--they genuinely 
need people that they can talk to that get it.
    Ms. SCHOLTEN. Thank you so much. That was very powerful.
    Mr. Donati, since 2021, when NIL became permissible, have 
you seen name, image, likeness compensation alleviate some of 
the broader stressors student-athletes have had to navigate, 
such as low graduation rates and poor mental health?
    Mr. DONATI. Have I seen NIL alleviate some of the burdens 
student-athletes carry with them?
    Ms. SCHOLTEN. Yes.
    Mr. DONATI. I mentioned in my opening testimony that one of 
the things I think that we are not talking about is, a lot of 
our student-athletes, you know, come from underprivileged 
homes----
    Ms. SCHOLTEN. Uh-huh.
    Mr. DONATI.--and, a lot of times, there is pressure on them 
to support those families once they get to school. So these 
resources now, in a lot of cases, are going directly home--to 
mom, to dad, to brother, sister, to extended family.
    So that, to me, has been a real win and something that I 
have seen. If we are talking about mental health, the pressure 
of that is so real for some of these young men and women, to be 
able to help them at home has been--I have seen that burden 
alleviated in real-time. So I think it has been a real win.
    Ms. SCHOLTEN. Yeah. Thank you.
    I yield back.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. All right.
    I now recognize Representative Stauber from the great State 
of Minnesota.
    Mr. STAUBER. Thank you very much.
    And to our witnesses, thanks for your testimony. It is from 
your experiences; it is very compelling.
    And so, I come from northern Minnesota, and we have great 
college athletics in our great State. And, of course, hockey is 
one of them. And I was fortunate to play hockey, win a national 
championship. And then, all these years later, I can say I 
fooled the Detroit Red Wings in deciding the end our contract. 
And I have two other brothers that played professionally, and 
my nephew is with the Chicago Blackhawks.
    I have to tell you, though, I haven't heard a lot about 
schooling and grades and education. Because, eventually, we are 
done. We are done.
    And so I would like to talk more with a focus on, what are 
you doing with the student-athletes that come in--sometimes 
when they come from underprivileged homes, what have you, and 
they are making really--through the NIL, making, you know, some 
good money, how do you balance that with their school education 
and their future? And they are not going to be there forever, 
you know?
    Mr. Torretta, I am sure you saw people waste a lot of 
money, right? And, all of a sudden, one day it is over. You 
put--in my case, you put the skates away, and we say, ``You are 
working that 9:00-to-5:00 now.''
    How do you deal with that, and how do you prepare that 
student, that student-athlete--because they are students first, 
athletes second. So how do you prepare that student-athlete?
    Mr. Donati, go ahead.
    Mr. DONATI. Well, you just identified the great challenge 
of being an athletics director. Because you do inherit young 
men and women who are at your university to grow, and some are 
all ears, and some aren't. And some find out later in life that 
they missed an opportunity, and that is why we have systems in 
place to bring them back for degree completions down the road.
    We only have the ability to be with them so many hours of 
the day, so many hours of the week. Those are NCAA rules. So we 
have to make the best use of those.
    I will give you one example, to answer your question, of 
how we educate them. We have what is referred to as ``Alston 
money'' that we were allowed to provide our student-athletes, 
up to $5,980 per year. And we have a condition on receiving 
that money that they go through this financial literacy 
education. So that is the requirement. There are no if's, 
and's, or but's. If you miss one of those sessions, you do not 
receive the check.
    So we do try to hold them accountable. And it is not a 
perfect science, because we are dealing with 18- to 22-year-
olds, in some cases 23-year-olds. But it is the great challenge 
of being an athletics director, candidly.
    Mr. STAUBER. Uh-huh.
    Mr. Smith, can you give us your thoughts on what would 
happen if some of the proposals we have talked about became 
law?
