S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman on this episode of KPBS Midday Edition. We unpack the Protect College sports act as it moves through Congress. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. Welcome back to KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. For decades , college athletes faced strict limits on what they could earn , even as coaches , universities and athletic conferences built a multibillion dollar industry. Today , athletes can earn money through deals involving their name , image and likeness , often called nil. Participating universities can also pay athletes directly. Well , now Congress is considering legislation that could reshape athlete compensation , transfers and eligibility. Late last month , the Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act. The bill now goes to the House. Supporters say it would bring stability to college sports and establish important athlete protections. Critics , though , say it would give schools too much control over athletes earnings and opportunities. So who would benefit , and would the bill's protections be enough for the people playing the games? Well , joining me is Lynn Simon , a San Diego attorney and sports law expert who's worked on legal challenges to NCAA rules and advised California lawmakers on athlete compensation. Lynn , welcome back to Midday Edition.
S2: Thank you very much.
S1: So let's start with the big picture here. What would the Protect College Sports Act do?
S2: That's a very big picture. It's 170 pages long. And basically it addresses dozens upon dozens of issues relating to college sports. And it tells the state legislatures to butt out , and it tells the courts , by and large , to butt out , Which means we will have a brand new set of rules for college sports written by senators and congressmen , and we will be unable to change it if we don't like it , or it doesn't work out very well , unless we can get Congress and the president to once again act , which , as you know , is a challenging thing to do. It's very , very inflexible , whether you like more of the rules than you hate or vice versa. But no one likes everything about the bill , and no one hates everything about the bill. But what I hate about the bill is its inflexibility. We are stuck with it if it passes for the indefinite future.
S1: What problems , uh , is this bill looking to address? I mean , what problems do its supporters say it would solve?
S2: I think it's looking to address the problems of , um , typically courts , state courts or federal courts ruling that various NCAA rules are inappropriate. Now , this , of course , began with with things that we now think are wonderful , like Ed O'Bannon suing the NCAA about not being allowed to earn a penny of name , image and likeness when they were using his image to sell video games. And we go back to state , state legislatures , which are also kicked out of the system. They did wonderful things like they they put nil into business. California did it. Nancy Skinner , state senator from Northern California , with my help , put a bill together that was the first in the nation. So all those good things happened from legislatures and from courts. And what Congress is doing is saying , we have we have the answer to all the questions. And here they are. Take them or leave them. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. And and Ed O'Bannon , who you mentioned , that's a former college basketball player from UCLA. Hey , listen , you know , you mentioned this bill is inflexible. Um , and I'm assuming that that's one of your biggest concerns. What do you think it gets , right?
S2: Oh , uh , the transfer rules sound legitimate. You can transfer once in four years and continue to play sports. And if you transfer twice , you have to sit out a year , unless you have a very good reason for transferring. Like a coach quitting or whatever. The eligibility rules look a little stiff , but but okay. Um , allowing name , image and name , image and likeness payments uh , at with um , no , no ceiling on them is a great idea as long as you understand what name , image and likeness is. And don't think that it's any amount of money going to the athletes from any source , name , image and likeness is payments by businesses essentially to use the name , image and likeness like Nike having a shoe deal. It's not colleges writing checks to their athletes. Uh , the bill does limit the latter limits the payments to the athletes , but it limits it to $50 million. Approximately 45 or $50 million per school per academic year. Which , uh , it doesn't sound. Doesn't sound too bad to me. But again , how will it look in ten years or 20 years? I'm not sure this may be the first and last , uh , uh , Bill of , you know , act of Congress that addresses these issues.
S1: You know , you advise state legislators here in California on the Fair Pay to Play act. Um , so help us understand how athletes get paid today. What's the difference between an outside Nil deal and a , you know , direct payment from a university?
S2: Well , an outside Nil deal is exactly what you describe. It's it's outside. It is , as I use the same example , a Nike contract. If Nike would pay the best , the best high school basketball player coming out of high school , going off to play at one of the great , great schools UCLA , Duke , North Carolina. Uh , whoever , um. Uh , Nike might offer him a contract , and he would get checks from Nike for as many years as he stayed around college. And , uh , everybody would be happy with that arrangement. Um , a payment from the school would mean that , again , UCLA , Duke or whoever was agreeing to write him checks and pay him to come to the school and play basketball. It's about as close to a salary as you can get , but that's not what they call it. Now they're just they're giving different names to it. They're calling it the schools and and Congress going along with it. They're calling those salary payments revenue sharing. And I guess that's revenue sharing in the sense that , you know , any company that pays its employees is sharing its revenue. But a better term for it would be salaries. But I would say that maybe image and likeness is a legitimate market level payment to an athlete for the use of his name , image and likeness and and anything from the university as a salary. And then I guess money coming from alumni or the like is , uh , probably under the table and , and illegal. So we don't have to deal with that as a matter of law.
S1: So really , ultimately , it sounds like the bill is looking to add a salary cap , um , meaning a limit to how much college athletes are able to make. Is that how you would characterize this?
S2: Well , actually , there is a salary cap created by by a lawsuit , a lawsuit called House , USC versus NCAA. Um , uh , was settled , I think , about 18 months ago. And part of the settlement was that athletes could be paid in the form of salaries , as I described them , over and above legitimate arm's length , uh , and ill. They could be paid what was called revenue sharing , and it would be , uh , about $20 million per school per year for all athletes in all sports , male and female. Big sports and small sports. A $20 million cap , which would increase with the cost of living each year for nine more years. And after ten years , the bill sort of runs out and leaves. Leaves it to other people to worry about. So we have a salary cap. This law would essentially double the salary cap.
