A California lawmaker launched a invoice Thursday that will have faculties that play main faculty sports activities pay sure athletes as much as $25,000 yearly, together with masking the price of assured six-year athletic scholarships and medical bills after faculty.
The Faculty Athlete Safety Act is sponsored by Assemblyman Chris Holden, who’s a former San Diego State basketball participant, and is the kind of statewide laws the NCAA is looking for federal lawmakers to enact.
California was the primary state to move a regulation giving faculty athletes the correct to be compensated for his or her title, picture and likeness in 2019. This sparked related motion by state legislatures throughout the nation.
The NCAA has lifted its ban on athletes incomes fame by means of sponsorship and endorsement offers, however greater than two dozen statewide NIL legal guidelines have made it inconceivable for the affiliation to create detailed and uniform guidelines.
Simply final week on the NCAA conference, faculty sports activities leaders reiterated the necessity for Congressional assist to control NIL compensation and shield the affiliation from state legal guidelines that undermine its means to manipulate faculty sports activities.
“We have to reinforce that with regards to faculty sports activities, federal regulation supersedes state regulation,” Baylor President Linda Livingstone, chair of the NCAA Board of Governors, mentioned final week. “In areas like NIL, we’re already seeing state legislators take steps that they imagine will give universities of their states a aggressive benefit over their neighbors.”
The invoice launched by Holden, a Democrat whose district contains Pasadena, would require California’s Division I faculties to share 50 p.c of their income with athletes who’re deemed undervalued as a result of the worth of their athletic scholarships doesn’t match their market. This might be largely geared toward athletes who compete in income-generating sports activities resembling soccer and basketball, however not solely.
The scholarship cash could be included within the 50% that goes to the gamers. The remaining would go right into a fund that will pay out yearly. Particular person funds could be set based mostly on what the faculties herald and couldn’t exceed $25,000 per yr for a single athlete.
Any extra income from the athletes’ quota would go into a level completion fund that the athletes could be eligible to attract from after graduating in six years.
The invoice additionally requires faculties to supply protection for sports-related medical bills, set up and implement security and transparency requirements in recruiting, preserve all athletic applications — not simply revenue-producing ones — and Title IX compliance .
The invoice is harking back to one launched in 2020 on the federal stage by 4 Democratic senators, together with Cory Booker of New Jersey, referred to as the Faculty Athlete Invoice of Rights..
This invoice, just like many others associated to school sports activities and extra particularly the NIL, launched in Congress went nowhere.
Holden launched the Faculty Athlete Civil Rights Act of 2019 which was ultimately signed into state regulation. This required faculties to doc and inform athletes of their rights and prohibited retaliation in opposition to athletes who reported violations or abuse.
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