The interim House v. The final approval of the NCAA arrangement is still at least two months away, but the events ‘ reported deal has already changed the direction of one significant California legislator’s policy-making strategies. State Assemblymember Chris Holden announced on Tuesday that he planned to ditch the revenue-sharing provision of his pending bill, The College Athlete Protection Act, because of the “significant progress toward athlete compensation ” outlined in media reports about the House settlement. While an amended edition of Holden’s policy, AB 252, had now passed the California state legislature last summer, it faced a steep climb to clean the Senate and getting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s name. However, given California’s due involvement in initiating the modern age of college sports reform, it had captivated both the NCAA and its supporters. In February 2019, California state Sen. The Fair Pay to Play Act, which allows current college athletes in her state to receive compensation for their name, image, and likeness, was introduced by Nancy Skinner ( SB 206 ). A bill that would have included direct payment measures was something Skinner had considered for some time. She did, nevertheless, choose what was thought to be the low-hanging fruits of achieving bipartisan support. Importantly, even after SB 206 was signed into law in September 2019, Skinner also chose not to use its success to fund profit sharing in a subsequent bill. California has arguably now ceded the policy-making position that allows colleges to compete economically to states like Virginia, which recently passed a bill ( HB 1505 ) that allows its college athletes to receive direct NIL payments from their schools. That legislation is scheduled to take impact on July 1. Holden, however, plans to carry back with AB 252’s another non-revenue procedures, including those that address school athlete health and safety standards, Title IX conformity and the survival or protections of athletic scholarships and sports. originally proposed in January. California universities that generate more than$ 10 million in annual athletics media rights revenue would be required to pay$ 25,000 to some of its athletes through a “degree completion fund,” according to AB 252. ” Athletes were entitled to accessing up to$ 25,000 of those monies each, but could only obtain the remainder after graduating. The act called for the creation of a new state subagency to handle the payment process and its other steps, which were first proposed for the Department of Education and then the Office of Planning and Research. Holden, a bill championed by the National College Players Association, actually stipulated that the athlete’s money go to those who do not get “fair market value compensation ” and provided a method for determining those who qualified. Essentially, this confined the share of revenue-sharers to soccer and men’s hockey players. The Women’s Sports Foundation called the legislation an “extant threat, ” and the act was amended to make it clear that female players receive half of a school’s funding for the completion of a degree. A proposed settlement that may stop House v. NCAA, Carter v. NCAA, and Hubbard v. In exchange for$ 2. 7 billion in damages and the introduction of a new school sports program that will allow institutions to compensate their runners up to$ 20 million annually. In a statement, Holden claimed that a decision like this would “put our young people in a position that more accurately reflects the unique location they are in and set them up for victory post-college.” In his 2017 Learner Athletes Bill of Rights, Holden had first proposed the idea of a degree-completion account. An amended version of that policy, which included the completion-fund speech, passed two Senate boards before dying on the “suspense report. ” In early 2021, past California Assm. The College Athlete Race and Gender Equity Act ( AB 609 ), which required schools making over a certain amount of money to pay their athletes an NIL “royalty fee, was introduced by Sydney Kamlager-Dover. ” In addition to revenue-sharing, Kamlager-Dove’s act contained an extreme gender-equity part that put the onus immediately on athletic directors, who faced a three-year expulsion from professional athletics if their schools weren’t Title IX compliant by Jan. 1, 2025. In February 2022, AB 609 passed away of inactivity. Kamlager-Dover, for her part, was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in 2023. Upon AB 609’s failure, Sen. The College Athlete Race and Gender Equity Act passed this time through the upper chamber first, along with Nancy Skinner, who was the co-author of SB 206. Bradford’s version of the bill, despite its name, quickly jettisoned its gender-equity provisions in an effort to pass stripped-down revenue-sharing legislation. Although the bill successfully passed the Senate Judiciary and Appropriations committees, it was still relegated to the suspense file in May 2022. The National College Players Association, which is based in California, had been a driving force behind each of these bills, including the 2017 Student Athletes Bill of Rights. Ramogi Huma, the executive director of the NCPA, said in an interview with Sportico that he had no particular interest in attempting to impose the NCAA on the Golden State. “At the time, I did n’t see that other states were more likely to go forward ” with bills, Huma said. “Virginia was a welcome surprise. ” Huma does n’t count out California’s contribution to the cause of expanding athletes ’ earning opportunities, especially given that the House settlement has yet to receive even preliminary approval. Nevertheless, Huma added that having national forces promote direct compensation coming from all directions has a “big picture ” benefit. “ When you have multiple states pressing, it becomes even more clear that this is the right way to go, ” Huma said, “and I think that carries a lot of weight—whether it be in Congress, the media or the courts. ”