For as long as college athletics have been around, which is well over 200 years, the student athletes that represented their teams have always done it as amateurs, not being paid for playing and playing only for the pride of representing their school on the field, court or arena. However, some people are actively trying to change this long standing tradition.
In recent weeks, California Senators Nancy Skinner and Steven Bradford's “Fair Pay to Play” bill, better known amongst politicians as SB 206, passed in a 39-0 vote by the state senate and a 73-0 vote by the Assembly. With these unanimous votes, the bill is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will decide if this breakthrough in college sports will be signed into law. It was set up to allow college student athletes in California to continue to receive athletic scholarships but would also allow them to generate income from “their name, image and likeness”, making them “professionals to an extent.”
Many of the supporters have different reasons for endorsing the bill. One of the main reasons is the fact that athletes receive none of the money their school makes off of tickets, merchandise or television, although they are the ones who are earning it. For large division one powerhouse programs like Alabama football, the program brings in over 100 million dollars annually for the university. Another argument is on behalf of female athletes who do not have the same opportunities to play professionally like the men. Skinner was quoted saying that NCAA rules are “particularly unfair to female athletes, because for many young women, college is the only time they could earn income, since women have fewer professionally sports opportunities than men.”
However, not everyone is a supporter of the bill. Both Stanford and USC have expressed their concerns with it. One of the biggest concerns stems from NCAA President Mark Emmert’s comments that California schools would not be allowed to participate in national championships because they would be violating NCAA bylaws which do not allow athlete compensation. This would result from the fact that athletes might possibly gravitate toward California schools, giving those schools an unfair advantage.
This would mean some major changes for the NCAA landscape overall. UCLA’s dominance in baseball would no longer be there, nor would USC’s top-tier football program, or even Stanford’s national champion caliber swimming program. In fact, other athletic directors are worried that recruits wouldn’t come to their school, even if they did get paid, because they couldn’t compete at a national championship level. Currently, the NCAA is reviewing their bylaws on the subject, but it’s not looking likely that anything will change.
Emmert recently sent a letter to Newsom, which stated, “When contrasted with NCAA rules, as drafted, the bill threatens to alter materially the principles of collegiate athletics and create local difference that would make it impossible to host fair national championships. As a result, it likely would have a negative impact on the exact student athletes it intends to assist.”
If it does indeed pass, it would go into effect in January of 2023, but until that decision is made, this looks to be an interesting showdown between California and the NCAA. Who will prevail?
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