NCAA athletes ask Congress to listen during NIL hearing

NCAA athletes are asking Congress to hear their voices during national name, image and likeness hearings

Transcript

00:00 Congress will meet today to discuss name, image, and likeness when it comes to NCAA

00:04 athletes, but several groups created by student athletes have written a letter saying to the

00:10 Senate Judiciary Committee, "Today, the commissioners of the NCAA's Power Five Conference will

00:14 testify before you in order to undermine the efforts of student athletes advocating for

00:18 a more just and equitable collegiate athletic system."

00:22 For more, I'm joined by Erin Rose, who got a hold of the letter and has spoken to some

00:25 of these organizations, including one dubbed No More Names, and Erin, basically what these

00:30 student athletes are asking for is essentially a say in how this is approached by Congress

00:36 and the Power Five Conferences.

00:38 Yeah, so there are five organizations involved in writing this letter, and they're essentially

00:43 asking for some input on these decisions.

00:47 This is obviously name, image, and likeness.

00:48 It's something that affects all NCAA student athletes, and they're saying, "We want a seat

00:53 at the table.

00:54 We want the commissioners of the Power Five Conferences to make decisions with Congress

00:58 without the input of student athletes."

01:01 So they're hoping that this letter will help spur Congress to take the input of student

01:06 athletes.

01:07 And what is their number one goal here?

01:10 I know they believe that the Fair Pay to Play Act passed in California should become the

01:14 national standard.

01:15 Yeah, that's one of the things they want, but as you can imagine, with thousands of

01:20 student athletes, there are going to be a variety of different voices.

01:24 I was told by Chris Egge, who's one of the leaders of No More Names, that he just wants

01:27 their voice to be heard.

01:29 He'd like some polling mechanism in place to see what students think, and then they

01:34 can proceed with that.

01:36 So he's suggesting, as you mentioned, the Fair Pay for Play Act, but ultimately, they

01:40 just want their voices to be heard in this decision, and hopefully with that, the NCAA

01:45 can act accordingly with that information.

01:47 Basically, if it's their name, image, and likeness, it should be their voice involved

01:51 as well.

01:52 Exactly.

01:52 Bye.

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