About whether or not things are made public. I feel for you, because part of me think that is youre captured by those you are supposed to regulate, but then youre supposed to regulate those you are captured by. I could tell whether youre in charge or whether youre a minute a minion to them. The notion that you will say ill go after this im you know, i dont sense that you feel like you have any control over the situation, and if you have no control, if youre merely a monetary passthrough, why should you even exist . Well, i think the the reality is that while the issue we are talking about here i dont have a vote on, and i dont get to set those policies, i can certainly set the tone on it, and i can certainly be someone who voices a very loud opinion and says this is not right, this is inappropriate, these are the conflicts that exist when you have a policy and a practice like this on on your campus. When i first took the job, the very first summit i held in indianapolis was a summit on sexual violence, a summit that led to the creation of a working group of experts, not College Athletic folks, but of experts from across the country to create a working group and a think tank. Well be issues the results of their work this summer, im now, thanks to your work, gull to go and make sure this issue is addressed in that handbook, and im going to talk to the leadership at our very next meeting in august that we need to find ways that athletic depends are not responsible, because of all the concerns that you raise. Thank you. Im over my time. I hope somebody else covers the questions about young people from families that cant afford to even travel to see their Children Play in the games. Yes. Because meanwhile, the universities are making millions off their children, but their parents cant even get a stipend to attend the game to watch their child play. There is something wrong with that scenario. And its going on college catch puss across this country every single week. I agree with you. Thank you. I want to start with which is the coach for the for the coach who has epilepsy. As you know, had a number of seizures, and the university of minnesota president said were not going to get rid of him. Our record has been rocky, the gophers, they kept the coach on. He had to coach from a box, he couldnt coach on the field because of his condition. During the entire season he coached from a box, and i was there when we beat nebraska with him in a box. It was a great moment. It was a great story, but it does make me think, as i hear all of this, that that kind of compassion, what was so captivating about the story is it kind of defied what had been become of so many of these big sports games and the cutthroat competition and how people were treated. So i think what youre hearing up here today is the hope that these are deliverables, these are things that can happen, when you talk about changing the Sexual Assault policy, making sure the players have the health care insurance, making sure thif the time to do the internships. They arent crazy hard things to do. That we have another hearing, whether its six months from now or a year from now to check up on whats happening with these things whether theyre at the high school level. I know that senator tom udahl cosponsored his bill. I know theres a lawsuit thats going on, just your opinion of it, but if you could talk about whats being done. I think its a critical issue and most heavy ily identified. It occurs in virtually every sport. First of all, as i had mentioned in my opening comments, we created when i first came into the office, i was a business sprited to find there wasnt a cheef medical officer, so when we went out, we hired a wonderful doctor who is a neurologist. Hes working unbelievably hard. We dont have good signs, its not as well understood as we all might think. So once they have done that, just this past handful of days they released the first ever consensus among the medical community on the treatment and the prevention of concussions, especially around football, a new football practice guidelines around contact and a variety of other things. We signed with the department of defense about two months ago, an agreement to do a 30 million project. Were putting up 150 million, dod is putting up there 15 million to attract longitudinally young men and women and try to get a legitimate history of the occurrence and treatment of the concussion. Were working with the youth all of the Youth Sports Organization to try to get better practice guidelines working with the envelope to try to get coaching, efully in people, and boys how to tack the so girl soccer coaches are saying we need to ban any heading until girls and boys are at least 12 years of age. So were looking at trying to lend our support to those kinds of efforts. Were making pardon the pun headway, but the factser we need a lot more understanding of where this disorder. Im pleased where we are, and im proud. Part of the reason why i stopped playing in the nfl to pursue medicine and go into a particular special of neurosurgery was because i saw a lot of my teammates with early onset dementia or some of these traumatic things you often associate with several concussive episodes. I saw it in the nfl, and now as an aspiring neurosurgeon, i would love to add expertise to that discussion, but one thing i noticed in the locker rooms was a lot of my teammates, fellow athletes, we want to be fast, right . Wrept to be quick, nimble, agile, so the protective equipment we wear, a lot of the guys would choose and select equipment thats lighter and maybe not as protective. So that may lead to more concussive episodes. I think education is incredibly important. And talk to us about the dangers of concussion. And then if you have a risk of getting a second concussion, your likelihood of getting a third, fourth and fifth goes up exponentially. The pressures of trying to be on the field, trying to compete, all at the same time as devin said, earlier if youre not on the field, nfl coaches cant see you, youre not exposed, perhaps you lose the opportunity of getting drafted high and getting to the next level. Its just to perhaps change the culture, change