over by California Democrat B. F. Sisk. The Sisk Committee explored several contemporary issues in professional sports, including baseball's antitrust exemption. The league argued that the exemption was necessary to maintain a competitive balance among teams, and the Committee was also tempted to uphold the exemption through veiled promises that new MLB franchises would expand into their districts. While the Sisk Committee ultimately found that there was no adequate justification for baseball's antitrust exemption and recommended that it be lifted accordingly, no bills to that effect were introduced. The committee also recommended a successor committee be established on sports antitrust law, but it was never established; a study was done in 1981. Representative Gillis Long attempted to pass a bill that would strip MLB of its "favorite son treatment", which he announced in a hearing with NBA Commissioner Larry O'Brien, but it died in committee. In January 1995, a bill that would have eliminated baseball's antitrust exemption was introduced to the Senate, where it died in committee soon after the resolution of the 1995 strike. Senator Orrin Hatch reintroduced the bill the day after Flood's death as the "Curt Flood Act of 1997". The bill amended the Clayton Act to "clarify that major league baseball players and owners have the same legal rights, and the same restrictions, under the antitrust laws as the players and owners in other professional sports leagues". The bill was voted out of committee that October and was approved by Congress the following January. President Bill Clinton signed the Curt Flood Act of 1998 (CFA) into law on October 28, 1998. While the relationships between major league players and ownership now fell under federal antitrust protections, other aspects of professional baseball, including franchise expansion, relocation, ownership, and ownership transfers, as well as "the marketing and sales of the entertainment product", remained exempt. The Furthering Access and Networks for Sports Act, known as the FANS Act, initially proposed to further limit the exemption. Introduced in the Senate by Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, in 2013, with cosponsorship by Republican John McCain of Arizona, it was primarily motivated by fan anger over the control exerted over cable and Internet broadcasts of games by all four professional sports leagues and major cable providers. While its greatest changes were proposed for the SBA, primarily affecting the NFL's blackout policies, it also would have repealed the language of the CFA that