התמלול המלא של 11/11/26: Mo Egger with Attorney Stuart W. Penrose of The Minnillo Law Group: Is the Protect College Sports Act dead?

00:00:00 Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, which means we talk sports and the law with our sports legal expert, the man, attorney Stuart W. Penrose. It's awesome to have you, sir. How are you? 00:00:10 Speaker 2: Awesome to be back, Mo. I'm doing great. I got to say, though, last night, and I'm optimistic about Bearcat basketball. Don't get me wrong. I think we're going to do well with this coach. But for one night only, I left Fifth Third Arena thinking we were in the Wes Miller era. And I was thinking of some lawsuits I wanted to file myself. But, you know, that's beside the point. 00:00:32 Speaker 1: Can I sue for years of accumulated restlessness at night as I agonize over Cincinnati Bearcats' missed free throws? 00:00:43 Speaker 2: Mo, I'm right there with you. I'm right there with you. 00:00:47 Speaker 1: Frustrating. 00:00:48 Speaker 2: All right. 00:00:48 Speaker 1: Well, hopefully it gets better. Only the third game. We'll see. 00:00:52 Speaker 2: Only the third game. Optimism runs high. 00:00:56 Speaker 1: It does. Just as long as the other teams never play zone defense, we'll be fine. All right. We've talked about the Protect College Sports Act, which, you know, even for those who don't follow politics, they understand, like, we now have a lame duck Congress, a significant shift in who's going to be controlling both branches of Congress. And so are we now considering the Protect College Sports Act dead? 00:01:25 Speaker 2: It's a long shot that it's going to get passed at this point, at least as it is right now. I mean, but we knew this going into the midterms anyways. And, you know, it's pretty obvious Democrats would likely at least take the House. And, you know, here we are. And, you know, how motivated is a lame duck Congress going to be to pass this as is right now? I mean, Republicans already have a razor thin majority there. You know, is Mike Johnson going to be that motivated to whip up votes to get this through? I mean, there's already Republicans in the House that are skeptical of the bills as is. There's plenty of Democrats that want it to be more player friendly. Yeah, I think the odds that it's going to get passed between now and the new Congress in January are very, very, very slim. 00:02:10 Speaker 1: Without diving too much into red versus blue, is there a possibility that the Democrats go, OK, like now it's our turn at this legislation. And so we want to craft something that helps create some guardrails for college sports. But it's going to look a lot different and have a lot more different stuff in it, for lack of a better way of putting it, than the legislation that has already been kicked around. 00:02:35 Speaker 2: Well, certainly it's possible, but it's not going to look exactly like it is now. But, you know, it had pretty heavy bipartisan support in the Senate. It got, you know, quite a few votes, you know, above 50. That said, I mean, you'd expect it to be a lot more player friendly. And, you know, perhaps they, you know, come up with a bill that President Trump doesn't like. He's got to sign it into law at the end of the day. So there still needs to be, you know, some level of bipartisanship there. And, We know how good Congress is at getting things done in general. So, you know, we could be looking at the Wild West and, you know, college sports being held up by patchwork litigation and, you know, injunction here, no injunction there. And, you know, maybe a lot more of the same for the, you know, for the years to come. I hope not. But, you know, it seems that that's more likely than not from what I see. 00:03:26 Speaker 1: Our sports legal expert is attorney Stuart W. Penrose from the Manila Law Group. We've talked about the two Cleveland pitchers who are being accused of pitch rigging as a part of a sports gambling scandal. Their trials are underway. The defense is actually introducing things like scouting reports and hot and cold zones that we see when we follow baseball as evidence to prove that the pitches that are in question here made tactical sense. And so how do you explain baseball strategy? And I'm like complex baseball strategy to a jury of people who might not be baseball fans, might not know the difference between a fastball and a slider. 00:04:10 Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing. I mean, they don't need to turn the jurors into baseball scouts, Mo. They just have to show them that there's legitimate reasons why a pitcher might, you know, make a particular decision to throw a particular pitch. They're going to argue the standard, you know, of prosecution here, which is beyond a reasonable doubt. You know, the reality is the defense technically doesn't have to prove anything. They just have to create enough reasonable doubt, you know, for him to get for these two men to get acquitted of the charges. we're not talking a lot of pitches either. Uh, my understanding is for class, they were talking 18 pitches over 17 games over a course of two years. And Ortiz, apparently we're only talking about two pitches over two games, one pitch in each game. Um, so I'm really interested to see what the prosecution has to bring forward here. You think there has to be some, you know, concrete communications, you know, text emails, something to, to tie them to this. Um, Otherwise, there's a lot the defense can bring forward here to try to poke holes in this. 00:05:16 Speaker 1: If there's evidence of manipulation, how hard is that to combat if you're the defense? 00:05:25 Speaker 2: Well, again, I mean, you're going to come back to standard, a reasonable doubt. And I think what you're talking about, you know, what they're bringing forward, you know, scouts on hitters, you know, patterns of pitches, you know, whatever is the best way to do it. That's what I would do if I were their counsel. You know, my understanding is that they're attacking the credibility of one of the conspirators as well, too, and saying that, you know, this person manipulated these men and,