With the decision looming on approval of a massive NCAA settlement, Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian made a quick trip to Washington, D.C. last week, feeling almost an obligation to highlight the need to call the “guard rail” on the rapid professionalism of college track and field.
“It’s something that matters to me,” Sarkisian said Monday during his first meeting with the media since his April 9 trip to Congress. “I love being a college football coach. Student-athlete.”
Steve Sarkisian: Coach in the Texas Athletics Quartet
Salkisian joined Texas volleyball coach Jerit Elliott, football player DeAndre Moore Jr. and volleyball player Emma Halter during the trip as part of a lobbying session addressed to Congressional members for the imminent approval of at least $200 million for student patients in the SEC and NCAA.
US Judge Claudia Wilken held the final hearing on April 7th regarding the $2.8 billion class action antitrust settlement filed by athletes against the NCAA and its biggest meeting. Full approval must be granted on July 1st before the terms take effect immediately. Relocation portal, scholarship restrictions, and whether university athletes should be considered employees.
According to Sarkisian, lawmakers said lawmakers can hear from student-athletes and coaches who must adapt directly to the new rules.
“I really want to be clear. No one says they don’t want players to get promotional rights and revenue distributions. “We want to be able to protect them to protect the program, so that means 105 people or those numbers are on the roster, that can be a great experience playing college football.”
“We need help from elected officials” to establish parameters regarding the impending court decision, Louisville athletics director Josh Heard told reporters in Washington, D.C.
“I think it’s possible to go back to elected officials and say we’re trying to do our part,” said Josh Haild, Louisville athletic director. “We’re willing to be positive and pay $2.8 billion in backlash. We’re going to find a way to fund this $20 million revenue share.”
Steve Sarkisian says the former boss will become a strong advocate
How that revenue will be shared among all student-athletes moving forward is perhaps the biggest issue with settlement.
“We want our players to be compensated in the right way. That’s fair,” Sarkisian said. “We’re in the space right now. There aren’t many guardrails (and) there aren’t many regulations. If we don’t start doing this, we’ll lose this student-athlete idea if we don’t start finding ways to get guardrails around this.
Sarkisian, who once worked for the retired Alabama coaching legend Nick Saban, praised the former boss for long defending the fair revenue sharing model that holds the foundations of college amateurism.
“Coach Saban has been playing that drums for over a year,” he said.
Does Sarkisian think Saban will serve as emperor over the federal oversight committee’s potential?
“He’s sharp enough and no doubt everyone will listen to him,” Sarkisian said.
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