Diana Harshbarger Asks Witness About Effect Of Transferring Schools On ‘Educational Attainment’

yesterday

During a House Commerce Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN) questioned college athlete, Anthony Egbo Jr., about the effect of transferring on players’ academics.

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Transcript

00:00He's a traitor, just so you know. Anyway, thank you, Mr. Chairman, the ranking

00:06member, thank you to the witnesses for being here today. You know, I got a lot of

00:11worries about this NIL, and I have two grandsons coming up. They love football,

00:16basketball, the whole nine yards. I worry about the number of times they can go

00:20through the portal. I worry about the agents and the collectives. Is there a

00:24standardization? Do they need to have some type of accreditation? And I worry

00:30about no limit on outside money. But I guess my first question, we're going to

00:36talk to Mr. Eggbo, because you're a Wildcat. And you know, I went to high

00:40school, I was a Wildcat, and once a Wildcat, always a Wildcat. Yeah, just so

00:45you know, in your opinion, how many times can a student-athlete transfer without

00:51expecting shortfalls to their educational attainment? Would it be once,

00:55twice, five times, eight times, in your opinion? Yeah, I don't know if I have

01:01that answer. Actually, I do know that I don't have that answer. But I do think

01:05that student-athletes, you know, every student-athlete is different at the

01:09stage that they enter into the portal. Some are grad students that have

01:14earned their degree already and are looking for a new opportunity, and others

01:17are 18, 19-year-old kids that are, you know, for whatever case, entering the portal. So I

01:22just do think that there's different situations and circumstances, but I don't

01:26think it's a, I don't know the answer to that. I know, we're trying to figure that

01:30out. I guess my follow-up to you is, does transferring during the

01:36semester affect a student-athlete's academic success? I mean, without

01:42question, in my opinion. I don't think that it's hard to see that a mid-semester

01:47transfer is very disruptive to educational principles that Coach

01:52Beamer mentioned before. At the end of the day, education is at the forefront and

01:57at the foundation of what we're trying to do, so protecting that is important. I

02:02agree. This goes to Coach Beamer. If other schools follow the dynamic approach to

02:08NIL that schools and the SEC have, where do you think college football will be in five

02:12years? If there's a national standard in regards to the legislation, but also with

02:20revenue sharing coming in with the optimism of the settlement next month, to

02:26me, it will level the playing field for programs across the country,

02:31where we're all playing by the same rules. If we have the legislation and

02:37enforcement to back that. Mr. Whitman, this will go to you and Coach Beamer.

02:45Should university revenue sharing include performance-based bonuses? Like,

02:50say, in Mr. Beamer's case, you've got a quarterback at those 3,000 yards and you

02:55beat Clemson. Should he get a bonus? You start, Mr. Whitman, then we'll go back to

03:03Coach Beamer. That's an interesting question. I think it's important to remember under

03:07the terms of the settlement, the payments to our student-athletes will come in the

03:10form of NIL licenses, and so the idea being in the performance bonus context

03:16that the better a student-athlete performs, then the more valuable their NIL

03:20license becomes for the use by the institution or by the athletics program.

03:24And so we certainly are contemplating a system that would permit performance

03:29bonuses. I think a different question is how those are ultimately accounted for

03:33in terms of the cap structure that's being developed, but ultimately we think

03:38performance bonuses have a place. Whether institutions ultimately choose to use

03:42them or not is a different question. I think one of the the intentions of this

03:47process is to allow each school a lot of autonomy to determine for itself how

03:51best to structure its contracts and its relationships with student-athletes to

03:55make their institution as appealing as possible to potential student-athletes.

04:00Which I would agree with Mr. Whitman. In fact, that's a conversation that I

04:04literally just had yesterday morning with Dawn Staley, our women's basketball

04:09coach at South Carolina, in regards to bonuses. And yes, ma'am, if a player for us

04:14plays his tail off against Clemson and allows us to win, yes, absolutely.

04:19Sorry, young man. I knew he was going to say that. He got the first dig in. Yeah, exactly.

04:26All right, this goes to Coach Beamer and Mr. Whitman. How should a student-athlete's

04:32fair market value be generated? I know you're speechless. It's a really

04:42important question and certainly we are champions of our student-athletes NIL

04:47rights. It's important that we look for ways to separate true market-based

04:52arms-length transactions that support our student-athletes and their legitimate

04:56NIL interests from the synthetic, artificial, competitive-based NIL

05:02opportunities that have been created over the last handful of years. And so we

05:06certainly don't have an interest in micromanaging those opportunities for

05:09student-athletes. In fact, we want to continue to try and help facilitate and

05:13create those in the ways that are permitted under the most recent changes

05:17to NCAA rules. But it's important that we do try and create some system to

05:22monitor that to create some level of transparency. Our student-athletes want

05:26that transparency. Those working within our system want that transparency. And

05:31ultimately, we also know that this isn't going to be a perfect system at the

05:35outset and we'll continue to evaluate it and improve upon it. But we feel

05:40confident that here at the beginning as we develop a clearinghouse with a

05:43partner like Deloitte, a very reputable firm, that we'll be in a strong position to

05:48make those assessments. And I would agree the fair market value range of

05:53compensation, there's no cap on that. I want to be clear that we're all for our

05:59student-athletes being able to make as much as they possibly can in legitimate

06:04NIL outside income. But what we need is transparency and a clearinghouse,

06:11like we're saying, that will give us that those the teeth in that. Okay, very

06:15good. And we want to take into consideration that some of the players

06:20that, you know, such as the offensive linemen, we have a senator, I mean we

06:25have, well maybe a future senator, but a senator right here, that they also be

06:31compensated as well fairly, even though they don't get the recognition. Yeah,

06:35really, I love the offensive line, just FYI. They spell relief. Okay, okay, I know.

Diana Harshbarger Asks Witness About Effect Of Transferring Schools On ‘Educational Attainment’

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