California’s Student Athlete Law is A Hail Mary that Misses the Mark

Today Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 206 into California State Law. The law now allows student athletes to generate revenue and profit off of their name, image and likeness. While well-intentioned no doubt, it benefits only a handful and falls woefully short of impacting – let alone curing – the inequity of collegiate athletics. The better solution remains paying college athletes for their service with some sort of stipend to be paid from the billions of dollars in revenue college sports generate.

The University of Alabama football team is the apex of big time college sports. Coach Nick Saban and his Crimson Tide have won five National Championships since 2009 and have appeared in the Championship game two other times in that span. Over the past three years more than 30 Alabama players have been drafted into the NFL. The team is currently 5 – 0 and widely expected to compete for the National Championship again this year. The team, like most Division I programs, has 125 players on the roster. These 125 players – most of whom were 4-star and 5-star blue chip recruits – were attracted to Alabama as the gold standard program and by its legacy of success.
And how many of them can you name?

For most, the list stops at Tua (Tagavailoa), the star quarterback many are projecting to win the Heisman trophy and be the first overall pick in the next NFL draft. A very few more may be able to name the star running back, Najee Harris, and the trio of star wide receivers: Jerry Jeudy, Henry Ruggs and Devonta Smith. And for more than 99.9% of Americans, the list ends there. Five players out of 125 – 4% of the roster. So how does this legislation advance the ball? How does it benefit the other 120 players at Alabama – let alone the thousands of players that labor in isolation and anonymity at University of Montana, Bethune Cookman and South Dakota State? Who Is buying their jerseys (which aren’t even being made)? Who is going to pay anything for their “name, likeness or image?”
Ultimately the law will benefit those players who need it the least. The talented 1% who end up being top players at top schools – and who likely will get to spend at least a few years playing professionally.

In my view, we need to also benefit the Jared Mayden’s, Jaylen Moody’s and Daniel Wright’s of the world (hint – they all play for Alabama too and I bet you’ve never heard of them). Young men who work just as hard, likely will never go pro, and still help to generate the billions of dollars the NCAA and its member schools reap. The way to do that is to provide a payment to each and every player, providing them some degree of profit sharing in the immense pot of money they create. The amount can be debated. It’s also a fair question as to whether it should be limited to revenue generating sports. But certainly within the ranks of college basketball and college football – it would eliminate the free labor and inequity of the current system.
So while the California state legislature and Governor Newsom had their moment in the sunshine with the passage of SB 206, 99% of college athletes will continue to labor in the dark ages.