Congressional bill focuses on NCAA scholarships, concussions

Five members of Congress reintroduced legislation Thursday that is aimed at re-shaping not only the NCAA, but college athletics in general.

The bill would require schools to provide four-year scholarships and annual baseline concussion testing to athletes in contact sports, including football. It also would provide for the possibility of greater due process rights for schools and athletes involved in NCAA infractions cases.

In addition, adopting language from legislation introduced last November and again in January, the bill would establish a Presidential Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. The 17-member panel would be required to "review and analyze" a variety of issues — academics; the financing of college athletics, including tax regulations; health and safety protections — and submit a written report of findings and recommendations to the White House and Congress.

Reps. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) and Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) offered similar legislation in August 2013, but after being referred to a House subcommittee, it went no further.

This time, Dent and Beatty are being joined in their effort by Reps. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), John Katko (R-N.Y.) and Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Pa.). In January, Rush moved a bill about the presidential commission, continuing an effort that now-retired Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) began last November during Congress' lame-duck session.

It remains to be seen whether Thursday's bill will gain more traction than any of series of proposals related to college sports that fizzled in the last Congress.

However, Dent said during a news conference he believes that this bill has a greater chance of at least getting consideration because Congress this year is likely to address a re-authorization of the Higher Education Act, the law that provides the foundation for federal funding and oversight of college education. Technically, the bill is an amendment to a section of the Higher Education Act.

"We will keep pushing for hearings," said Dent, who opened the news conference by saying that "the NCAA's stated goal is to protect the welfare of the student-athlete ... and, bluntly, the NCAA has failed in my view -- failed miserably, actually."

Rush went further, calling the NCAA "the last plantation in America," and saying the bill is aimed at the "abysmal cesspool that's called college athletics in America." Rush's January bill has been referred to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, of which he is not a member. But Rush suggested that the Energy and Commerce Committee, of which is high-ranking member, also could have jurisdiction.

Katko's district is home to Syracuse University, whose men's basketball program was recently hit with NCAA sanctions. He criticized the NCAA's enforcement process, saying "each and every one of these investigations are conducted completely inconsistently with no real game plan and no real set of rules on how the investigation's going to go. ... I think it's very important that we have some sort of due process with respect to universities and students."

NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said the association had no immediate comment on the new bill.

The bill aims to address the four-year scholarships, but during the NCAA convention in January, schools and athlete representatives from the NCAA's five wealthiest conferences approved legislation that will prevent schools and coaches from choosing not to renew an athlete's scholarship for athletic reasons.

In addition, a number of schools and conferences have pledged to provide four-year scholarship to all athletes as long as they meet basic academic and citizenship standards. Under the system that has been in place, most athletic scholarships are subject to annual renewal.

However, the legislative activity in Washington does appear to have the attention of the NCAA and at least some of its member schools and conferences. The association — which maintains its own governmental relations office in Washington and has been using an outside firm — reported spending $110,000 on lobbying activities in the first quarter of this year, according to its latest disclosure report to the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Last year, the NCAA reported spending $580,000 on lobbying, an amount that exceeded what it reported spending on lobbying during the previous three years, combined.

Other first-quarter disclosure reports showed that the NCAA's outside lobbying firm and lobbyists for the Big 12 Conference, North Carolina State and Kent State spent time working specifically on the legislation about the presidential commission as introduced by Rush in January.

The NCAA's first-quarter report said it lobbied on "issues relating to research on concussions to improve prevention, identification and treatment efforts; and issues relating to intercollegiate athletics, including athletic scholarships, academic success, the collegiate athletic model and amateurism."

The presidential commission, as proposed, would include members appointed, variously, by the president and by the majority and minority leadership of the House and Senate.