WASHINGTON—As March Madness tournament continues, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Draymond Green, three-time NBA champion of the Golden State Warriors, this week joined Washington Post Live to discuss the need to treat college athletes fairly and allow them to make money off their talent. Murphy specifically talked about the inequities in college athletics as an inherent civil rights issue, his legislation to provide unrestricted rights for athletes to make money off their talent, state laws coming into effect on Name, Image and Likeness (NIL), and the NCAA’s unequal treatment of women athletes versus their men’s league.

When comparing college with professional sports, Murphy said: “I am a huge fan of college sports. I live in Connecticut, we obviously live and die with our basketball program. And as a fan of college sports, I couldn't help but notice that over the course of the last 10 to 15 years, college sports all of a sudden looks like a mirror image of professional sports…There's just as much money in the college game, sometimes more money. People are getting rich off the college game, the coaches, the athletic directors, the shoe company executives. The only thing that's different is that the players, the workers, the employees in the college game are poor as hell. These are kids who can't afford to put food on the table for their family. Their parents can't afford to come watch them play in the NCAA Tournament.” 

Murphy continued: “It just seemed to me, unjust that there was so much money being made in college sports, way more money today than just 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and these students were getting nothing. It's time to share the wealth. It's time to see this as the civil rights issue that it is, and I’m glad that Draymond and a lot of athletes, both at the college level and the pro level are finally speaking up about this.”

On the College Athlete Economic Freedom Act, Murphy said: “[Y]ou can give the NCAA the ability to decide what endorsement deals are okay and which ones aren't. Second, you could allow a federal agency to do that—the [Federal Trade Commission]. Or, third, as Representative Trahan and I proposed, you can give students a pretty unqualified right. You can just let students be able to do whatever endorsement deals they believe are in their economic best interest, just like every other student who has a marketable skill is able to do at any school in America. Why treat student-athletes different than other high-labor value students that they go to school alongside? So I just don't trust the NCAA to do it, I don't think they've shown that they are interested in putting students’ interests first.”

On state NIL laws coming into effect this summer, Murphy said: “I'm not afraid of some of these state laws becoming operational, and then we can test the theory that the sky is going to fall. Maybe the NCAA can figure out a way to deal with different endorsement rules state to state.  If they can, then there might not be a need for federal intervention. Time will tell, and I think we should just keep talking across the aisle to see if we can come to some common understanding. It might not be as hard as it is on other issues.”

On the NCAA’s proposed guardrails for revenue sharing with college athletes, Murphy said:  “Whatever guardrails [the NCAA is] going to propose for student-athletes, they should be willing to apply to coaches as well. I don't really understand why Nick Saban is able to go out and make millions of dollars off athletic commercials with no requirements for financial literacy training and a different standard is applied to students. I frankly think that what the NCAA probably means by guardrails is a limitation on the amount of money that students are able to glean such that the lion's share can be reserved for coaches, boosters, and college sports industry executives. My worry is that the NCAA is not interested in sharing a serious share of the revenue with students. And so while they will talk about these guardrails in terms of student safety and student well-being, I just haven't seen a lot of evidence to suggest that that's their end goal. I worry that they will use these guardrails to simply limit the financial reward to students so that the reward can go to folks who right now are enjoying most of the upside.” 

On the civil rights issue inherent in college sports, Murphy said: “I don't think you can avoid the fact that the vast majority, 80-90% of the adults who are getting rich off of college athletics, are white men. And the majority of the workers, the individuals who are actually providing the labor on the court or on the field in the money-making programs are African American. I think there is a civil rights element to this discussion. This idea that white adults are telling these African American student-athletes that they should just be okay with the scholarship and they should stop bothering people for more, we don't do that any other industry. We don't cap the wages of high talent employees or workers in any other industry besides this one. And I can't help but think that it has something to do with the fact that the haves financially in college sports are white, and the have-nots financially in college sports are black.”

Last month, Murphy introduced the College Athlete Economic Freedom Act, which would allow college athletes to make money off their Name, Image, and Likeness. Murphy also authored an op-ed in Yahoo! Sports to make the case for student athlete compensation and collective bargaining rights, an issue he plans on introducing legislation to address soon. 

Click here to watch Murphy’s interview in full.

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