Ted Cruz spent 10 minutes being interviewed on College GameDay Saturday under a steady rain of boos — and ESPN apparently views booking him as an easy call.
According to Justin Williams and Stewart Mandel of The Athletic, an ESPN source said Cruz, already in Austin for Saturday’s 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 “easy decision” given the bill’s relevance to college football that week, and added that GameDay had not received any requests from a senator or other figure — a coach, an athletic director — opposed to the legislation.
If it had, the source said, the show would “obviously do the same.”
It was also, as Awful Announcing’s Matt Yoder wrote, the second straight Saturday in which GameDay cleared airtime for the same piece of legislation. A week earlier, Nick Saban and Pat McAfee turned a segment into an infomercial for the bill, with Saban grading the legislation “80% good” and McAfee barking at Congress to get back from recess and finish the job.
Cruz, in turn, posted on X quoting both men, saying McAfee “nailed it” on the chaos in college sports and Saban had “put the absurdity plainly,” then called on Congress to pass the bill, send it to Donald Trump’s desk, and have him sign it “on College GameDay this fall.” 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.
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.
According to the Washington Sun, Michele Roberts and DeMaurice Smith, former heads of the NBA and NFL players’ unions, are lobbying against the PCSA. The AFL-CIO, the NAACP, and the Congressional Black Caucus have all spoken out against the PCSA, saying that it “disproportionately affects Black athletes” and instead “grants sweeping new legal protections to powerful institutions while failing to adequately protect the athletes whose talent fuels this multibillion-dollar industry.”
It’s 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.
However, it helps you understand this all-out blitz when you realize where ESPN’s parent company is putting its money.
Joedy McCreary at OpenSecrets recently laid out the fight surrounding the PCSA, spelling out which entities are pushing for it and which are pushing back. As McCreary reported, Disney — ESPN’s parent company — is among the corporations that have lobbied directly for the Protect College Sports Act, 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’s PR push and the one Saban does commercials for, is run by Ted Cruz’s former chief of staff.
None of that renders Cruz off limits, or the bill off the table for discussion. It does render “easy decision” 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 — or any other opposing voice to the bill — the same courtesy in Oxford next Saturday remains to be seen.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.