During a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) spoke about changing classifications of student-athletes.
00:00I recognize the ranking member, Representative Choleney from California.
00:04Thank you. I want to thank all the witnesses again. A terrific testimony.
00:10Mr. Huma, a lot has changed other than you've gone from a linebacker's build in five meals a day to three in a DV.
00:17But could you talk a little bit about, I mean, in sports, there's been lots of arguments for decades about what is an amateur,
00:25whether it's the Olympics or college athletics, and what's a professional.
00:30What has changed from your perspective to make this a more acute need to define the boundaries of professionalism and amateurism?
00:41Thanks for that question. I think, you know, today, the high revenue college sports are almost indistinguishable from the pros.
00:50Obviously, college is involved. But besides that, again, it was mentioned just yesterday, there was a hearing.
00:55Because there was legal pressure, again, one of the avenues to fight against this injustice, the NCAA Power Five conferences are being pushed to finally share revenue with athletes.
01:05And as we speak right now, there's recruits 16, 17 years old being signed by schools right now to professional agreements.
01:13So, and that's a good thing. That's a great development.
01:17And that's now something even the schools are celebrating.
01:19They kind of have to because they have no choice.
01:21But, hey, we're there.
01:22And that was because athletes' rights were not taken away by Congress.
01:25And I will point out, as an athlete, all the athletes we work with, there are very special things about college sports.
01:33You know, but amateurism has nothing to do with it.
01:36It has nothing to do with it.
01:37You can learn leadership if you're an employee.
01:40You know, you can learn all the different things we talked about today, teamwork, camaraderie.
01:44That doesn't go away because someone has rights, because someone's an employee.
01:47You know, the ability to play at a high level and pursue a degree, that's really what makes college sports special.
01:53And I think if you dissect what everyone's talking about here, that's what is there.
01:58The employee status issue does not negate that.
02:00It doesn't take away from being a student.
02:03You have students in bookstores at all the schools we're talking about.
02:05They're employees.
02:07You have some students on these campuses that actually have the right to form a union.
02:10But we're not here talking about that.
02:11This is about taking away rights from athletes so that they're not empowered to make the changes this industry has never wanted to make.
02:20You know, the first year that we actually announced what we were doing, within months, three football players died in their offseason workouts.
02:28And since then, there's been death after death after death.
02:32You can set your watch to it.
02:34The very next year I testified in Congress, 2002, begging Congress, please do something.
02:39And nothing's been done.
02:40And there's been individuals that have talked about it.
02:42And I was really in agreement with much of what Congressman Baumgartner said today.
02:48Congress, you have the votes.
02:50You can solve these issues.
02:51And this is what I'm here pleading for on behalf of all the families that have suffered and the families that will suffer if Congress doesn't act.
03:00So my district is next to the mothership of the University of California.
03:05So when I talk to people in the football program at Berkeley or a very dear friend who's coached the rugby team, sort of the rugby program in the United States, this challenge doesn't, to Mr.
03:21Bungarten's comments and Mr.
03:23Nash's too, there seems to be an ability to fix this.
03:27The idea of pooling the revenue to make sure that these minor sports, and that's a misnomer from my perspective, having been a lacrosse player many years ago, to get all the benefits that you've talked about.
03:39So there does, in your comments about your agreement, I'm in agreement too.
03:42But beyond that is these questions, and we've always sort of mythologized the Rudies of the world, but then underlying, and that's not just unique to college athletics, there are the issues you mentioned about sexual exploitation, harassment, just harassment of people who are in the program anyways.
04:02But defining that as opposed to what Ms. Williams talked about is dealing with adversity, that's legitimate adversity.
04:10So there strikes me as sort of the challenge we have here, is making this work, but also making sure that some of the cultures that we've unfortunately dealt with for too long don't get addressed,
04:23and the athletes have a chance to defend themselves, as an employee would.
04:27Absolutely, I think there's a big difference between the challenges that make us stronger as a college athlete, you know, dealing with adversity within a normal realm, but that adversity should not include sexual assault.
04:40You know, and UC Berkeley, that was one of, I could have listed names, but UC Berkeley, 2014, Ted Agu passed away, the university admitted negligence.
04:48Now, the trainer that oversaw that workout was the same trainer at Central Florida just a few years before, that oversaw another workout death among similar circumstances, sickle cell, which is completely preventable.
05:01And that trainer could be anywhere today, you know, so that is not the type of adversity that people can walk off, that family's devastated, Ted's gone.
