Ted Cruz Wants to Save College Sports

And as promised, Andy and I are now joined on the Hoops HQ show by Senator Ted Cruz from the great state of Texas.

Senator, thanks so much for taking the time.

Thank you for your work, you and Senator Cantwell, to get to this point.

I know we have a long way to go, but a lot of us, myself included, didn't think we could even get this far, so you're to be congratulated and thanked for that.

It's called the Protect College Sports Act, and...

You know, the main criticism out of the gate is that this is tilted too far in favor of the schools.

You're proposing ways to limit athlete compensation and their ability to transfer their eligibility.

So the main question at the start, Senator, is why should athletes have the same opportunities offered by the free market that coaches and athletic directors have?

Well, Seth, Andy, thank you for having me on.

It's good to be with you.

Look, this bill was introduced, and this week is a big deal that we have now bipartisan legislation.

We introduced it because college sports is in crisis.

And the biggest losers, if Congress doesn't act, are going to be the athletes.

What we're seeing right now, we've got, number one, the transfer portal that is, I think, out of control.

And you've got kids transferring three, four, five times.

You've got eligibility.

There are no eligibility standards.

Six, seven years.

You've got people playing 27, 28 years old.

You've got pros going back to college athletics.

None of that is good.

And then on top of that, you've got an out of control spending spiral that is causing every week we're seeing a different school canceling women's sports, canceling track and field, canceling Olympic sports, canceling tennis.

That's going to keep going.

And we're seeing if Congress doesn't act, I believe within three to five years, We will see a total of somewhere between 30 and 50 schools that have football teams that are competitive nationally.

And I think everyone else basically goes away.