A California lawmaker launched a invoice Thursday that will reshape how school athletic departments within the state are required to share their earnings with athletes.

The proposed laws, named the School Athlete Safety Act, requires main money-generating school sports activities groups to create a fund that will pay gamers a share of their groups’ annual income, a portion of which might be held in a belief for gamers till they full their diploma. The invoice additionally proposes making a 21-member, state-run panel that regulates the methods wherein faculties are pouring assets into defending and educating their athletes.

Chris Holden, a former San Diego State basketball participant and the present chairman of the state legislature’s appropriations committee, introduced the invoice at a information convention in entrance of the Rose Bowl Stadium on Thursday afternoon.

“By way of the years, school athlete issues have been neglected as a result of they aren’t within the skilled leagues,” Holden stated in a press release supplied to ESPN. “If faculties are profiting on their gamers, then these college students deserve equitable pathways for his or her careers whether or not that’s within the skilled league or in California’s workforce.”

The revenue-sharing portion of the invoice seeks to create “truthful market worth compensation” for athletes. To take action, Holden’s invoice features a system designed to make sure that half of the income generated by every school crew is devoted to its athletes both by way of grant-in-aid scholarship {dollars} or in revenue-sharing funds.

For instance, if the San Diego State basketball crew generates roughly $6 million in income and spends roughly $500,000 on scholarships for its gamers, the college must put aside $2.5 million on the finish of the yr (half of the overall income minus the price of scholarships) for the gamers if the brand new invoice turns into legislation.

Gamers can be eligible to obtain as much as $25,000 in annual funds on the finish of their season, and any further cash can be held in a belief till they graduate. For probably the most worthwhile school groups in California, this system might result in a whole bunch of 1000’s of {dollars} paid to gamers who get their levels.

The invoice permits faculties to reallocate funds, if mandatory, to verify they aren’t violating Title IX guidelines that require faculties to supply equal advantages to males’s and girls’s groups.

An try to go related language by way of the California Meeting final yr failed, however Holden’s place on the appropriations committee, together with an elevated stress in a number of totally different states to push the NCAA to additional change its guidelines, present this invoice with a greater likelihood of coming to a vote, in accordance with Nationwide School Gamers Affiliation founder Ramogi Huma.

Huma labored with Holden and his workers to craft the invoice as a part of his work with the NCPA, an advocacy group that has been pushing to reform the NCAA for almost 20 years. The NCPA additionally helped push the 2019 California invoice that served as a catalyst for NCAA guidelines adjustments that now permit athletes to make cash from their title, picture and likeness.

The brand new invoice additionally incorporates a number of provisions aimed toward funding for the well being and well-being of athletes that the NCPA has tried to get handed by different legislators on the state and federal ranges. These proposed guidelines can be monitored and enforced by a 21-member School Athlete Safety panel appointed by state politicians.

Different objects within the invoice embrace:

• Necessities for faculties to cowl medical prices for sports-related accidents and insurance coverage. The necessities differ based mostly on how a lot annual income an athletic division generates;

• A subcommittee of the School Athlete Safety panel that will set up rules about when athletes can return to play after an harm together with different well being and security guidelines;

• A subcommittee to certify brokers who work with school athletes on endorsement offers;

• Assured scholarships for six years (or till the athlete earns their diploma) for athletes who stay as full-time college students in good tutorial standing;

• Necessities that faculties publicly share details about their present compliance with Title IX legislation and details about what advantages they supply to their athletes designed to extend transparency for prospects within the recruiting course of;

• A prohibition that forestalls any college from chopping one in every of its varsity sports activities if the athletic director on the college makes greater than $500,000 per yr.

“The NCAA’s formal place is that it has no obligation to guard or educate school athletes,” Huma stated in a press release earlier than Thursday’s press convention. “This invoice would defend athletes’ bodily well-being and guarantee they’re handled equitably within the enterprise and academic elements of faculty sports activities.”

The invoice particularly says that funds to athletes shouldn’t be used as proof that the athletes are staff of their faculties. In the newest push to additional change the enterprise of faculty sports activities, the NCAA and its members have drawn a tough line at permitting athletes to be thought of staff. There are a number of ongoing authorized efforts to realize worker standing for school athletes, however this invoice shouldn’t be meant to be a part of that push.