[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 159 (Tuesday, September 15, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5597-S5599]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Intercollegiate Athletics

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this morning in the Education 
Committee, we had a really interesting discussion on intercollegiate 
athletics--specifically on the proposals that are appearing in various 
States to pay student athletes for their name, image, and likeness.
  This is the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee, and Senator 
Wicker and his committee are considering whether there should be any 
congressional action, but we were looking at the impact of the proposal 
to pay student athletes on the tradition of the intercollegiate student 
athlete in our country, and here is my own view.
  If student athletes are paid by commercial interests for their name, 
image, and likeness, that money ought to go to benefit all of the 
student athletes at that institution. In other words, if the 
quarterback at the University of Tennessee is paid $500,000 by the 
local auto dealer to advertise the auto dealer, that money ought not go 
to him; it ought to go for the benefit of all the student athletes at 
the University of Tennessee, including the women's sports, the men's 
sports, the minor sports, the major sports.
  Student athletes shouldn't be on the payroll and be treated as hired 
hands, in my opinion. I don't see a good ending to allowing a few 
student athletes to be paid by commercial interests while most of their 
teammates are not.
  If young athletes want to be part of a team, enjoy the undergraduate 
experience, learn from coaches who are among the best teachers in the 
country, and be paid a full scholarship that helps them earn a degree 
worth $1 million during their lifetime--that is according to the 
college boards estimates--those earnings of that student should benefit 
all student athletes at the institution. If a student athlete prefers 
to keep the money, then that student athlete should become a 
professional athlete.
  We had a bipartisan discussion this morning. I want to thank Senator 
Murray, the Senator from Washington State, who is the ranking Democrat 
on our committee. Our committee always has diverse views, but we always 
have good, civil discussions.

[[Page S5598]]

  We had excellent witnesses from the University of Wisconsin and from 
Utah State University. We had a representative of the players 
association as well, and we had a track and field coach from Ohio State 
University who has been Coach of the Year in the Big 10 for 4 years, 
and they all had a point of view on this question.
  The question is whether the tradition of an intercollegiate student 
athlete is worth preserving, and if so, how do you do it? Specifically, 
what would the impact be on that tradition if States pass laws allowing 
commercial interests to pay student athletes for the use of their name, 
image, or likeness?
  Now, I have had two experiences that help me form my own opinion on 
this. Here is the first one.
  In 1960, during my sophomore year in college, I was exercising at 
Vanderbilt University on the university's cinder track, and a man 
watching me had in his right hand a big stopwatch. He introduced 
himself as Track Coach Herc Alley, and he asked my name.
  ``Did you run track in high school?'' he asked me.
  ``No,'' I said, ``we didn't have track in high school.''
  ``Why don't you run 100 yards for me,'' he said.
  So I did.
  He examined his stopwatch and said: ``10.1 seconds. That is very 
good. I have three really fast boys on my 440-yard relay team. Why 
don't you come be the fourth one?''
  So I joined the Vanderbilt track team running the mile relay, the 
440-yard relay, and the 440-yard dash. My job was to carry the baton 
from the first fast boy to the third fast boy.
  The next year, our team set a school record in the 440-yard relay. 
That record will never be broken for one reason--because they now 
measure the race in meters. So they don't run the 440-yard relay 
anymore.
  We sometimes practiced with some really speedy athletes. They were 
students from what we called then Tennessee A&I across town. This is 
before desegregation. These were Olympians. They included Ralph Boston, 
Wilma Rudolph, and Wyomia Tyus. Coach Alley, our coach, had no 
scholarships to offer. His teams rode buses to meets. Our cinder track 
made it hard to establish fast times. Scraping together teams of 
nonscholarship athletes, he produced several Southeastern Conference 
track champions.
  Coach Alley's enthusiasm that day gave me an experience that millions 
of young Americans have had--that of being an intercollegiate student 
athlete. Some of those athletes were good enough to win scholarships. 
Senator Richard Burr is one. He is on our committee and was at the 
hearing this morning. He had a football scholarship at Wake Forest 
University.
  My experience at Vanderbilt taught me a number of lessons, including 
this one: When running on a relay team, be sure to choose two teammates 
who can run faster than you can. That is not a bad recipe for being an 
effective U.S. Senator either.
  Now, as the college football season gets underway, even amidst COVID-
19, we are reminded of how important these games are to student 
athletes, to their institutions, and to millions of spectators. The 
fascination with sporting competition is nothing new, according to the 
Knight Commission, which said in its 1991 report the following:

       The appeal of competitive games is boundless. In ancient 
     times, men at war laid down their weapons to compete in the 
     Olympic games. Today, people around the globe put aside their 
     daily cares to follow the fortunes of their teams in the 
     World Cup. In the United States, the Super Bowl, the World 
     Series, college football and the NCAA basketball tournament 
     command the attention of millions. Sports have helped break 
     down bigotry and prejudice in American life. On the 
     international scene, they have helped integrate East and 
     West, socialist and capitalist. The passion for sport is 
     universally shared across time and continents.

