John Calipari speaks out against private equity, advocates for Protect College Sports Act
Published:
College sports are at an impasse. Everyone needs more money, but there’s no traditional way to get it. This has led private equity to enter the industry. To John Calipari, this trend cannot be allowed to continue.
Calipari is on Capitol Hill this week arguing for the passage of the Protect College Sports Act. He believes private equity would be devastating for the non-revenue sports so many athletes partake in.
“Let’s just say, private equity takes over your program. Private equity’s gonna look at, ‘what are the losers?'” Calipari said. “They’re not losers. We’re teaching leadership. We’re teaching future business leaders, leaders of our country. ‘Well, yeah, but that program doesn’t make money.'”
“This is not a normal business. Everyone acts like it is… with the way it is now, it’s football carrying all the sports,” Calipari said. “I think if we do this, 75% of our issues are gonna be gone. It doesn’t mean we don’t have things to do in the future. We do… [but] we need something right now.”
The Protect College Sports Act “establishes requirements for name, image, or likeness (NIL) agreements for college student athletes and provides a limited antitrust exemption for schools and conferences to pool and sell certain college sports media rights,” per Congress. The Senate is set to vote on the act in the coming days.
