Ted Cruz spent 10 minutes being interviewed on College GameDay Saturday under a steady rain of boos \u2014 and ESPN apparently views booking him as an easy call.<\/p>\n
According to Justin Williams and Stewart Mandel of The Athletic<\/a>, an ESPN source said Cruz, already in Austin for Saturday\u2019s Texas-Ohio State game, expressed interest in coming on the show to discuss the Protect College Sports Act after it aired. The source called it an \u201ceasy decision\u201d given the bill\u2019s relevance to college football that week, and added that GameDay had not received any requests from a senator or other figure \u2014 a coach, an athletic director \u2014 opposed to the legislation.<\/p>\n If it had, the source said, the show would \u201cobviously do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n It was also, as Awful Announcing\u2019s Matt Yoder wrote<\/a>, the second straight Saturday in which GameDay cleared airtime for the same piece of legislation. A week earlier, Nick Saban<\/a> and Pat McAfee<\/a> turned a segment into an infomercial<\/a> for the bill, with Saban grading the legislation \u201c80% good\u201d and McAfee barking at Congress to get back from recess and finish the job.<\/p>\n Cruz, in turn,<\/a> posted on X quoting both men, saying McAfee \u201cnailed it\u201d on the chaos in college sports and Saban had \u201cput the absurdity plainly,\u201d then called on Congress to pass the bill, send it to Donald Trump\u2019s desk, and have him sign it \u201con College GameDay this fall.\u201d ESPN declined to comment on that idea when it first surfaced, though Cruz getting an actual interview a week later did nothing to quiet speculation that a bill-signing ceremony might really be on the table.<\/p>\n What none of that explains is why one of the most-watched shows in sports television has spent back-to-back weeks running unchallenged advocacy for a federal bill with actual, organized opposition.<\/p>\n According to the Washington Sun, Michele Roberts and DeMaurice Smith, former heads of the NBA and NFL players\u2019 unions, are lobbying against the PCSA<\/a>. The AFL-CIO, the NAACP,\u00a0and the\u00a0Congressional Black Caucus have all spoken out against the PCSA, saying<\/a> that it \u201cdisproportionately affects Black athletes\u201d and instead \u201cgrants sweeping new legal protections to powerful institutions while failing to adequately protect the athletes whose talent fuels this multibillion-dollar industry.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s one thing for the show to put its full weight behind a congressional bill without giving proponents and opponents ample time, especially when opponents argue it will negatively affect the earning ability of the athletes who make the sport work.<\/p>\n However, it helps you understand this all-out blitz when you realize where ESPN\u2019s parent company is putting its money.<\/p>\n Joedy McCreary at OpenSecrets recently laid out the fight<\/a> surrounding the PCSA, spelling out which entities are pushing for it and which are pushing back. As McCreary reported, Disney \u2014 ESPN\u2019s parent company \u2014 is among the corporations that have lobbied directly for the Protect College Sports Act<\/a>, according to disclosures OpenSecrets reviewed. So have Amazon, Paramount Skydance, the National Association of Broadcasters and NCTA. Saving College Sports, the advocacy group fronting much of the bill\u2019s PR push and the one Saban does commercials for, is run by Ted Cruz\u2019s former chief of staff.<\/p>\n None of that renders Cruz off limits, or the bill off the table for discussion. It does render \u201ceasy decision\u201d a fairly generous description, coming from a network whose own parent company has a direct financial stake in seeing that bill become law. So whether the Worldwide Leader extends CEO and 19th president of the NAACP Derrick Johnson \u2014 or any other opposing voice to the bill \u2014 the same courtesy in Oxford next Saturday remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ted Cruz spent 10 minutes being interviewed on College GameDay Saturday under a steady rain of boos \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,20682,7166,1947,126360,7883],"class_list":["post-435001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-college-gameday","tag-disney","tag-naacp","tag-protect-college-sports-act","tag-ted-cruz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}