Cassidy, Bill: Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will please come to order. People love college sports. They go to bars just to watch a game. I bleed purple and gold for LSU, but I like to say that any team in my state, I bleed their colors on game day. And there's nothing like a great football game at LSU Death Valley. You get up early, you tailgate, you watch game day with your friends until it's time to go to the stadium, and it brings people together. There's a community. Ashley Moody just stepped out, but I can even like Ashley Moody because we connect over, you know, SEC sports, even though she's a Florida fan. But more importantly, though, as important as that is, student athletes can change the trajectory of their life by participating in college athletics. Carlos Temple, who, a good friend of mine, he's one of our witnesses, will speak of that student athlete from a small rural town breaking out of poverty, having opportunities they never could have imagined because they get an athletic scholarship. And the family, good people, but the parents are not going to college, did not have the vision. The athlete then goes to college. Maybe the only way they could go to college is with a scholarship. They see the broader world, and their life changes. Sports gives these young people that chance, and parents want it for their children. By the way, not that we need to just comment for context, because we all know it, sports is an economic goldmine. The LSU home football games bring in millions of dollars to Baton Rouge. Hotels and restaurants. I go to Phil's Oyster Bar. He says if LSU wins the game, oh my gosh, his business is great for the whole week. And so people go to bars, restaurants. The school benefits, the endowment at the school benefits. In many ways, there is great economic impact. College admissions and college application rates to a school which is when a national championship goes up. We can continue to speak about this multi-billion dollar impact, not just upon the student, but upon the university, upon the community, upon the state. And all that, in a setting which I bring this up, people say it's a wild, wild west. With that context, NIL and everything that has occurred, it just spontaneously, people say it's a wild, wild west. For the first time, student athletes are sharing revenue. Coach Tuberville, who I'm sure will be here later, said when he was a coach at Auburn, he advocated for that from the get-go. That even before the NCAA was forced to do it, Coach Tuberville and others were saying there should be revenue sharing. That is a good thing. The bad thing is that I gather that some people are preying upon these young athletes. Not preying like, dear Lord, bless their lives. No, like sign this contract and the contract is not to the advantage of the student athlete. Exploiting them to make decisions that sometimes leave them without a degree, without being set up for that future success, knowing that according to Coach Tuberville, only 0.2% of these athletes will play in the pros. The highest number I've heard is 2%. Whatever it is, 98 to 99.8% of these athletes will not play in the pros. So the goal of their experience in university should be to set them up for life. The question is, is that happening? Now, clearly the student athlete should share in the revenue, but it's a false choice to say we must choose between them receiving no revenue sharing and the current system, which spontaneously people call the wild, wild west, where as many as 98%, and I won't quite say that, but a significant percent will lose that setting up for success for the rest of their life. So it's fair to say that court decisions, the lack of rules, leadership hampered by all this has created confusion and potentially opened the door to exploitation. And a common theme I hear aside from wild, wild west is the current system is unsustainable. Title IX violations may be something to consider. In fact, we should consider it to make sure that it isn't, and if Title IX is being violated, we should address it. There doesn't seem to be enough money to turn a student athlete into an employee athlete and simultaneously fund non-revenue sports, because what I'm hearing is that if the expense increases too much, schools will cut non-revenue sports, and as a result, cut off thousands of young people's chances to go to college. By the way, you can't eliminate women's sports because of Title IX, but you can reduce how much money is being invested and shared with the players, and that's, that's not what we want. At most colleges, at most colleges, sports are not, are not profitable. So the president of the NAIA warned at our round table that many small and medium-sized colleges would not be able to survive the cost of collective bargaining. Think about it. I'm not sure that, is Senator Baldwin still here? I'd be interested in, I'm interested in the impact on High Point University if they could keep their basketball program, shall we note, in the NC2A tournament, took out Wisconsin. You'll, you'll get your chance. So the current, my bracket had McNeese winning everything. I've not done well. The current landscape is just replacing one unfair system for another. Short-term financial gain with NIL deals is overshadowing the value of an education and the value of Olympic and women's sports. Remember, once more, the majority of these student-athletes will not go pro. So we must encourage them to get their education and make sure that they're set up for success. Any solution we come up with must protect the student-athlete as a student, and the Power Four conferences represent less than 10 percent of student-athletes. Now, you, again, constantly hear people ask, will Congress do something? This committee has responsibility over education, labor, and pensions, also health. We should tackle it. Let's bring stability so students and institutions can navigate without unnecessary burden or cost. Let's get off the sidelines. This hearing is how do we set up the student-athlete for success, whether he or she attends a Power Five, NAIA, a mid-major, or an HBCU, and along the way, make sure we take care of the universities as well. I thank my witnesses, our witnesses, for being here. With that, I recognize Senator Murphy for his opening statement.