Senator continues push for college athletes
Murphy wants equitable landscape, regardless of sport or gender
Senator Chris Murphy, who introduced legislation earlier this month with Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts that would allow college athletes and prospective college athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL), said Wednesday that the proposed bill hopes to create an equitable landscape for all athletes, regardless of their gender or sport.
“When we’re talking about athletes rights, we’re talking about rights acruing to both male and female athletes and the importance of making this a broad comprehensive debate and discussion,” Murphy said Wednesday on a Facebook Live with Trahan and the Voice in Sports group, an organization that looks to bring more visibility to female athletes and elevate their voice.
The College Athlete Economic Freedom Act, proposed Feb. 4, would allow college athletes to own their own brand and be able to make money off endorsements and their likeness. It would also protect the athletes’ right to organize though a college athletes association, retain legal or agent representation and set a national standard which will override state laws.
Murphy said one of the bill’s key components was disallowing the NCAA to “micromanage” decisions so that revenue sports — largely Power Five and male sports — are not given a different set of rights than non-revenue sports.
“We thought it was important to grant the same set of rights to everybody,” Murphy said. “We made the decision in our bill not to grant the NCAA a whole bunch of rulemaking authority here. I’ll just speak for myself. I’ve seen what drives the NCAA decision-making are the big Power Five money-making sports. My worry is that if the NCAA was in charge of saying what deals you could do and what deals you can’t, they might broaden the aperture for the money-making sports that [are] making them the money, and then maybe have narrower rights for others.”
Said Trahan: “This provision is designed to ensure equity and such support. We must not have a situation where football and men’s basketball absorb that support and leave just scraps for everyone else.”
Trahan, a former college volleyball player, pointed out that outside of the WNBA and the Olympics, there are fewer post-college opportunities for female athletes to make money off of their talents.
By allowing athletes to profit off of their NIL, Trahan said, that may change.
“There generally isn’t a lot for women athletes after college,” Trahan said.
“But if NIL helps to attract eyeballs to women’s sports at the collegiate level, then it should offer more opportunities for women, whatever they ultimately choose to do.”