Senator says key piece of college sports legislation 'probably' has 60 votes to clear upper chamber

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ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — A lawmaker sponsoring a key piece of federal college sports legislation said he believes the bill likely has the support it needs to make it through the upper chamber.

“We probably have 60 votes,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said Friday at the Associated Press Sports Editors meeting.

Schmitt called the next two weeks critical for the Protect College Sports Act.

He said leaders from the Southeastern and Big Ten Conferences, both of which oppose the bill as it is written, have met with him and other top sponsors — including Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.. — to negotiate changes in the bill in an effort to gather their support.

Without the bill, Schmitt said “the trajectory of this in three years will be even further unrecognizable,” predicting a scenario in which women’s sports teams fold under financial strain.

College sports has been struggling to find a fair way to pay players for their name, image and likeness since payments to players were approved by a federal court last summer.

The legislation introduced by Cruz and Cantwell offers the NCAA and conferences limited liability protection and moves to preempt the patchwork of state laws that govern NIL payments. It also opens the option for conferences to pool their media rights — a move proponents say could generate extra billions but that the SEC and Big Ten do not support.

In a letter to school presidents last month, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey outlined worries that the bill could create more problems than it solves. Sankey suggested rewriting a section of the bill that allows athletes to file civil lawsuits in certain cases, saying as it was written it could create more litigation instead of reducing it.

Even if the bill passes the Senate, it would face an unlikely run through the narrowly divided House, where both Democrats and Republicans have found a number of flaws with another bill — the SCORE Act — that never came to a floor vote.

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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports