The California Bill Challenging NCAA Amateurism Just Cleared Another Hurdle. Here’s How It Got Started.

Timothy Nwachukwu, NCAA Photos via Getty Images

Shortly after Nancy Skinner’s final term in the California Assembly, she found herself at the Rotary Club of Oakland, where a sports economist was slated to speak over lunch. His name was Andy Schwarz. He’d been a consultant in O’Bannon v. NCAA, a landmark challenge to the NCAA’s prohibition on compensation for athletes. Skinner was already planning a run for the state Senate, with her sights on reforming student-athlete rights, and when she approached Schwarz afterward, she had one question: What could California do?

This past February, Skinner, now a state senator, introduced a bill answering that question. Along with Steven Bradford, a state senator from Gardena, Calif., Skinner proposed Senate Bill 206, known as the Fair Pay to Play Act. The bill would prohibit universities from issuing bans on athlete compensation and would grant student-athletes the right to profit from their own name, image, and likeness — currently prohibited by NCAA rules.

Skinner pointed to Katelyn Ohashi, a former University of California at Los Angeles gymnast whose YouTube highlights garnered millions of views and whose Instagram followers number in the hundreds of thousands. Skinner recognized a student-athlete at the height of her athletic career, “and yet she’s completely prohibited from monetizing that,” Skinner said. “It just seemed patently unfair.”

In a letter to California lawmakers last month, Mark Emmert, the NCAA president, opposed the bill — implying that California universities could be barred from NCAA championships if it were to pass. The bill “threatens to alter materially the principles of intercollegiate athletics,” he wrote.

Despite pushback from both the NCAA and California colleges — including the University of California and California State University systems, the University of Southern California, and Stanford University — the Fair Pay to Play Act passed by a 31-to-5 vote in the Senate. On Tuesday it cleared another hurdle, the Assembly’s committee on higher education, by a 9-to-0 vote. If the bill passes the appropriations committee and full Assembly, it will land on the governor’s desk, where it would require a signature by mid-October.

Skinner and Bradford spoke recently with The Chronicle about the genesis of the bill, who stands to benefit from it, and why California, facing pushback from the NCAA and its member institutions, is taking the first step to change the landscape of college athletics. The interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q. Compensating student-athletes has been discussed in various forms. How did you land on name, image, and likeness?

Nancy Skinner. Initially, I thought they should be paid. But then there’s the whole question of how you do that. I’d already heard references by professional athletes about how, in college, they would walk into the student store and see a jersey with their name and number, a poster, or various products that were for sale, based on them. And yet their permission wasn’t asked, and they received no compensation for it.

Q. Whereas other students could profit?

Steven Bradford. If you’re a computer science major on scholarship, and you develop an app while in college, you can benefit from that. If you have a big YouTube presence, you can benefit from that while being a college student. So if there’s a corporation that says, “Hey, I like this young lady or young man and would like for them to be the face or the spokesperson for a product of mine,” while [they’re] still playing college sports, we see nothing wrong with that.

Q. The NCAA is a billion-dollar organization. When you put this bill forth what kind of pushback did you expect?

Bradford. I never thought about [pushback]. Look, the NCAA is antiquated in many of their policies, and reform is always needed. You have college coach coaches now that are making more than college presidents, making more than governors and some CEOs of major corporations.

Skinner. One of the former vice chancellors at Berkeley, who I knew very well, Daniel Boggan, is the former vice president and chief operating officer for the NCAA. When I contacted him and talked to him about [the bill], he alerted me to the fact that the NCAA was a formidable opponent and would not take kindly to any type of pressure — and that I should be prepared. There’s no way to prepare other than to present the best arguments, the best rationale, and build as much support as you can. And that’s what my staff and I, and the other supporters of the bill, have been doing.

Q. What’s part of that rationale?

Skinner. If any other billion-dollar industry was utilizing college students as the source of their revenue and denying those college students any compensation or share of that revenue, there would be universal outcry. It would not be tolerated. So why is it tolerated in this case?

Q. Well, why is it?

Bradford. It’s clear. I mean, you have a billion-dollar entity.

Q. That threatened California schools saying it could remove them from NCAA championships.

Skinner. Well, I also think that it’s highly ironic. It is an association of colleges. So colleges are threatening colleges? That’s just absurd on the face of it.

Bradford. I don’t think the NCAA wants to eliminate California teams from NCAA competition or bowl games. It’s a threat. Is it a possibility? Yes. But I believe if California passes this, you will see other states — Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina — that have big sports programs looking to do the same thing. Those athletes gonna say, “Why not us?”

Q. What do you make of the NCAA and California colleges saying they’re aligned in the goal of supporting student-athletes while also coming out against this bill?

Skinner. I think they’re disingenuous, and I think they may have all different reasons. But for some of them, it’s straight economics. They think whatever economic gain they’re getting would be shrunk. I think that’s a miscalculation. And I’d say that they don’t really respect the rights of students.

Q. After your bill was announced, the NCAA formed a working group to address the issue of name, image, and likeness. Should they be leading this conversation?

Bradford. We’re the catalyst for them finally moving on this issue. So now we should hit the pause button? They have hit a pause button on this issue for 20, 30 years. Even if this measure is signed by the governor, it doesn’t go into effect until 2023. That gives us plenty of time to sit down and work out whatever differences the NCAA might have as it relates to implementing this new policy.

Q. Obviously student-athletes stand to benefit, but which groups specifically?

Bradford. It’s really a civil rights issue. When you look at the athletes who play for the real revenue-generating sports, 50 percent of them are African American — both men’s and women’s sports. They’re clearly the breadwinners and revenue-generators for these universities. In many ways it’s modern-day exploitation. This is truly an issue of fairness.

Skinner. This bill is even more important for female athletes than male athletes. The whole industry of sports is male-dominated, whether it’s the apparel companies, the media, what have you. But if the women had the ability to promote themselves — and we take Katelyn Ohashi as an example — not only might they be able to make some money, they would also be able to uplift the status of female athleticism and female sports. And that, to me, was a very compelling argument.

Q. Are you surprised it took so long for state governments to address this?

Bradford. Yes and no. [The NCAA] views this as radical. I don’t, but this is going to totally change how the NCAA views athletes. Radical change takes time.

Will Jarvis is an editorial intern at The Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter @willyfrederick, or email him at will.jarvis@chronicle.com.