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Report: Senate committee to hold hearing on college athletics July 9

Mark Emmert

FILE - In this April 6, 2014 file photo, NCAA President Mark Emmert answers a question at a news conference in Arlington, Texas. The NCAA’s board of directors is scheduled to discuss and endorse a 57-page overhaul plan that would hand far more power to five major conferences to decide how to treat and perhaps satisfy their athletes.(AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)

AP

With the number of issues that became problematic for the NCAA over the last year or so, more people outside of collegiate athletics began to take notice. Among those was a group of United States senators, who took the step of organizing a hearing on the state of collegiate athletics that was supposed to be held back in May.

However that hearing was postponed, and according to Jon Solomon of CBS Sports it will now take place on July 9 (next Wednesday).

With the Ed O’Bannon lawsuit yet to result in a verdict (in-court testimony came to a conclusion last Friday), a lawsuit filed by Jeffrey Kessler and the unionization issue that Northwestern is dealing with, there are many questions that the senators would like to have answered according to the report.

After the hearing was postponed in May, Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va) released a letter to NCAA president Mark Emmert expressing concern about the NCAA’s oversight of its members. The letter referred to a response Emmert previously provided to a Congressional request for information that “leaves us with the impression that the National Collegiate Athletic Association … defers to member institutions on most matters potentially leaving student-athletes vulnerable to the very abuses the NCAA was created to protect against.”

The letter stated that as colleges generate more revenue and publicity “the potential for exploitation and abuse of student-athletes has never been greater.”


Among those who were expected to testify when the hearing was originally scheduled are O’Bannon and former Tennessee running back Arian Foster, who is now playing for the Houston Texans. The committee also invited NCAA president Mark Emmert to testify.

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