Washington colleges push back on bill to allow NCAA athletes to get paid

Should college athletes be allowed to get endorsement deals, despite NCAA rules strictly forbidding it?

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The controversial issue is before the state Legislature and had a hearing in a House committee this week.

Republican Rep Drew Stokesbary is behind the bill, which would allow student athletes to have agents and paid endorsement deals.

That’s a violation of current NCAA rules, but the proposal would make it a violation of the state Consumer Protections Act for the NCAA to take any punitive action against students or schools that violate those rules.

“Over the years, the NCAA and college athletics overall have become a multi-billion dollar enterprise,” Stokesbary said. “Bowl officials, conference officials, athletic department officials, NCAA officials, coaches, all of their salaries are going through the roof. Everybody is getting extremely wealthy off of this system except for the college athletes themselves, the ones that do 90 percent of the work that create all of this value, and there’s just a fundamental unfairness there that I think is antithetical to our values as Washingtonians.”

Chris Mulluk, with Washington State University, spoke against the bill at the hearing this week, saying in his view, it’s regrettably unworkable.

“If states are laboratories of democracies, then I hope you understand that we’d rather not be the lab rat,” Mulluk said referencing an earlier comment from Stokesbary as a reason to support of the idea.

“WSU is a leading supporter of the development of some of the new benefits provided to student-athletes across the country several years ago, including meals, room and board, funds for travel and miscellaneous needs. We’re concerned that under this bill simply there won’t be any athletes to provide these benefits to and that’s not just hyperbole,” Mulluk added.

He stressed to the committee that membership in the NCAA is a privilege, not a right, and says this bill puts the school’s privilege in jeopardy.

“This bill would require the university to allow athletes to engage in activities that are in clear violation of NCAA bylaws,” Mulluk warned. “Repeated and widespread disregard of those bylaws as this bill dictates would leave the NCAA with little choice but to levy a succession of penalties, ultimately leading to the loss of NCAA and PAC-12 membership, that would ultimately leave our teams competing at lower levels or at a club level, if at all.”

Mulluk added without football, there would be no Cougar volleyball, no women’s soccer, no baseball, and more.

Joe Dacca, from the University of Washington, echoed those concerns, and pointed to recent changes the NCAA has made to benefit student athletes.

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“In addition to tuition, books, [and] room and board, our full-ride athletes get an annual stipend of $2,800 for other personal items and that is just in the last couple years. We know that many will argue that simply isn’t enough and we’re certainly open to additional reform. We ask that those changes be made at the national level so as to not put the eligibility of our student-athletes in our programs at risk,” Dacca told the committee.

But backers of the bill say the whole point of the proposal is to discourage the NCAA from booting schools for violations, by making it a violation of the Consumer Protections Act to do so, opening the door for lawsuits.

But Dacca says the problem with that is any legal action they took would likely be tied up in the court for years.

“As institutions, we would be in limbo during whatever time period that would be and very likely be ineligible during that time. That’s what we’re concerned about is that ineligibility and what that would mean for the programs that we have. Certainly if not ineligible, you can imagine what effect that would have on our ability to recruit, “Dacca explained.

David Drayer, from Eastern Washington University, had other concerns.

“I’m not here to defend the NCAA and say that everything they do is right, because there’s some frustrating things at our level that I think we would love to see addressed at a national level as well. I’m afraid of doing that in a patchwork way the way this bill does,” Drayer said.

Others argued the proposal would only benefit a few student athletes while putting the majority of the rest at risk.

The bill is scheduled for a possible vote in committee next week.

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