    And before you answer that, I will just say that I am one 
that not necessarily would support the government being 
involved and forcing you on this. I would rather have the NCAA 
and the institutions and the professionals at this table make 
those decisions. But, if need be, you know, we in Congress 
could help out. But I just see that the less Washington gets 
involved, I think the better off the ultimate outcome can be, 
especially in this situation.
    So give me an example, if we put laws forward, what does 
that do?
    Mr. SMITH. Well, first of all, your premise--now, I am 67. 
I was an athletic director at the age of 29. And, trust me, I 
never wanted to come to the federal government to ask for help, 
okay? But we have reached a point where interest groups, 
pressure groups, lawyers, politicians, whoever, have made it 
very difficult for us to come up with a strategy to deal with 
the issues that we are dealing with today.
    And, frankly, as you heard in the ratings of our faith in 
the NCAA structure to be able to deal with it, we don't see 
that happening. So that is why we are here. It is that simple. 
We need the leadership help that is represented in this room.
    So, you know, I really believe that accepting one of the 
laws that has been talked about earlier, one of the bills that 
has the elements that we have already talked about, it is very 
important to try and get across to everyone so that we can get 
it passed. The things that we have talked about relative to 
agent management, all those type of things, we really need help 
with. And so I would say that the plan is around that.
    Mr. STAUBER. Thank you.
    Ms. Salamone, I really, really appreciate your comment 
about taking care of our athletes, both their mental health and 
when they are injured. And we do need to make that a priority. 
When an athlete gets injured, you can't just put them aside. 
They are part of the team. And the mental health part of it is 
really important for me too.
    So I am out of time, but thank you, witnesses, for your 
testimony, and appreciate your athleticism.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you.
    I now recognize Representative Thanedar from the great 
State of Michigan for 5 minutes.
    Mr. THANEDAR. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    And I want to thank all the witnesses to be here and for 
all of their testimony.
    You know, my kids are not professional athletes. They are 
like me, so they--but they love sports and a wrestler and 
football. So, for the first time, I was able to impress my 
children with my new job here, you know, with today's hearing. 
So I want to thank the Chairman for this hearing.
    You know, I grew up in a family that didn't have anything 
to do with business or entrepreneurship. When I got my 
education, I worked as a chemist. I wanted to start a business, 
and I had absolutely no concept of, you know, how to manage, 
whether it is branding, whether it is revenues, whether it is 
investment.
    And I am looking at these young people that have focused so 
much on developing their sports skills. They are young, and 
many of them come from families that are not into business. How 
do we teach these young people so they can look after 
themselves, make good, sound financial decisions, and have a 
strategic plan?
    Even, you know, when you start a business, the first thing 
you do is write a business plan that you go present it to a 
financial institution. How do you bring that entrepreneurship, 
that ability to, you know, have a plan, and making sure that 
they don't get exploited by vested interests, but they, you 
know, are able to make good decisions for themselves? How does 
NIL help?
    Anybody on the panel, Mr. Smith, anyone else, on this?
    Mr. SMITH. Well, I think all of us are into education. And 
the blessing that we have--and it includes the athletics--is 
that we are probably the only incubator left in higher 
education where we can actually have programs specifically for 
student-athletes to help them with that.
    Mr. THANEDAR. Uh-huh.
    Mr. SMITH. I would just give you one example. At our level, 
with the students that we recruit, many of them never worked in 
their lives. So, when we sit them down as sophomores and tell 
them it is a requirement that they write a resume, it starts 
their wheels turning----
    Mr. THANEDAR. Yeah.
    Mr. SMITH.--to get them thinking about, ``Uh-oh, what am I 
putting on here?'' And so then you begin the process to help 
them understand why it is important to take advantage of the 
internships that we have available to you throughout the rest 
of your career here, putting them in the work environment so 
that they can see what it means to be in the work environment.
    The lessons learned through athletic competition and 
practice are directly transferrable to the work environment. 
That is the blessing we have in athletics. So how do we help 
the student-athlete on their continuum, while they are with us, 
get to that? And it takes a lot of programming, it takes a 
culture, it takes an effort and a doggedness to make sure you 
work with those student-athletes.
