Tuberville Promotes His New Bill to Rein in Transfer Portal During HELP Hearing

WASHINGTON - Today, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spoke at a U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing about how Congress can reform college athletics to better protect students and ensure they have opportunities to succeed.

During his remarks, Sen. Tuberville discussed the Student-Athlete Act, his new legislation to rein in the transfer portal and clarify eligibility rules for student-athletes.

Sen. Tuberville exchanged questions with two witnesses: Abby Lynch who is a former soccer player and track athlete at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Collis Temple Jr. who is a member of the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors.

Excerpts from Sen. Tuberville's remarks can be found below or viewed on YouTube or Rumble.

TUBERVILLE: "Yeah. Houston, we have a problem, and it's getting worse every day. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for what you do. We got huge problems in a lot of areas. This year, we will have 10,000 football players at all levels signed up for the transfer portal-10,000. 5,000 men and women's basketball players were signed up for the transfer portal. I just wanna go through this. I've got a bill I put up […] We're all talking about the NCAA-which has been a disaster, by the way-after 35 years of dealing with them. They're a big part of the problem. But it seems like we can't solve that problem.

So, at the end of the day, the issue to me is pretty simple, okay? The question is whether we still believe student-athletes are supposed to be students […] I'm all for athletes being paid every dime that they can get. Please go out there and raise your money and take every dime people wanna pay you. I'm all for that. I've always said that. As you said-I forget who said it-but it is a full-time job. My God. Sports is full-time. Meetings, weightlifting, study halls. You name it. I did it [for] 35 years, and I couldn't believe that we weren't paying student-athletes. But that's behind us.

Young men and women have worked hard and have earned that opportunity. They ought to be able to benefit from this opportunity. We don't even talk about scholarships anymore. My God, that's what we used to talk about. Now we talk about money. The system is so far away from [education], it's embarrassing. College [athletics is] starting to look less like a pathway to a degree, and more like a revolving door, as I said, [because] of all this transfer[ing]. Athletes are bouncing from school to school chasing the next deal. We all know that. They're not paying taxes on that next deal either, by the way. And that's the next thing that's coming…It ought to concern everybody. Everybody […] 98% of the young men and women that go to college do not play pro sports. We need to get away from that. The future is going to depend on the education-the education part of going to school. If you wanna play in the NFL or pros, go. Go get it done. But if you wanna learn something […]-95, 98% of the thousands of kids I coached that got a degree thank me all the time. 'Thank you for making me go to class.'

This week, I'm introducing the Student Athlete Act. I mean, we all got problems-collective bargaining, 'We don't get enough healthcare,' and all that, hey, we're gonna have those problems. This bill that I'm putting out is a basic idea. […] But at the end of the day, we gotta start somewhere, folks. Or we're gonna lose it. We're gonna lose Olympic sports. We're gonna lose women's sports. Because there's not gonna be any money. It's gonna be club sports. I got news for y'all: it's coming. The money's not gonna be there. You can forget about Title IX. You can have all the lawsuits you want. If the money's not there, it's not there. Money's gonna go to athletes that get on television.

So, student-athletes, to me, should have a five-year-window. You start, you got five years. I'm sick of these 28, 29-year-olds playing in a young-person's sport and taking your money. I'm sick of that. Five years [to] play-no waivers, no excuses. Once you start, you got five years. At the end of that five years, you go and do whatever you need to do the rest of your life. It's pretty simple. I mean, you can get a degree in those five years. If you transfer one time, the likelihood of you getting a degree is almost zero. Think about that. Unless you wanna go to school seven, eight years and pay for a lot of that yourself. So, I'm for a one-year transfer. One time, you get it-freebie. If your coach leaves, [something] happens in your family, you transfer. After that, you pay the penalty of what we used to do. You transfer, you sit [out] a year. But you got a one-[time] transfer. One year.

Folks, we can't do this transfer portal [in its current form]. If we do it, we're gonna as I said, we're gonna lose men's sports, women's sports, and we're gonna have just a couple [sports] out there that's going to be on television, and that is it. And there's not gonna be any scholarships. So, I don't have a lot of-can I ask a couple of questions while I'm at it? Ms. Lynch, my bill would solve the issue pretty quick in in terms of transferring, but is it realistic for somebody to transfer and get a degree?"

LYNCH: "Thank you so much for your question, Senator Tuberville. Also, War Eagle. I would say that the realistic capability of a student to transfer and still get a degree, it depends where they transfer. Obviously, we deal with quarter schools and semester schools in the Big Ten, and that is a really complex thing in terms of transferring credits, academic progress, progress towards degree. Also, the timing of transfer portals isn't always the most helpful. Like, the football transfer portal is now January 2^nd to January 16^th, and that sits right in the middle of when quarter schools start their new semester. And that's really problematic for getting student-athletes-particularly football-student-athletes enrolled in their next institution, which really puts them back academically. So, transferring does inhibit academic progress, especially when you're transferring multiple, multiple times. I appreciate your question. Thank you."

TUBERVILLE: "Mr. Temple, how do we keep integrity in this nonsense?"

TEMPLE: "Well, before I address the integrity question, I just wanna make some highlighted comments. As most of us know, South Carolina is a special-super special-women's basketball venue. They average 18,000 folks a game in their stadium. There's another super basketball venue for women. It's called LSU [with] Kim Mulkey. We average about 14,000, 13,000 persons a game. Here's the reality of what's gonna happen in the world of athletics as it relates to Title IX and women's sports. The year Kim Mulkey won the national championship with what was the young lady's name? […] Angel Reese? Yeah. Angel Reese. LSU lost six million dollars in the basketball arena for women. This past year, at the University of South Carolina, women's basketball lost eight million dollars. It's unsustainable. It's unsustainable. Now, the answer is, okay, what do you do with Title IX and women's sports? I submit to you, there's not a total of eight to ten million dollars that's been generated and earned to sustain women's sports.

So, as you move forward to work on this very complex circumstance, you gotta take it all into full consideration. You gotta take it all. It's mostly about the money. Because of it being mostly about the money, it is vitally important that we figure out a way to make sure that these student-athletes participate in the college experience, which is the academic piece first.

Now, you say that we probably need to give them five years. I understand. Five years is a redshirt year, plus four to play. Senator Tuberville, I would ask you to consider a six-year deal. A six-year-deal would involve a grayshirt, which is something that you're familiar with, and then a redshirt, which is something you're also familiar with, and then give them four years to play. So, when you're talking about 18-year-old freshman, 19-year-old sophomore, 20-year-old junior, 21-year-old senior, and you give them a couple of extra years to get it together, I think it'll work a lot better than just five years. Now, what the hell was your question?"

TUBERVILLE: "Integrity."

TEMPLE: "Integrity."

TUBERVILLE: "[How can] we keep the integrity?"

TEMPLE: "It will absolutely keep the integrity. We need to move forward on your concept because as you indicated, we have to start somewhere. We don't wanna throw the baby out with the bath water. We have to start somewhere. And I think your concepts and your perspective about how this thing has to work is healthy and must be done. The NCAA is not going to fix it. They're not gonna fix it. We have to move forward with you senators."

Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans' Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees.

###