The advent of the college sports revenue-sharing bill has Olympic and women’s sports advocates concerned about the future of their programs in California.
Assembly Bill 252, introduced by Rep. Chris Holden (D-Pasadena), would require every Division 1 school in California to establish a “degree completion fund” as a contribution to their fully-scholarized athletes. A way of paying “fair market value”. The bill defines value as half of a team’s annual revenue less the cost of player grants.
The proposed law would require schools to share 50 percent of revenues with athletes deemed “undervalued” because their market value would be higher than the value of their athletic scholarships. The sports with the most revenue for Division I schools are soccer, boys basketball, and some girls basketball or volleyball teams, but few Olympic and girls sports.
Former Stanford swimmer Maya DiRado, a Maria Carrillo-Santa Rosa alumnus and four-time 2016 Olympic medalist, including two gold, is One of the former California athletes to express concern.
“I don’t have the illusion that we can make money for the university,” she told The Chronicle. “My problem with the bill is that it doesn’t seem to really reflect an understanding of how the roughly 80 percent of college athletes who don’t play these sports are going to be affected by the revenue-sharing model.”
Repeated requests for comment from the University of California, Cal State University and Houghton University were not returned. The bill was opposed by the UC and CSU systems, who argued that AB 252 would result in severe Title IX consequences and the possible elimination of non-revenue sports.
A similar proposal in the state Senate failed last year because of gender equality concerns and Title IX violations. It still faces opposition from the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, whose Athlete Advisory Council says it “positively impacts a few athletes and hurts the income of many”.
Schools can choose how to allocate income. For example, a university could decide that because of Title IX it must split funding equally across all sports, but this is not explicitly outlined in the bill.
“There’s an amendment that says you have to obey Title IX,” DiRado said. “That line takes so much, I think the way it’s just written there betrays a misunderstanding of what it actually does. It can become so unviable that you just cut sports and they turn into club sports because you can’t Keep playing those teams and try to make the pay fair.”
Under another new amendment, Division I schools would be prohibited from “cutting funding for any sport or athletic scholarship,” though experts aren’t sure how feasible that would be.
AB 252’s target operating income is currently used to fund football and men’s basketball recruiting budgets and coach salaries. However, some experts worry that revenue will come from non-revenue sports budgets as the athletic department prioritizes revenue items.
The Women’s Sports Foundation opposed the bill in a statement: “As currently structured, this bill creates unnecessary barriers for schools to comply with AB 252 and Title IX. Additionally, we know that when budgets are tight, schools and colleges make cuts. Sports; since women’s sports and men’s Olympic sports are usually the first to be axed, AB 252 puts those sports at a disadvantage.”
Keith Altman, an attorney who specializes in student advocacy, doesn’t think schools will automatically cut teams, but it’s a slippery slope when it comes to prioritizing revenue sports.
“If your premise is that only revenue-generating athletes benefit from it, how do you say which sports generate revenue in terms of marketing and ticket sales, and what counts as revenue-generating?” he said. “The Tier 1 schools aren’t operating at a loss. I suspect they’re all making money, so even if they’re making a little less money, I don’t know if they really need to cut anything unless they just choose to.”
Money paid to the athlete’s scholarship will be included in the 50% given to the athlete. The rest will go into a fund that is paid out annually. Individual payments will be determined based on income brought in by the school and will not exceed $25,000 per year for any one athlete.
“It’s hard in a college setting because this distinction of who’s making money and who’s not making money is often hard to tell, and who knows how much money Stanford’s hockey team makes?” said Paul Oyer, a sports economist and author of S Professor of Economics at Stanford University. “Of course they don’t have a TV contract, but they get donations because of the kindness of the show.”
The bill would also create a state agency called the College Athlete Protection Program, tasked with securing true revenue numbers and enforcing them. It has the backing of the National Collegiate Players Association, an athlete advocacy group that has spearheaded state-based NIL reform efforts.
California was the first state to pass the NIL law in 2019, granting college athletes the right to compensation for the use of their names, images and likenesses. That sparked similar actions in state legislatures across the country.
The NCAA prohibits direct payments to athletes, which is why the NIL has succeeded: Athletes can be compensated regardless of whether they are unable to profit from their particular athletic career. The state has been a leader in the conversation about compensating NCAA athletes as employees, but Title IX concerns remain controversial in NIL law.
“The vast majority of college athletes do it for a reason other than because it generates a lot of money for the school,” Oyer said. “But there are a lot of people who are worth a lot to the university, and I believe and I think most labor economists think they should be paid for it. It’s just a question of how to do that fairly.”
Contact Marisa Ingemi: marisa.ingemi@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @marisa_ingemi
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