    We have a thousand of them. And that is the highest 
priority that we have, is to make sure that they prepare 
themselves for life before they walk across that stage and get 
that diploma.
    So I could go on and on about that, because that is what I 
am passionate about.
    Mr. DONATI. And I would say, overnight, when the NIL laws 
were passed, we created 550 new entrepreneurs on campus. And so 
one of the things that we did at TCU, which I know are going on 
at other universities like The Ohio State University and other 
places, is that we took--we have a top business school in the 
country, and we have a top athletics program. We said, let's 
combine resources.
    And so we literally brought a piece of that business school 
into the athletics department, created an endowed 
professorship, and brought in Neeley faculty--Neeley School of 
Business--and got to work on these entrepreneurship skills. We 
thought, what an opportunity.
    So I am bragging a little bit about TCU for a moment, but I 
know this is going on at other schools across the country. And 
so this was--this is the good side of NIL. These are the little 
positives. Because this is bigger than any NIL payment. These 
are tools they can take with them forever.
    Mr. THANEDAR. Thank you so much. These young people need 
the help, and I really appreciate all of the work that you do. 
Thank you.
    Chair, I yield back.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you very much.
    And we still have some time left. We have some Members on 
their way back from other Committee hearings.
    And for those of us here, would you like to ask another 
round of questions?
    You want to talk about the University of Maryland?
    Mr. MFUME. Well, I would really like to get back to Ms. 
Salamone.
    I mean, your perspective on this I did not expect, coming 
into this hearing. I hadn't read the testimonies, but I figured 
we would talk about the regular things--the guardrails and what 
we needed to do and, you know, oversight.
    But I would like for you to talk some more about this whole 
aspect of the athlete being a human being and how we, in the 
process of developing good athletes, make sure we are 
developing good human beings.
    Ms. SALAMONE. Yeah. I mean, you talked a lot about Jordan 
McNair. And I think his father is someone who is doing 
tremendous work bringing that humanity to athletes and bringing 
a parental perspective that I think we lose a lot of times when 
it comes to college athletes, that these are young people that 
we need to care about, and there are many people who care about 
them. And they get treated like a sack of meat a lot of times, 
but they are human beings.
    And coaches can tend to lose sight of that when it comes to 
winning games, treating it like a job, and, you know, 
forgetting that even the best bosses in business care about 
their employees and treat them well and treat them with respect 
and care about them personally.
    And I think we need to bring more of that mindset into 
coaching, into administration, and getting to know the 
athletes, what they care about, what they--you know, not just 
what they can do on the field or on the court or wherever their 
performance is.
    And I think that would go a long way, is just bringing back 
that humanity, that these are human beings with families that 
work very hard but that, you know, can't do it all and 
sometimes buckle under the tremendous pressure of college 
athletics.
    Mr. MFUME. Thank you. And it is a lot of----
    Mr. TORRETTA. Can I add----
    Mr. MFUME.--pressure.
    Mr. TORRETTA. I would just like to add something----
    Mr. MFUME. Go right ahead.
    Mr. TORRETTA.--on, you know, the independent oversight, 
which I agree with. And I would say, the mental abuse happens 
in high school athletics to, you know, on up, and it is like, 
who do you call? Because if you go even to a high school 
administrator and you report something, it becomes self-
preservation for that administrator, because that administrator 
is working for the institution, you know, whether it is a high 
school or a college, and they are going to try to not have this 
be a major issue.
    And that is where it is like, who do you call as a parent 
if you are in high school, or who do you call if you are a kid, 
that you know that they are going to have your best interest?
    Mr. MFUME. Uh-huh.
    Mr. TORRETTA. And I can go back to broadcasting a ball 
game. And it was Duke that was in the ball game, and they have 
one of the best brain institutes in the world--brain studies, 
you know, CT, you know. They had a player come across the 
field. He gets knocked out cold. He is back out there three 
plays later. The same play, gets knocked out again.
