Rep. Michael Baumgartner says college athletics has hit a breaking point, and he believes Washington State sits right in the middle of the mess.
In an exclusive interview with Cougfan.com, the WSU graduate and Eastern Washington representative argued that the sport’s old structure has been blown apart. “The traditional model that we all love has really been disrupted,” Baumgartner said. “Nobody knows this more than Washington State University,” a school he said lost roughly $30 million annually in media rights revenue after the Pac-12 broke apart.
Baumgartner is pushing for Congress to step in and reshape the financial foundation of college sports. His goal, he said, is a system that spreads money more evenly, protects Olympic sports and narrows the gap between the richest leagues and everyone else.
He said the damage reaches far beyond football. In his view, the money squeeze has already made it harder for schools to support non-revenue sports and opportunities for athletes. He pointed to WSU’s elimination of its nationally respected men’s indoor track and field program as one example of what can happen when the economics go sideways.
“What we've been trying to do here in Congress is try to put college sports back on a sustainable pathway," he said.
Even so, Baumgartner is not pretending the road ahead is easy. He put the odds of the legislation becoming law as written at “less than 50 percent,” pointing to resistance from the Big Ten and SEC, along with lawmakers who want college athletes to be able to unionize [See video above for more].
There is still a path, in his view. Baumgartner said he sees encouragement in Sen.
Ted Cruz of Texas becoming more open to helping smaller schools, and he also pointed to the bipartisan work he has done with Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington on the Senate bill.
"Ideally, there would be a vote when the Senate returns before the recess," Baumgartner said. "They have to get through some of those other bigger issues, and if they did get that vote on the floor before the recess, then we could deal with something this fall potentially."
One of the trickier parts of the Senate version has been an amendment that some have read as a barrier to Group of 6 schools moving into power conferences. That has obvious implications for Washington State fans who still hope for a future jump to a bigger league.
Baumgartner said he expects that language to disappear if the bill advances.
"I would say it's very likely that if the Senate bill moves, that provision about discussing conference realignment would probably be removed from the text when it goes to the Senate floor," he said.
He made clear he wants WSU to compete at the highest level, but he thinks the deeper issue is what has happened to regional conferences across the sport.
"My own view is that transcontinental college conferences are bad public policy and stupid," he said. “And they might kind of work for college football, but it's absurd that you're sending college volleyball players or soccer players across the continent on a school night. It makes a mockery of the student-athlete process."
Baumgartner said schools should be grouped into geographically sensible leagues that preserve old rivalries.
He also wants college athletics to adopt a broader media-rights model. In his view, football’s huge TV money should keep propping up the rest of the athletic department instead of flowing even more heavily to the wealthiest programs.
"Big-time football makes money, has to pay for everything else, including women's sports and Olympic sports," he said. “And I think that's a model that should continue across the system."
That thinking leads him toward a model closer to the NFL’s collective media-rights setup, where television money is negotiated more broadly and competitive balance is protected. Without that kind of reform, he fears college football keeps drifting toward a super league of only 20 to 30 of the nation’s richest programs.
"I just think that college football is a less-good product if the Big Ten, the SEC have so much higher salary caps and so much more money than everybody else because you don't have the competitive balance,” he said. "So we should want competitive parity on those issues. But that's a big discussion point."
Baumgartner said the hardest sell is the wealthiest conferences, especially the Big Ten.
"The Big Ten continues to be the biggest problem right now because they like things the way they are," he said.
Even though he calls himself “a free market Republican,” Baumgartner said college sports should not be viewed like a normal business because of the role it plays in public life.
"College sports is not the free market," he said. "It's a highly subsidized public good and should be regulated as such."
For Baumgartner, the debate is bigger than conference realignment or TV contracts. He said lawmakers have to decide what college athletics is supposed to be.
"What policymakers have to decide is, what are we doing this for?" he said. "I'm trying to fight for the little guy and work toward a system that is fair for everyone and restores what we had in 2019."
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