  So said the Knight Commission 30 years ago.
  But concerns with problems in sports are also nothing new. The Knight 
Commission was established in 1989 to address scandals in college 
sports that were ``shaking public confidence,'' not just of big-time 
collegiate athletics but the whole institution of higher education.
  Well before that, in 1929, the Carnegie Foundation put out a report 
that said recruiting had become corrupt, professionals had replaced 
amateurs, education was being neglected, and commercialism reigned. 
Before that, in 1906, partially in response to President Teddy 
Roosevelt's criticism, the NCAA had been formed to protect the safety 
of players and deal with corruption.
  My second experience forming my opinion on today's hearing was my 
participation and membership in that Knight Commission at the time I 
was president of the University of Tennessee. Our commission 
recommendation was that university presidents take charge of college 
athletics and the huge amount of television money it attracted and 
restore the academic and financial integrity of the program. As a 
result, over the next several years, academic standards became more 
stringent, financial support for student athletes increased, and 
college presidents asserted more responsibility for financial 
integrity.
  What is especially relevant to today's hearing was that despite 
today's problems surrounding intercollegiate athletics and the problems 
then, the Knight Commission strongly endorsed keeping the student 
athlete tradition. What it said is worth repeating also:

       We reject the argument [the Knight Commission said] that 
     the only realistic solution to the problem is to drop the 
     student athlete concept, put athletes on the payroll, and 
     reduce or even eliminate their responsibilities as students.
       Such a scheme has nothing to do with education, [said the 
     Knight Commission] the purpose for which colleges and 
     universities exist. Scholarship athletes are already paid in 
     the most meaningful way possible: with a free education. The 
     idea of intercollegiate athletics is that teams represent 
     their institutions as true members of the student body, not 
     as hired hands. Surely American higher education has the 
     ability to devise a better solution to the problems of 
     intercollegiate athletics than making professionals out of 
     the players, which is no solution at all but rather an 
     unacceptable surrender to despair.

  Well, I hope those words from the Knight Commission 30 years ago will 
guide how Congress deals with the newest issue threatening the concept 
of student athletes, and that is allowing commercial interests to pay 
athletes for use of their name, likeness, and image.
  Already four States have enacted laws sanctioning such payments in 
various forms. More than 30 other States are considering legislation.
  Senator Wicker, as I mentioned, chairman of the Commerce Committee, 
is considering whether there ought to be congressional action. Our 
purpose was to look at the impact on the student athlete.
  Who are the student athletes today? Well, it wouldn't make much sense 
to talk about this if we didn't say who and what we are talking about, 
so here it is. There are 20 million undergraduates in about 6,000 
colleges and universities that exist in the United States today. Nearly 
1,100 of those 6,000 colleges and universities belong to the NCAA. More 
than 460,000 young men and women participate in 24 different sports 
each year in about one-quarter of 1 million contests. About 300 of 
those institutions play football and basketball at the highest level. 
Fewer than 2 percent of athletes, student athletes, go on to play 
professional sports, according to the NCAA. This means we are talking 
about approximately 9,000 college student athletes who compete in a few 
sports out of the more than 460,000 college athletes across 24 sports.
  So the current controversy is about an even smaller percentage of 
those 9,000 students who play football, baseball, or men or women's 
basketball and whose skills--or the institutions for which they play--
make them attractive targets for recruiting offers that will combine 
their scholarship dollars with endorsement money. For example, an 
exceptional quarterback, pitcher, or running back might be offered a 
$500,000-a-year endorsement by a car dealer in the same town as a 
college with a big-time football, basketball, or even baseball program.
  As the Knight Commission report said, student athletes are already 
paid in the most meaningful way, with a free education. Athletic 
scholarships are limited to tuition and fees, room and board, and 
required course-related books, but this can add up to a lot of money. 
It is $115,000 a year, estimates the University of Tennessee, per 
student athlete, including room, board, student stipends, academic 
support, meals, sports medicine, training, travel, and expenses.