S1: How much? Ah. I mean , how much are college athletes making now , today , compared to before this legislation?
S2: Everything is pretty well hidden and off the record. But there are some very good journalists who have dug into it as hard as they can. They've made Public Records Act requests to the universities , and there's sort of the belief among dozens of experts who do this for a living is that very good athletes are making 1 million or 2 or three a year. Some people believe it's four or 5 or 6 , but I think that's a minority of the experts trying to understand it. But that's 1 million or 2 or three on top of whatever they could make from a legitimate name , image and likeness deal.
S1: That's a that's a large chunk of change there. How has that changed from from before this legislation? Because , um , I know college athletes. They were in some pretty , pretty , uh , bad positions financially , right?
S2: Well , sure , if you go back far enough , you know , they , they often didn't have money to , to eat and , uh , to live. Yeah , they would be paid , you know , tuition , room board , books and , uh , if they really came from an impoverished background , what did they have for walking around? Money. You know , how did they how did they go to the movies? How did they go out for lunch with their friends? It was very , very difficult. They had nothing and it generated a lot of cheating. There was there was under the table money , which , you know , these days would look like chicken feed. But people were getting $5,000 in $100 bills from alumni or boosters of the schools to , uh , you know , just keep them. Keep them reasonably comfortable on campus. So this is a massive , massive change. And I think it's a change for the good. The question is really the details that come along with it.
S1: Well , and I want to get into some of those here , but there is a double standard question here , I think , because some highly paid coaches say athlete compensation needs more guardrails. How does this bill treat coach pay compared with player pay?
S2: I don't think it touches coach pay at all. It is 170 pages and it has been amended about five times , including twice right at the end before they passed it around. Uh , but whenever , whenever the bill passed , just in the last 3 or 4 weeks before it passed , there were a lot of changes. But my understanding is it does nothing to , uh , nothing to college coaches pay , nothing to college coaches ability to move from school to school. I believe that there. I believe that if they quit their job in the middle of a season , they're not permitted to go to another school that season. That's the only limitation on coaches. Interesting.
S1: Interesting. I mean , if the concern is that spending has gotten out of control , why focus on athletes compensation without imposing comparable limits on coach salaries and buyouts? That's a. Question.
S2: Question. Absolutely.
S1: Absolutely. I'm left with their , um. I want to talk about the health protections quickly , too. The bill would require five years of post competition coverage for certain sports related medical expenses. What exactly would that cover , and would that what would it leave out?
S2: Well , I don't know what it would cover. It's a very non-controversial part of the bill. It sounds good. It's better than nothing. Which is , I believe , what they have now. And so people are happy with it. But but it it's , it's it has created very little discussion. And I have to admit that to me it , it , it is what it looks like. It's , uh , it's Health insurance , and , um , it's a good idea. Again , that's another thing. I don't know. It's. Yeah , you're a little bit out of my territory because it's inadequate. It's better. It's better than nothing. But certainly you certainly you could go further.
S1: Um , the in in , uh , ACP , uh , opposes this bill , arguing that it would restrict black athletes economic rights without guaranteeing the long term security they deserve. Um , how does race shape this debate in your eyes , or if.
S2: At all? You know , I yeah , it does , and it doesn't. I think it affects college athletes the same way , in my view , at the same way , whether they are white or black or Hispanic. But because there are a large number of African American athletes , I think it affects them disproportionately to their to their classmates , in other words. Again , if you look at the if you look at the big picture , um , it's uh , how would I how would I best describe it? If college athletes are being underpaid and college athletes are facing caps that are unnecessary? A very sizable number of them are African American , more so than you would guess if you knew nothing about college sports and you were looking at this issue , you know , from whatever somebody who lived in , in India , uh , would say , well , it seems fair. All the athletes make , you know , are subject to the same rules. But these are a lot of the African American athletes. It's their one big chance to put some money in the bank. Many of them are exceptional college athletes who won't become pros. And they're for years at college , uh , being an exceptional athlete and helping their , their , uh , school win national championships at four years is maybe the best earning years that they have in their lives. And it's very important to them.
S1: This bill is now with the House. It's it's passed the Senate. And of course , they returned to session shortly after midterm elections in November. Um , what are you going to be watching for as it makes its way through Congress?
S2: I think I'm going to be watching for how seriously they take the bill if they think it's not. If a lot of congressmen think it's not a big deal , I think they may pass it because the Senate passed it and the Senate passed it rather easily , and which was surprising to a lot of people. And the white House supports the bill , as far as we can tell from President Trump. Um , so it looks like , well , everybody believes in this. Let's go ahead and do it. But if they look at it more closely , I think they see that there are a lot of problems with the bill. There were huge changes made , as I said , in the weeks and days before it ended. And it would be easy for a critic in the House. And there will be many to point out a dozen things that are wrong with this bill , if not , if not two dozen. And again , the killer point.
S1: Is that we gotta leave it there. Lynn , I so appreciate it. This is a conversation. We'll keep going. Lynn Simon is an attorney here in San Diego , a sports law expert and former adjunct adjunct professor. Lynn , thank you so much.
S2: You're very welcome. Thanks for the invite.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
