Sen. Eric Schmitt Tells Dan Dakich How College Sports Commission Will Save College Football
A New Bipartisan Push Could Finally Restore Leadership To The NCAA
It's obvious to any fan of college football that the situation in collegiate athletics needs fixing.
The NCAA has seen its authority and importance decline precipitously, particularly in the name, image and likeness era. And with that decline in importance, there's been a vacuum in leadership for major college sports questions.
One of the most obvious being eligibility. Compensation is one thing, but as the trend in college basketball has shown, where does it end when it comes to players who've been in lower level professional leagues returning to college? This is one of the questions that the College Sports Commission, led by President Donald Trump, is trying to answer.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) was part of the recent round table hosted by President Trump, and he spoke to OutKick's Dan Dakich about on "Don't @ Me" this week.
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 26: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt talk to reporters after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in their case about Title 42 on April 26, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Sen. Schmitt Wants There To Be Guidelines And Leadership At NCAA
Dakich and Schmitt spoke about a bill going through Congress to address some of these questions, asking him how it would handle the most famous recent case of an Alabama basketball player returning to college after playing in the NBA G League.
"…I think for the audience to understand, that's the central challenge right now, is that the NCAA, and by the way, the NCAA's had a lot of problems over the years, so this isn't me going to bat for that institution necessarily, but the truth is, there is no governing body that right now can set any rule that won't be challenged in court, and they will likely lose."
Schmitt continued, explaining that NIL issues started this because of a lack of guardrails around the new rules.
"Look, this started with the name, image, and likeness issue, right? So a player's name and image will be used on a Nintendo game or whatever, EA Sports or something, and they were never being compensated. And that's not fair either…And so the court said, yeah, if you do that, these players should be compensated for that. No problem, but the issue there is ultimately where this led to was that you can't establish really any rules.
"So, this is about eligibility in particular. You're seeing now, you know, sixth year seniors. You know, we're not that far away from a guy going into the draft potentially and then not liking his draft position, right, and coming back or playing for a year. Maybe a SEC corner comes out a year early, sits on the bench and maybe can come back."
How can the Congress fix it? Well, by attaching some other priorities to it, in order to grant an organization like the NCAA protection from lawsuits challenging their authority when it comes to eligibility.
"So the way it would fix it, Congress would say, 'In exchange for you protecting women in Olympic sports and having a better system, we're gonna grant you lawsuit protection to be able to make these kinds of basic rules.'"
It's notoriously difficult to get things through Congress, but it would make a ton of sense for there to finally be some actual rules around player eligibility that prevent professional athletes from playing in college. Presumably something common sense like that would have bipartisan support, especially with legendary figures like Nick Saban involved. But as we know with Congress, never assume anything. Stay tuned.
Check out the interview below.