{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.schmitt.senate.gov/media/press-releases/senator-schmitt-congress-has-a-responsibility-to-protect-college-sports/", "Senator Schmitt: Congress Has a Responsibility to Protect College Sports", "2026-06-03", "2026", "2026-06", "Republican", "Senate", "MO", "Eric Schmitt", "S001227", "www.schmitt.senate.gov", "schmitt", "https://www.schmitt.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/", "scraper", "Highlights Congress\u2019 Role in Implementing Key Reforms to Preserve a Uniquely American Institution\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 Today, at a Senate Commerce Committee Hearing on the Protect College Sports Act, U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) discussed Congress\u2019 role in preserving and strengthening the integrity of college athletics amid the chaos and instability of the current college sports system.\n\nWatch the Senator\u2019s opening remarks HERE.\n\n\u201cThere [are] so many great lessons to be learned in life through college athletics, and I truly believe we are on the precipice of that going away\u2026 you certainly won\u2019t have 500,000 student-athletes being able to learn those lessons every year. It\u2019ll be something very different, very different than what we\u2019ve grown accustomed to. I think college sports\u2014college football in particular\u2014is such a uniquely American institution and it really is worth fighting for. It\u2019s worth preserving, but it\u2019s not going to happen by itself anymore\u2026\u201dsaid Senator Schmitt. \u201cPeople have asked me, \u2018Why is Congress getting involved in this? And it\u2019s a legitimate question\u2026 Why in the world would the federal government have anything to do with college sports? Well the truth is Congress is the only entity on the planet that can provide the anti-trust exemption status to empower a governing body to set the rules, and to enforce the rules\u2026 No one else can do it. It is up to us\u2026\n\n\u201cThe way I view this thing is there\u2019s two buckets: you have the governance issue, and you have the revenue issue. The governance issue is granting that authority, to have the rules to protect the student-athletes, for there to be enforcement. On the revenue side, look, the business model of college sports forever has been\u2014basically\u2014you make money on your football program, and it subsidizes all the other non-revenue sports, the women\u2019s sports, the Olympic sports. We will lose out if this thing continues down the path. We will not have the same level of athletes competing in the Olympics.\u201d\n\nSchmitt is an original cosponsor of the Protect College Sports Act. The bill includes Schmitt\u2019s framework to allow conferences to pool media rights to generate new revenue and preserve opportunities for women\u2019s and Olympic athletics programs.\n\n###", 1, "2026-06-04T06:38:12Z", "2026-06-04T06:39:44Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.schmitt.senate.gov/media/press-releases/senator-schmitt-congress-has-a-responsibility-to-protect-college-sports/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.7509069293737411, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}