the focus of Big Coalition high velocity hits, and the idea that that is a part of the game. It is not a part of the game. If you look at the rule book, its to take a player to the ground similar to how rugby is performed, but you see the highlights and exposure on the big high velocity hits where guys are speering into another player. Thats what gets celebrated, and i think thats the wrong path. As i said, hopefully in a few years or so, i can add more knowledge to this discussion, but from my anecdotal knowledge, it is an issue. Ill ask questions on the record of the internships of you mr. Ramsey. I thought that was fascinating, on what a small proportion of the student athletes end up going into pro sports, thats most likely not going to be their career. They have to have that ability to pursue, and if its supposed to be 20 hours, then we have to find some way to measure that and enforce is. To me this hearing so far has been a lot of talk about a lot of things which have been around for an awfully long time, which we all think should be solved, but theyre not solved, and i think there are very clear reasons for it, and that is decisionmaking is flawed, fragile and useless. Florida, which has everybody recruits from florida, they have a law that transparency, how money is spent, has to be made public, because they have a law. And so, you know, in the contributions and when ncaa comes in, only a small portion goes to education and all kinds of things go to the stadium, that is all available to the public. So i commend them for coming from a state like that, and i just think thats the path with so many answers, which we just otherwise seem to be unwilling to deal with. Excuse me. Well, thank you, mr. Chairman. And i think a lot has come out of this Committee Hearing that should enable and help dr. Emmert to continue with the reforms that hes trying. So much has been said, let me highlight a couple. I happy to know, because i was mesmerized with mr. Rolle as a player at Florida State. For hi to do the interview for the rhodes scholarship, which was in the south, on a saturday, his president t. K. Weatherall had to get special dispensation so that they could get someone to donate a private jet for him that could fly him somewhere in the northeast when Florida State was playing up here, and even so, he made it only in the second half. But the emphasis you know, thats something thats so common sense that you would want a player to interview for the rhodes, and yet it was a big deal. It shouldnt have been. The fact of so of of these players that are coming from families that are dirt poor, and they dont have the opportunities that others do it seems to my its common sense, we should have sometime ends or whatever you call it, so it equalizes the Playing Field of the financial ability if those student athletes are contributing to the Financial Wellbeing of that university. So too with Health Insurance. That all to be common sense. If is hurt and thats a careerending injury, the best of medical care ought to be given to that player and for it to last for some period of time in the future. And of course, consuggestions just add a whole other dimension to this thing. I thought it was very interesting in another committee that i have the privilege of chairing, we did a hearing on concussions, and including professional athletes they would not recommend to their children that they play football. So times are changing. The ncaa has got to get with the times. So whatever this Committee Hearing has done to enible you as a reformer to get those schools the votes that you need to do a lot of these things that werealkout why should they have to sneak arounn the shadows in order to get money to be able to buy a ticket to come to the game and where to stay in a hotel and so forth . Mq1n it defies common sense. Mr. Rolle, you want to make any final comment . Sure. One thing that id like to say is that when you think about the and the oneyear renewable, aio lot of players that i was on teams with, it kind of felt like it was us versus them. And it wasnt a team. We didnt feel like the ncaa was protecting our best interests, wanted toc see us succeed and thrive and flourish. It was almost as if we had to do everything we could to promote ourselves and to better ourself against this big machine that was dictating and ordering the steps that we took. And maybe thats not true. Maybe theresc some miscommunication, maybern the information wasnt getting disseminated well enough. And thats another thing that is quite bothersome be today going back to the economic issue and the economic struggles. A lot of myc teammates, senator nelson, come to poor area this is florida, and they come to Florida State as the first person in their family to be a college student, and they dont have a lot of money to lean back on from their families. So that leaves them openc and susceptible to unsavory things. Nfl runners would come to our dorms and knock on our doors and say, hey, i can take you out to a nightclub, i can buy you a meal, i can give you a suit to wear, i can take you and your girlfriend out to eat, andc the players dont have anything else. Then they become uneligible because now they have a black mark or they just dont play anymore, so they end up back in polk county, florida, and that perpetuity continues, and its g and discouraging. I saw it often. That is the exact example that we need to use. Thank you, mr. Chairman. O use. