Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spoke to Breitbart News about his legislation to protect college athletes amid the changing landscape of collegiate sports and recruiting, and the emergence of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) opportunities.
Tuberville, who spent decades coaching at the highest levels of college football, possesses unequaled expertise in the Senate to tackle this issue, but he explained his initial reluctance to wade into it to Breitbart News.
“I really didn’t want to get involved in this because I know when the federal government gets involved in something that most of the time it’s not good because there’s regulations that are involved and things don’t go the way you would expect,” Tuberville said.
But the retired coach, who says he is “for players making money,” quickly realized he could not sit on the sidelines. “The Supreme Court said that [college athletes] can make money off their name, image and likeness. The problem is, now you have different states doing different things with different rules, which is unfair.” One slip-up could endanger their eligibility, a fear that motivated Coach Tuberville to enter the arena with his colleague Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), himself a college athlete.
Tuberville’s Protecting Athletes, Schools, and Sports (PASS) Act of 2023 would ensure uniformity of NIL laws across the country to protect student-athletes, schools, and the traditions of college sports. The pair did their due diligence in putting together a bill to regulate the complicated issue. “For a year and a half, Joe Manchin and I brought coaches, players, collective groups, administrators, the NCAA, and again, we’re putting this bill out on the floor through the Commerce Committee, but this bill was basically written by the people that are doing the job as we speak. It’s a mess.”
Manchin, Tuberville Introduce Legislation to Address Name, Image and Likeness in College Sports
With so many components of NIL, Tuberville’s legislation is necessarily comprehensive. “We put health care in this bill. We address the transfer portal. We addressed recruiting. Ninth graders and 10th graders which should not be allowed with money. We did a lot of different things,” he explained.
“We just want to make sure that we keep education the number one priority in college sports because we don’t, if we turn into minor league sports, it won’t last long.”
Coach Tuberville’s desire to maintain the traditions and integrity of college sports, not just in football, played a role. Tuberville understands as well as anyone in Washington how athletic departments operate, and his perspective on the dangers of the current NIL landscape influenced the crafting of the bill. “I mean, you’ll have the boosters getting out, nobody will be buying tickets. We’ll lose Olympic sports because there won’t be any money. And so we’re trying to do the best we can to help right the ship and get the train back on the right track here.”
The bipartisan bill faces challenges from Democrats that must be overcome to turn the bill into law, but Tuberville is determined to get the bill across the goal line. “I’m gonna tell you, it’s gonna be hard with the Democrats [who] want to unionize all of the athletes. And that just a crying shame, because you start unionizing 18- and 19-year-olds, we’ll lose sports as we know it. And of course, the Democrats, everything they touch is either unionized or socialism.
“And so, you know how they’re gonna fight back, and right now we’re in the minority, but Joe Manchin is on my side. We’re gonna push it hard and see what happens,” Tuberville concluded.
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