[[Page S5599]]

  Student athletes may also combine other sources of financial aid, 
including Federal or State need-based aid, to help pay for the full 
cost of attendance. These include Pell grants, for example, which could 
be $6,300 a year, supplemental education community grants, work-study, 
State grants based on need using Federal calculations, such as the 
Tennessee HOPE Scholarship or the GI bill. About 92,000--or 20 
percent--of the student athletes receive Pell grants also.
  According to the College Board, the value of a 4-year undergraduate 
degree is $1 million over a lifetime, and according to the NCAA, 88 
percent of Division I student athletes will earn a 4-year degree
  So the question at hand is, Should Congress act, or should varying 
State laws govern payments for name, image, and likeness to student 
athletes? Is a patchwork set of regulations worth the confusion it will 
cause with unrestrained boosters, creative agents, the impact on title 
IX on men's and women's programs, on a coach's effort, and most of all 
on the tradition of the student athlete? That is the Commerce 
Committee's job. We heard some interesting testimony this morning.
  Based on my experience as a student athlete, as a member of the 
Knight Commission, and as a university president, I offered these 
suggestions:
  The Knight Commission is correct to say that student athletes 
shouldn't be on the payroll. They shouldn't be treated as hired hands.
  Two, Congress should act but in a limited way--as limited as 
possible--to authorize an independent entity, safe from litigation, to 
write rules governing payments for the use of name, image, and 
likeness. Congress should provide aggressive oversight of that entity 
rather than try to write the rules ourselves.
  Three, that governing entity ought to be the NCAA. I know, I know--
the NCAA is controversial, but if it is not doing its job, the 
presidents who are supposed to be in charge of it should reform it. 
Giving the job to a new entity would take forever. Giving it to an 
existing entity like the Federal Trade Commission, without expertise 
and without any responsibility for higher education, would make no 
sense.
  Now, as to the rules that I would hope the NCAA would write, here is 
what I believe should be the overriding principle: Money paid to 
student athletes for their name, image, and likeness should benefit all 
student athletes in that institution. Following this principle would 
allow the earnings to be used for additional academic support, further 
study or degrees, more insurance options, and more support for injured 
players and other needs. It would avoid the awkwardness of a center who 
earns nothing snapping the ball to a quarterback who earns $500,000 
from the local auto dealer. It avoids the inevitable abuses that would 
occur with agents and boosters becoming involved with outstanding high 
school athletes. It would avoid the unexpected consequences to other 
teams in an institution because of the impact on title IX or the impact 
on existing student aid available to athletes.
  Such a principle would preserve the right of any athlete to earn 
money for the use of his or her image, name, or likeness. It simply 
says: If you elect to be a student athlete, your earnings should 
benefit all student athletes at your institution. If you want to keep 
the money and be someone's employee, go become a professional.
  This system would create the same kinds of choices that today's NCAA 
rules for college baseball require. A high school student must stay 3 
years if he chooses to participate in a college baseball program. Take 
Vanderbilt's baseball program. David Price, Sonny Gray, and Dansby 
Swanson--Major League fans know they are all very successful 
professional athletes--all were drafted by Major League baseball teams 
while they were in high school. They could have earned a lot of money 
going directly into professional baseball. Instead, they chose a 
Vanderbilt education, 3 years of college experience, and the 
opportunity to be taught by Coach Tim Corbin, a great teacher. If 
Price, Gray, and Swanson had been permitted to sell their name, image, 
and likeness while at Vanderbilt, under the principle I am suggesting, 
their earnings would have been used for the benefit of all of 
Vanderbilt's sports teams, men and women.
  Applying such a principle to all intercollegiate athletics might 
cause a few talented athletes to join professional leagues immediately 
after high school. That is their right. But if that young athlete 
prefers the college experience, the expert coaching and teaching, the 
free education, the other academic support, and the undergraduate 
degree that can earn $1 million over a lifetime, then their earnings 
ought to benefit all the student athletes at the institution.
  While the NCAA is making new rules, I suggest it ought to assign most 
of the new television revenue that comes to institutions--let it go to 
institutions and be used for academic support for student athletes 
rather than continue to encourage inordinately high salaries for some 
coaches.
  As I said at the beginning, I don't see a good ending to allowing a 
few student athletes to be paid by commercial interests while most of 
their teammates are not. If they want to be part of the team, enjoy the 
undergraduate experience, learn from coaches who are great teachers, 
and be paid a full scholarship that could help them earn $1 million 
during their lifetimes, their earnings should benefit all the student 
athletes. If they prefer to keep the money for themselves, let them 
become professionals.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I begin by asking that the Record 
reflect how much I am going to miss the Senator from Tennessee when he 
is gone at the end of this year. It is nice to be on the floor with 
him.