One area U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) sees President-elect Donald Trump focusing on when he retakes the White House this month is men's and women's sports.
On Friday, Tuberville continued his effort to resolve the "disaster" that Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) and transfer portal had become in college sports with a lack of rules and regulations. The former Auburn head football coach lamented that the NIL had "gotten out of hand."
“We've pretty much made college sports minor league sports with all the money that's in it," Tuberville said Friday on Talk 99.5 "Dixon & Vining." "Now again, I'm all for these kids making money because the universities are making millions of dollars in TV revenue now, and it's really changed. In 10 years, for instance, in Auburn ... and Alabama has gone from around $15-20 million in TV revenue, everybody in the SEC to close to $70-100 million a year with the new contracts that they've signed. And so, that money should have been shared, revenue sharing, but greed set in, they wouldn't do it. And so, lawsuits have caused that to happen, to say, 'Yeah, you're giving some of this money to players.' Well, it's gotten out of hand. There's no regulations or rules, so we've got to do something with that, with all the other problems out there."
"I've got a small group of my staff in D.C. that works on it every day to try to come up with some kind of solution because if we stay down this road and don't put regulations with what's going on, then it's going to be a disaster," he added. “You're going to have the same teams. If you look at the rich teams of Texas and Ohio State and Notre Dame, those are the teams that are going to buy the best players every year, so it's not going to be a contest. Now, Alabama and Auburn are starting to be able to throw their two cents in there. But I mean, it's just going to be tough, and it's going to be a donor fatigue of trying to raise $15, $20 million a year to buy these players to come to your university. And this transfer portal where you can just, OK, I'm going to go somewhere else and make a few more bucks and not ever get a degree."
"Education is never brought up in college sports anymore, and that's what they're supposed to be there for. So we're going to work at it, Bryan. Hopefully, we can get some kind of resolution in the near future," Tuberville concluded.
He went on to highlight that the transfer portal allowing players to essentially come and go as they please was "taking away opportunities" and hurting the walk-on aspect of college athletics.
"You're eliminating probably 25-30% of athletes that ... used to have a chance to play college sports," Tuberville outlined. "And to me, college sports gives you an opportunity to learn, you know, time, organization, work ethic, learn how to win, learn how to take a loss, build back, work together as a teammate. We've just totally destroyed any of that because of money."
"And again, it's all — you go back and look at this NCAA for years, they said, well, we're not going to do it this way. We're afraid of a lawsuit. Well, the lawsuits are here. And it's changed the dynamics of everything we're doing. And just, unfortunately, it's teaching the wrong things to young men and women. And we're going to eliminate a lot of sports because there's not going to be a lot of money to go around for Olympic sports and a lot of the non-revenue sports, mostly women," he stated.
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