    Mr. MFUME. Yeah.
    Mr. TORRETTA. And I can remember thinking, I am like, man, 
if I was his parent, I would jump over the rail and wring the 
coach's neck, because who allowed that to happen?
    And that is what the NFL has tried to deal with, having the 
independent doctor on the sideline. Because, no matter where 
you are at, it becomes self-preservation. Who you are employed 
by, that is who, kind of, you are beholden to.
    Mr. MFUME. It does.
    And, I mean, we are familiar with the abuses--if I might, 
Mr. Chairman, for just a minute longer.
    I mean, we all saw what happened with Jerry Sandusky and 
how, because of that mountain of power, nobody wanted to check 
Person A, B, or C, and everybody was intimidated, until it all 
blew up. And then the question became, what did you know, when 
did you know it, and what did you do about it? And that is what 
universities and colleges are faced with.
    I would say, however--I must say that--and I think it is 
important for the record--that there are a lot of good coaches 
out there who also don't know where to turn. And it is like the 
policing. Nobody hates a bad cop more than a good cop. And 
nobody hates a bad coach more a good coach.
    So we have to find a way, dually, I think, to empower those 
good coaches and we have definitely got to figure out how to 
get this notion of intimidation out of the game. Because people 
are fearful; universities are fearful. Everybody is worried 
about, am I going to get sued? Am I going to lose my job? Will 
I be demoted? Will I be shifted somewhere else in the 
university?
    And the fact that it starts, really, at the high school 
level, as you said and talked about, is more challenging for 
us.
    Mr. TORRETTA. Or are you going to--you know, it comes to 
all of us individually. Do you have the courage to step up when 
you are in that?
    I mean, there was an instance, the Dolphins-Patriots game, 
there was a, you know, fight in the stands, and somebody lost 
their life this past weekend.
    Mr. MFUME. I saw that.
    Mr. TORRETTA. Do you have the courage, instead of filming 
it on camera----
    Mr. MFUME. Right.
    Mr. TORRETTA.--to actually stop what is going on?
    And I think that is--you know, that is just society, in a 
general sense, of stepping up--if you see something--``See 
something, say something,'' you know? We do that in the 
airport. It is, ``Do something.''
    Mr. MFUME. Uh-huh. Thank you.
    Mr. SMITH. And I agree wholeheartedly. And I think--and I 
applaud you. Thank you for bringing the focus to that with Ms. 
Salamone.
    I mean, this is about leadership. This is about culture. 
You know, we probably could have won the national championship 
last year if we had let Marvin Harrison continue to play. But, 
at the end of the day, he had a bad hit, so we took him out. 
But that was independent oversight. The coach had nothing to do 
with that.
    Mr. MFUME. Uh-huh.
    Mr. SMITH. And so what she is talking about is 100 percent 
right. Structurally, you need to put the people in place who 
are the experts to make those type of decisions. My coaches are 
experts on the X's and O's; they are not a doctor.
    Mr. MFUME. Uh-huh.
    Mr. SMITH. And I don't know if many of you saw. Recently, 
we just had a session on CNN with one of our former athletes, 
who walked into our coach's office and said he wanted to kill 
himself. And, fortunately, we have empowered our coach to make 
sure that they are very sensitive and humanistic in those 
situations and listens and then determines who is the expert to 
help that individual.
    And that is the coach you have to create, to her point. You 
have to make sure that the individuals in your organization 
understand their talents and skills and be empowered to give 
those talents--to give those things that they have talents and 
skills or no authority over, give it to the people who do.
    Mr. MFUME. Uh-huh.
    Mr. SMITH. And that does not exist. And not just athletics, 
but many organizations.
    So I agree wholeheartedly, and thank you for bringing the 
attention back to that. Because, at the end of the day, that is 
what it is all about, developing people.
    Mr. MFUME. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the extra time. 
I appreciate it.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Thank you.
