Senate advances the Protect College Sports Act

ESPN has gotten its apparent wish. Partially, for now.

The Senate has passed the Protect College Sports Act, by a vote of 74-24. It's a procedural move and not yet a full vote of the Senate. tbzikra.org

The vote comes three days after ESPN put Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of the bill's sponsors, on its flagship college football show to advocate for the passage of the act, without a contemporaneous opposing point of view. And while Stephen A. Smith has apparently chastised me for suggesting that everyone at ESPN supports the Protect College Sports Act, I don't believe that.

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It was not my intent to put everyone at ESPN in the same bucket, and I apologize if I created that impression. My point was and is that ESPN's corporate position seems to be that it supports the bill, as evidenced by the fact that two of its most prominent college football analysts (Nick Saban and Pat McAfee) have argued for its passage on GameDay without any real pushback by other panelists, by Disney's reported lobbying for the bill, and by the misguided decision to platform Cruz without offering a voice representing the other side.

Here's a thought — they could have let Smith interview Cruz.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) also opposes the Protect College Sports Act. I'll be interviewing him on Thursday morning, for a special edition of #PFTPM.

I'd love to chop it up with Stephen A., too. We agree on plenty of things. On the things we disagree, there's a chance that, through open and honest discourse, we'd better understand each other's points of view. The country currently needs a lot more of that.

The country does not need a federal law that "saves" college sports, in my opinion. College sports are doing just fine, and the system should be required to clean up its own mess without a federal bailout that artificially limits the compensation and freedom of the people who generate the vast majority of the revenue, while leaving unrestricted the ability of coaches to hopscotch the map in chase of their next bag of cash.

Previously, lawyers representing Packers running back Josh Jacobs filed a motion seeking to keep evidence in his criminal case from being released to the public. The victim in the case has now done the same thing.

But while the current order is temporary in nature, the new motion filed on behalf of Jacobs's former girlfriend seeks to have the evidence in the case — including a key video — permanently sealed.

Via Rob Demovsky of ESPN, her lawyers said Tuesday that the motion "is consistent with our client's desire to protect her privacy."

The motion complicates the NFL's effort to obtain the video. On Sunday, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network said that the league is "trying all sorts of legal maneuvers" to get the video.

One fairly direct maneuver would be to file an opposition to the motion, with a request for a limited opportunity to inspect the video subject to the requirements of a strict and comprehensive confidentiality order. And the league should ask Jacobs to join in the effort.

Common sense suggests that the harder Jacobs tries to keep the league from seeing the video, the worse to his ongoing career it may be. If the league decides to take an aggressive approach to the situation, the league could tell Jacobs that he'll remain on paid leave until the league processes his disciplinary case — and that the case won't be processed until the NFL sees the video.