WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate approved a bill to regulate college sports this week that was a year in the making.
The Protect College Sports Act was approved on a lopsided 77-22 vote, with both Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith supportive of the legislation.
Supporters of the legislation say it is needed to sort out the “chaos” in college sports.
But there is still controversy over the bill, with critics saying it would give the NCAA more power over players and cap the compensation that student athletes could earn.
The University of Minnesota joined all Big Ten schools in supporting the bill.
The bill would grant the NCAA and athletic conferences an antitrust exemption that would allow the NCAA to restore its five-year eligibility rule and transfer limits.
The legislation would also cap agent fees at 5% and protect athletic scholarships from being revoked due to injury, illness or performance.
It would also establish a national, federal standard for an athlete’s right to earn compensation for their name, image and likeness (NIL), replacing a patchwork of state laws on compensation.
The bill would also create a new $22.5 million fund for schools to retain student athletes, allowing it to grow to $27.5 million if schools invest in NIL for women’s and Olympic sports.
Yet opponents of the bill called it a long-term threat to college athletics and said it would cap the earnings and organizing potential of college athletes and create a permanent imbalance of power between college athletes and athletic conferences.
They also say the antitrust exception would restrain lawsuits and legal challenges the NCAA has faced in recent years.
And they say the bill was drafted without any meaningful input from the student-athletes themselves.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has fought for compensation of student- athletes, pushed back against claims that college sports is in “crisis” and in need of the bill’s new regulations.
“I know that there’s more people than ever showing up to these games and watching the games,” Murphy said in a statement. “The Big 10 just signed a $13 billion contract to broadcast its games.”
He also said the revenue of the NCAA is at an all-time high and the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and Big 10 are both making over $1 billion.
Besides the 22 senators who voted against the bill — most of them Democrats — the Protect College Sports Act is opposed by the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP and the AFL-CIO.
The debate over the bill now moves to the House, where its future is uncertain. The House won’t return to work until after November’s midterm election, so any opportunity to consider the bill would come in a lame-duck session of Congress.
Klobuchar breaks from party on data center vote
President Donald Trump and executives of the nation’s major tech companies signed an agreement this week to voluntarily police their AI systems, agreeing to work with “independent auditors” to assess whether AI systems are working as they were designed to.
But many Americans may not think that’s not enough of a safeguard.
A Quinnipiac poll released this week found that 73% of Americans are either very concerned (38%) or somewhat concerned (35%) that future AI systems could potentially threaten human survival.
Seventy-four percent of poll respondents said they have either not so much trust (29%) or none at all (45%) in the leaders of AI companies.
Meanwhile, Congress struggled this week to place regulations on the data centers that would power AI systems.
Most Senate Democrats argued that a bill called the Ratepayer Protection Act that’s aimed at protecting Americans from escalating energy costs does not go far enough.
The bill would require — but not mandate — that states consider a framework that would ensure that data centers pay for all energy costs and grid updates.
Senate Minority leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who led the opposition, said “a guardrail without teeth isn’t a guardrail.”
The legislation was approved several weeks ago by an overwhelming margin, 417 -3, in the U.S. House.
But it failed to win the 60 votes needed to advance in the U.S. Senate, even as four Democrats, including Klobuchar, broke from their party to vote to move the bill forward.
Klobuchar admitted the bill “would be just a start and it would not fix everything.”
“My focus is on making sure that Minnesotans — not Big Tech — have the final say on data centers, and that involves strong state standards and local control,” she said in an emailed statement. “Minnesotans don’t want a data center in their community, I don’t want it there either.”
Klobuchar, who is running for governor, also said she supports banning nondisclosure agreements for data centers. She also said, “I will make sure that Minnesotans aren’t getting hosed on their electric bills and that our state’s water is protected.”
Meanwhile, Minnesota’s other Democratic senator, Tina Smith, voted to block the bill.
Democratic opposition to the bill is thought to have been driven, at least in part, by efforts to avoid bolstering the reelection of the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, who is in a tough race for reelection against former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Klobuchar has the brainiest staffers
Members of Congress are ranked on many things, including their voting record, attendance and how much campaign cash they raise.
LegiStorm also ranked them by how much education they, and their staffers have.
It found that Sen. Amy Klobuchar has the most educated staffers, followed by Sen. Tina Smith.
That should not be surprising since senators have a larger budget to hire staff and more committee work that requires able researchers and experts in a variety of issues.
On the House side, Rep. Angie Craig, D-2nd District, had the most educated staffers, according to LegiStorm, even as the congresswoman in 2023 announced that a college requirement was not needed to work in her Washington, D.C., or district offices.
“Nobody’s career trajectory should be predetermined by a piece of paper — it should be determined by their work ethic, experience and ability to do the job in front of them,” Craig said at the time.
The office with the least educated staffers was Rep. Brad Finstad, R-1st District.
Finstad’s office did not return a request for comment.
Staff education levels can vary because some offices have more entry level staffers than others, depressing overall education levels.
LegiStorm ranked the education level of all House and Senate offices by considering the level of education — including professional degrees, associate degrees, bachelor’s degrees and post-graduate degrees — and weighing the institutions that granted those degrees.
National universities — schools that offer a full range of undergraduate (bachelor’s) majors, as well as master’s and doctoral degrees — are weighed more heavily than regional universities or liberal arts colleges.
LegiStorm also ranked the education level of all members of Congress.
In Minnesota’s delegation, Rep. Kelly Morrison, D-3rd District — who attended Yale as an undergrad and Boston University for her graduate studies and received a medical degree from Case Western Reserve University — is the most educated.
Klobuchar, who attended Yale and the University of Chicago Law School, came in a close second.
In other news:
▪️Matthew Blake has an in-depth profile of Republican gubernatorial candidate Lisa Demuth that explains how she climbed the ranks of power. The first installment is here and the second is here.
▪️Just before St. Paul’s Central Senior High was to begin its fall sports season, it was discovered that rubber pellets under the artificial turf on its playing field had turned into clumps, causing many problems. Metro reporter Trevor Mitchell has a story about how this happened and what the school is doing about it.
▪️There’s evidence that the race for U.S. Senate between Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and former sportscaster Michele Tafoya has tightened and the result of the contest will be determined by which candidate prevails in the attacks on her opponent.
▪️Greater Minnesota reporter Brian Arola explains why 17 state legislative races are already in the DFL column as contests for control of the Legislature are bitterly fought in other places.
Please keep your comments, and any questions, coming. I’ll try my best to respond. I can be reached at aradelat@minnpost.com.
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