    And we're winding down our time now. I am going to ask what 
will probably be the final question.
    We have heard some questions today about collectives that 
are putting them in a negative light. I think this is missing 
some important context to the role they play. Now, collectives 
also help get small businesses in contact with some of the 
athletes to create these partnerships and brand deals.
    So you three might just touch on that real quick. Would one 
of you, or all of you, please, talk about these collectives, 
how they came about, and how they help your teams compete, and 
if they do?
    Mr. DONATI. Well, collectives are here because we have 
allowed them to be here.
    And I think there are a number of them that do it the right 
way. I am proud to say, I think that the Flying T Club, which 
is the collective that supports TCU Athletics, does it the 
right way. We work with them, we have a lot of communication 
with them to understand what they are trying to accomplish and 
how they are trying to support our student-athletes. But they 
know this is not a sham and that they have got to do their 
responsibilities to make sure the real NIL activities are 
happening.
    So they have really gone heavy with community service. We 
have all of our student-athletes that are part of this 
collective engaged in community service. And so I am really 
proud of that, because you see young people in our community 
that look up to our student-athletes. I was one of those once. 
Our student-athletes are able to have a real impact in their 
lives.
    Not every collective works that way. And it goes back to 
having some uniformity, some oversight over them. But I think, 
by and large, collectives, you know, have been a good thing.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Do you want to respond to that?
    Mr. SMITH. Yeah, I agree with Jeremiah. And I thank you, 
Chairman Williams, for bringing that back to that attention. 
Because you are right; we have talked about the negative side 
of it, but there are a lot of collectives across this country 
that are doing really good for young people. And many of them 
for Olympic sport athletes, not just football and basketball. 
We talked earlier before Title IX. There are many collectives 
that are doing well in that space.
    So, yes, I agree with Jeremiah that there are so many of 
them that are doing well.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Gino?
    Mr. TORRETTA. I would just think that the contributors to 
the collectives, they want to support their institutions. You 
know, I think that maybe sometimes the small business maybe 
gets a negative connotation. Because if you have a small 
business, you reach out to--I would probably call Gene and say, 
``Hey, I have a small business in Columbus. Is there a student-
athlete? I would like to support.''
    And I think what collectives were formed for, if I didn't 
have a small business but I wanted to support the players, I 
could donate money to that collective, and then they could 
disburse it and support the athletics.
    So I think there are good things, but without policing of 
anything, there obviously are going to be bad issues--bad 
things.
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Yeah.
    Ms. SALAMONE. Yeah, I would echo the sentiment. I think 
that there are collectives that are doing good work. Some are 
connecting athletes with charitable organizations.
    I spoke to one person who told a story about--you know, I 
think one of the issues is, athletes go to whoever can help 
them with certain issues, and that is not always the school. 
And so this collective was able to actually help an athlete by 
connecting them with a social worker who could help them with a 
familial issue that they were dealing with. And it was causing 
them difficulty, where they were asking for money, when what 
they really needed was help in this other area that they were 
able to provide because they listened.
    So there are good people in this space doing good work. But 
those are the types of issues--again, to go back to why it is 
important to have players in the room, they will explain that 
to you, that it is not just about money. It is about, how can 
you help with the real-life things that happen outside of 
sports?
    Chairman WILLIAMS. Well, thank you.
    And I just want to say that this has been a great hearing. 
It is good to see so many of you in the audience, that weren't 
witnesses today, that care about this.
    I think it also shows that in Washington we can get some 
bipartisan stuff done. Not everything is driven by anger. But 
also the importance of this, college athletics, what it is to 
our country.
    So I want to thank all of you for being here today.
    Without objection, Members have 5 legislative days to 
submit additional materials and written questions for the 
witnesses to the Chair, which will be forwarded to the 
witnesses.
    I will ask the witnesses to please respond promptly when 
that happens.
    If there is no further business, without objection, the 
committee is now adjourned. Thank you.
    [Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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