Article by Genevieve Printiss, Staff and assisted by Sophia Ziemer, Staff
A Florida lawmaker has filed a bill that would give NCAA and NJCAA athletes the ability to accept sponsorships, thus allowing them to personally profit from their sport. Before this, any type of payments beyond academic scholarships would have gotten a college athlete banned from competing.
This bill is similar to California’s Senate Bill 206 that was recently signed into law. These new regulations will go into effect in California in 2023, with Florida possibly seeing changes from bill 251 as soon as 2020.
While this bill may initially seem like a good idea, critics claim the new freedoms would be used unethically and only divide the vast world of college athletics.
Tallahassee Community College is part of the NJCAA. If the House in Florida passes HB 251, TCC student athletes may be able to earn cash from their sport as soon as 2020.
While this bill may seem like a good idea, critics claim it is unethical and will only cause an imbalance in the world of college athletics.
Rob Chaney is the director of athletics at Tallahassee Community College. Chaney has held this position for 10 years, with responsibilities ranging from supervising coaches and staff to budget management. Chaney said that at two-year colleges, unlike Division 1 programs, athletic directors have responsibility for everything from budgeting to supervising coaches.
Due to this, there is little about Florida House Bill 251 that would not impact his job. For him, it is difficult to predict whether that impact would be positive or negative.
“I think there’s so many unknowns right now,” Chaney said. “Unknowns about exactly how this would be implemented and how it would be tracked.”
Without proof of how this will affect the world of college athletics, Chaney says it is difficult to fully support it.
“My first thoughts were ‘Oh no,’ because that obviously can be a real slippery slope,” Chaney said. “And it’s one of those where you think, okay, it’s happened in one state; how long is it going to take for the other 49 follow?”
There is also the issue of which athletes this bill will specifically effect. Not all college athletes will be sponsored, which causes a gap between those earning money and those simply competing in their sport.
“It’s probably the upper 10 percent of the upper 10 percent that might really see a big impact from this,” Chaney said. “I think if you do something, there needs to be a level playing field.”
To ensure this level playing field, Chaney recommends colleges to create trust funds for these athletes and provide them with the money they have earned after they have graduated.
“They have access to (the trust fund) but you’re not just providing extra money for them to use there on the spot and roll around campus and fancy cars,” Chaney said. “I think that’s where you get way off the mark with what college athletics is about.”
At the end of the day, “college athletics is amateur athletics, and we can’t lose sight of that mission,” Chaney said.
While California’s Senate Bill and Florida’s House Bill may not be the best way to compensate athletes, Chaney admits something must be done.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law on September 30 and said he believes the system is taking advantage of students.
In an interview with Fox Business, Newsom was recently quoted saying, “These athletes are abused in terms of the time they’re expected to spend on the sports, and the coaches are making a fortune.” Newsom also says, “(It’s) a big move to expose the farce and to challenge a system that is outsized in its capacity to push back.”
Nancy Skinner, a Democrat and writer of the California “Pay to Play” bill, claims that students who are committed to continuing their sport in college are handicapped due to N.C.A.A. rules.
The New York Times quoted Skinner in a recent interview, “People are just so aware of the fact that you’ve got a multibillion-dollar industry that basically denies compensation to the very talent, the very work that produces that revenue.”
The California law and the proposed Florida law are efforts to redistribute the wealth that seem to be disproportionately benefiting colleges.
“I think the college athletics model is so different today than it was,” says Chaney, adding that on any given Fall Sunday 25-30 years ago, there would be maybe three college football games on television.
“Today it’s becoming more and more commonplace that there’s there’s hardly a college event of any type, regardless of the sport, that you can’t watch in some form or fashion.” says Chaney.
With that in mind, Chaney does realize the amount of money most colleges and universities set aside for academic scholarships.
“We are still colleges that are providing a free education opportunity for that individual who might not have been able to go to college.”
Chaney estimates that the tuition, books, and room and board for a TCC athlete could be as much as $10,000 a year. For an out-of-state athlete, a full scholarship could cost the college up to $12,000 a year.
“So I struggle with where I fall on the argument sometimes, because again I know, I think there are a lot of good arguments out there to be made,” Chaney said. “It can really be a game changer and something that changes the landscape of college athletics for a long time.”