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator nelson. I apologize. You could have run for the senate ten years ago. I dont want to be disrespectful to senator blumenthal who i think was here before me earlier. No . I will ask my questions now only because i have to preside, and if you would yield for five minutes, i would really appreciate it. Ive already been put in my place once. I will yield. Yeah, but youre bigger than i am. So [ laughter ] let me thank you, mr. Chairman, for having this hearing, which very sincerely i think is a very important one or a significant for the future of academic institutions. I want to thank all of the folks who have come to enlighten us and thank you to senator nelson. And i want to begin by saying, for what its worth, i think the law here is heading in a very unfortunate direction. As dr. Emmert and i have discussed, i think the law is heading in the direction of regardi regarding athletes at university more and more employees that is because of the growing asymmetry and energy, time, sweat, blood injury that is involved. That is classically the reason why labor law protections have applied to individuals who on potentially are victims of exploitation. Or construction sites. So i think the challenge is to dim minutic and truly and therefore the laws will move to and i say that with regret, because i too, as dr. Emmert has articulated well value the student athlete model rather than the employee employer model, but the more the reality is that athletes in effect function as employees, the more the law will recognize that fact. My opinion is worth what youre paying for it. Im just a country lawyer from connecticut, but i sincerely believe that thats the direction of the law. I want to first ask you, astonished and deeply troubled by the revelation that Athletic Departments on many campuses investigate i would like your commitment that you will work to change that practice as soon as possible and as effectively as possible. You have my commitment. I obviously want to understand the data more. I simply read a summary. Im not sure what the facts are on those campuses. As i said earlier, the data that senator mccaskills staff brought forward was shocking to meivities i am shocked and outraged by you apparent practice on many campuses with the effect of revictimizing survivors who may be in effect victims. I want to focus for the moment on Health Insurance. You know, individual colleges and the ncaa made billions on the talents of these young men and women, and i want to ask you, couldnt they offer Health Insurance for athlete for a certain amount of time after they leave college . That seems imminently fair. So i would ask for your commitment that you will work towards providing for Health Insurance for these needs and injuries that may extend beyond their playing years on campus or even professional settings, and id like to know what more assuming you are committed to that charge, what more you can do to encourage schools to provide this kind of coverage for its student athletes . Yes, sir. Well, today the coverage that exists right now is provided either by the campus itself or by the student athletes family, depending upon University Policies at most of the high resource schools, they provide the insurance so the student doesnt have to. We need to do several things. Wen, in my opinion, we need to make sure there arent copayment requirements of a young man or woman, especially from a low income family, and suddenly they have an injury with a 2,000 or 5,000 copayment, since it was a sportsrelated injury, so we need to make sure we dont have many of those circumstances out there. We have right now at the ncaa level catastrophic insurance, so if there is longterm disability issues. If there are injuries that require treatment over the course of a lifetime, there is a policy in place. We have some individual that have been on the policy for 20 or more years. We have taken a number of steps to make sure that policy doesnt kick in until you have 90,000 worth of bills. We need to make sure that, to your point im saying yes, i guess, senator, you have my commitment. There are complexities in all of this we need to work through, but i agree with you that no one should have to pay for an injury they suffered as a student athlete. Thank you. I welcome and accept your yes to both the Sexual Assault and the insurance questions. I would ask further for your commitment to work with us on sensible legislation that will impose a higher level of responsibility in both areas. Thank you. Certainly. Thank you, mr. Chair. Go ahead. Thank you, mr. Chairman. First of all, im grateful, we talked about this in my first days as the United States senator, this was an issue you wanted to cover, and you saw my excitement for doing that. A lot of that stems from i was back in the 90s an Ncaa Division i football player. I want to first say, its very important for me to say, i probably wouldnt be here right now if it wasnt for that experience. I am deeply grateful. I joke all the time i got into stanford because of a 4. 0, and 16 yards receiving yards in my high school year. And had lifetime experiences frankly that i could never, ever replace. It opened up extraordinary doors for me. So we could have a hearing that could go on for hours if not days about all the good things that are happening with the ncaa, so please forgive me if im not giving that appropriate light. What concerns me and what you and i have talked about chairperson for quite some time are the egregious challenges we have. I want to publicly thank dr. Emmert, he was gracious not only to come here, which he did not have to do, but took special time to come see me as a former athlete to sit down and hear my concerns. I was taken aback that you agreed with me across the board. Let me just reiterate those for the record and make sure we are in agreement. So number one, you agree the big problem that athletes dont get scholarships to get a b. A. . Yes. That is a big problem that we have, athletes that pour their lives, 40, 50 hours a week, and then end up having gone through their eligibility, but dont have a b. A. That is a problem . Yes. You agree its a problem that we have athletes, often very poor coming onto College Campuses restricted from working, they cant shovel driveways for extra pending money, cant meet the needs of travel, cant buy toiletries, clothesing, if theyre restricted from working, you know thats a problem we have to address . A minor correction, not banned from working. They can in fact work, and in many cases do, but the biggest challenge is they simply havent the time. So in other words they cant work because of whatever reason, you know thats the problem that the scholarship does not cover the full costs at the same time theyre being expected, whether by law or not, to work 40, 50, 60 hours a week. Completely agree. Thats a problem. You agree its a problem with