The California State Assembly passed a bill this week allowing college athletes to make money off of their own names, images and likenesses – a bill the NCAA has already said could lead to competition bans on California schools.
California passed the bill by an overwhelming margin. USA Today reports that it passed the assembly 72-0, with 7 members not voting. The bill was amended after passing the State Senate, so it will have to return to the Senate, but USA Today says that this week’s vote “all but assures that the measure will go to Gov. Gavin Newsome (D),” who will have 30 days to sign or veto the bill.
The bill would effectively make it easier for NCAA athletes to earn money off of their own names, images and likenesses – revenue currently very strictly controlled by the NCAA’s amateurism rules. Athletes can make money off of their own names, but no reference at all can be made to their involvement in college sports.
The NCAA has shown very little wiggle room in the enforcement of those rules. In a swimming-centric case, two University of Iowa swimmers got in trouble in 2017 for launching their own T-shirt screening business, complete with a GoFundMe page. Because that GoFundMe page mentioned that the two (Chris Dawson and Tom Rathbun) had met while swimming at Iowa, the two ran up against potential NCAA ineligibility and were ultimately forced to remove all mention of swimming from the site, as well as removing both athlete’s names and photos. The two ultimately went by the pseudonyms ‘Rocky and Slide.’
The NCAA has already expressed concern that California’s bill would “make it impossible to host fair national championships.” NCAA President Mark Emmert has threatened a ban on all California schools from competition at the NCAA Championships. California has 23 Division I schools.
California’s representatives were critical of that NCAA stance. Per USA Today:
“I just want to say, ‘NCAA, don’t threaten California. Don’t threaten us’,” said bill sponsor Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D). “Because we have formidable schools. We have formidable alumni. And we have formidable viewership. And we can leverage those things until 2023, when this bill takes effect. I’m sick of being leveraged by the NCAA on the backs of athletes who have the right to their own name and image.”
The bill wouldn’t take effect until January 1, 2023.
Bad idea all the way around! Turning college sports into pro!
My suggestion is Four years of education after they are done with sports. Everyone knows these basketball players aren’t studying during the season. It’s impossible with all the travel. So if a kid plays basketball for 4 years, they get another 4 years of needed to finish their degree. 8 years total. 4 for sports, 4 more if needed for degree. That’s the only thing of worth here. Either get them to pro level sports to make money, or get them an education and a job to make money. Instead of paying the athletes use the money to make sure they get an appropriate opportunity in life. The real graduation rate at many of these schools is laughable. Kids get… Read more »
I’ve been out of NCAA coaching for a few years now, but I believe the NCAA recently passed legislation that allows former SA’s (who have either / or exhausted their eligibility or six year clock) to return to a school, receive a scholarship, and complete their degree without term limit or impact upon a team’s scholarship totals. Drafted baseball players were citied as an example. Get drafted, play for “X” amount of years and then return to school to complete their degree while being $$$ supported by the school.
I defer to current NCAA coaches for more detail and validation as I could have misread the legislation or been dreaming 😳
per the baseball part… Jrs who came out and were drafted and signed with pro teams used that 4th year of school thing and degree completion as part of their negotiating contracts. They would have their base salary, signing bonus and then an extra bit of money for a 4th year of college to complete their degree down the road. Usually it was factored into the signing bonus, but some clubs made it a separate payment or clause in their contracts.
reading the case about Chris Dawson and Tom Rathbun, it seems something definitely should change for NCAA athletes. That is just crazy to not allow the two to even use their name with their own business. Yes they get scholarship to study and be on a swim team so I guess there is some rules to that – like how many class they need to take as minimal, maintaining certain GPA, participated in certain amount of swim team activities. But that should not prohibit them from other normal activities (starting a new business) or mention to others about their own life and achievement.
I mean, NCAA is okay for media or sport sites that create profile or bio pages… Read more »
Lets say 3 Stanford Grads end up running some local companies, like Apple, AMD, Cisco systems. And these three are friends and big football fans. They go out to the top recruit at each position, and say they are tired of Stanford sucking at football. We are going to give all 26 of you $1M if we can use your photo. How about a photo of the entire recruiting class in your Stanford uniforms. Costs each company $19M, which they can write off in taxes. Let the bidding begin.
Regardless of how you feel about the NCAA or the amateurism rules, it’s what allows college sports to have at least some form of parity. There are already advantages/disadvantages based on say climate location, but those are uncontrollable. At least the scholarship cap is a form of a salary cap and nobody can pay more (although cost of attendance figures aren’t equal from school to school).
If this rule goes into effect, California teams will be able to pay more and that will steer the best players to California.
The next step would be California schools opening marketing branches in their athletic department to find endorsement deals for their players. As many mentioned above, these will go to… Read more »
I’m afraid this will not help the majority of athletes. Only a select few elite college swimmers that are way above the level of the majority of college swimmers in this country will benefit from this if it ends up happening.
I think non-rev sports can be safe if the NCAA just allows student athletes to only get money from “outside” sources that are approved by the NCAA (ie EA sports and video games, but not from the local car dealership down the road from campus). Jersey sales or putting images on promotional materials for individual schools should still NOT give the student athlete any money. It would have to be something where the entire team or entire conference maybe that is represented (again, ie a video game). Otherwise it will still be an end to football and basketball. Booster A from school A decides he will pay recruit #1 $1M to put his image on a piece of advertising if… Read more »
I really hope the NCAA gets absolutely embarrassed in federal courts
As if non-revenue sports weren’t already basically being **** on by the ncaa