Veasey Presses Witness On The Effect Of ‘Disruptive’ And ‘Demanding Itineraries’ On College Athletes

2 days ago

During a House Commerce Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX) questioned Josh Whitman, a college athletics director, about college athletes maintaining their academics despite rigorous schedules.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, I want to say thanks to each and every one of you for coming to testify.

00:06I want to, for Mr. Egg, I wanted to give a special shout out to him.

00:10My uncle, back in the 1960s, before the now defunct Southwest Conference, started accepting black athletes.

00:19He had an opportunity and graduated from Abilene Christian University.

00:23And so I have my late uncle, so we have Abilene Christian University shared value there.

00:30So welcome. Mr. Beamer, we're here to talk about NIL.

00:36And I will tell you that I think that one thing that the Southeast Conference is facing,

00:41and I talked a little bit, touched on that earlier when I mentioned the Southwest Conference and integration.

00:47I think that the SEC, particularly with all of the governors and the wokeness and DEI that they're bringing to these college campuses,

00:56I think y'all are going to run a lot of the brothers off.

00:59Honestly, I'll be straight up with you.

01:01Y'all need to figure out how you're going to make your campus comfortable for the black athletes that are playing there

01:08with all of this rhetoric around some of these topics.

01:13Mr. Whitman, I wanted to also point out, you talked about the grades,

01:17and I think that you're right on to mention that.

01:20What worries me, and everybody knows it, it's not anything new,

01:24that in order for players to stay eligible and in order for players to be able to participate,

01:31that there are certain degrees that are off limits,

01:34certain degrees that make it really tough for them to be able to major in

01:39if they don't want to be moved down the depth chart,

01:42and if they want to be able to stay on the team.

01:46And so it's great to talk about that education is still one of the priorities,

01:51but everybody knows that that game has gone on for a long time,

01:56that there were players that had all these credits, and the credits absolutely led to nothing,

02:01or they get a degree in something like general education to where it's not really a lot that they can do with it.

02:08And no one really knows what those degrees are for.

02:11And so I'm glad that you're talking about the education, but that brings me to my first question.

02:18I want to talk about, and I know that you're not from UCLA, but I want to just mention this.

02:23They're going to travel over 22,000 miles this season,

02:27going from the West Coast all the way over to the East Coast,

02:31and Stanford, USC, Washington, other schools are going to face

02:37those same demanding itineraries, and this is going to be disruptive to their academics.

02:44And so with knowing that you're going to have that increased physical and mental fatigue that's going to be taking place,

02:52how is that good for the student athletes?

02:56I really don't understand that.

03:00These increased travel schedules, I'm just curious,

03:06how have athletes been able to work around that, and how has it impacted them academically?

03:14Thank you for the question, Congressman.

03:16We've had the chance now at the University of Illinois to participate in the expanded Big Ten since the beginning of the fall,

03:24and so have some firsthand experience watching a number of our teams make those trips.

03:29The thing that I would remind you is that we continue to try and champion our student athletes,

03:34both in their academic and their athletic pursuits.

03:37And in the expanded Big Ten footprint, just as an example,

03:41for schools that compete at the level that we do, we're used to traveling nationally.

03:46Our student athletes in all of our sports travel extensively across the country

03:51to participate in their non-conference competition.

03:54And so for Illinois, we've now replaced some of those non-conference competitions,

03:58maybe in California or Texas or Florida, with now conference competitions.

04:03And so the chance for them is not that much different than what it was before.

04:08And we're also able to provide them with robust academic support.

04:12We have tutors and academic advisors who travel with our student athletes to help them study when they're on the road.

04:18I'm sorry to cut you off, but I want to ask Mr. Fossanelli about that, too.

04:22Could you touch on that?

04:24Yeah, we had a number of games, and traveling across the country is incredibly taxing,

04:29and especially to the point of—I really want to get on the point of—

04:34your practice schedule far outweighs your academic schedule,

04:39to where the majority of your time as a college athlete is spent on your sport,

04:43in your workouts, in your team meetings, in your practices, traveling for games,

04:48to where I've had a number of times where you're getting off that bus,

04:51returning from a game at 7 in the morning, and the sun's coming up,

04:54and you're thinking, great, on the way to meetings, and then back to bed,

04:57and hopefully I'll be awake for class on Monday.

05:00Those long-distance games are very tough and oftentimes lead to lack of sleep,

05:05lead to lack of all these issues that are part of it, and that athletes do enjoy the brace.

05:10Athletes are all about the grind on it,

05:12but it is incredibly difficult and taxing to manage having a final later in the week

05:16when you're not sleeping for part of that week.

05:20Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Veasey Presses Witness On The Effect Of ‘Disruptive’ And ‘Demanding Itineraries’ On College Athletes

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