“Everybody has a concern about the fact that it’s become the wild, wild West,” in college sports, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told WWL’s Bobby and Mike this week.
In particular, he was referring to the state of free agency in college athletics.
“I served with guys that played professional football. They said there’s more wide open, free agency in college right now than you had in professional sports,” Scalise explained. “And NCAA can’t do anything about it because you’ve got this wild, wild West mentality.”
However, he said that a coalition is forming to change the way things are done and make things better for schools and their student athletes.
“I don’t know if it’ll hold that way all the way through, but I like the coalition we have, but a lot of people from a lot of different kind of schools and a lot of different kind of backgrounds that want to get this done,” he said.
The free agency issue is also tied to “name in likeness” or NIL compensation policies from the NCAA.
“You don’t really know what deal student athletes have,” Scalise explained. “Student athletes don’t have any protections. There have been some… some real bad scandals where a student athlete signs the rights away or they get a multimillion-dollar deal.”
Scalise and others in Congress are working to fix these NIL issues, and he broke down how lawmakers are maintaining the balance between government overreach and figuring out how to protect student-athletes.
Listen to the full interview here to learn more.
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