| *This piece first appeared in the Front Office Sports Newsletter. Subscribe today and get the news before anyone else. Student-athletes in California could be signing endorsement deals in the near future. Senate Bill 206 by state Sen. Nancy Skinner would allow student-athletes in California to sign with agents and profit from endorsement. The bill, which cleared the state Senate yesterday, heads to the Assembly for consideration in the coming months, according to Melody Gutierrez of the LA Times. What does the bill say? – The bill would treat student-athletes like Olympians and give them an opportunity to “earn income from their talent” while retaining their amateur status. – The bill would allow student-athletes at public and private universities and colleges to earn money from the use of their name, image or likeness in endorsement deals starting in 2023. – The bill would not allow the schools to directly pay athletes. – The bill would bar schools from offering sponsorship deals to high school students as a recruitment tool. Not everyone is for it… While there is no precedent for what would happen if the bill were to become law in terms of how the NCAA would treat student-athletes at California schools, but many of the bigger schools don’t even want to test it. According to Guitierrez, Cal, USC and Stanford all oppose the bill. The next few months are critical… Not only for student-athletes in California but for student-athletes across the country thanks to the NCAA forming a working group to examine issues highlighted in recently proposed federal and state legislation related to student-athlete name, image and likeness. The working group will be moving quickly, with an update provided in August and a final report due to the Board of Governors in October |
