The controversial California legislation that figured to pose a threat to the NCAA’s current economic landscape is no more.
Assembly Bill 252, also known as the College Athlete Protection Act, was surprisingly pulled by assemblymember Chris Holden, the creator of the legislation, on Wednesday during a hearing before the state’s Senate Education Committee.
Holden had reportedly been advised against moving forward with the bill by the committee chair, state Senator Josh Newman.
“Though this is not the result we hoped for with AB 252, ultimately we did not have the support of the committee chair,” Holden in a statement, according to Sportico.
“Still, this is not a fail. Our original bill language, in large part, focused on creating opportunities for college athletes to be paid and was critical to the NCAA revenue-sharing settlement. I take these major shifts in the standard of college athletics to be an indication that we are headed in the right direction.”
The bill’s aim was to create a revenue-sharing arrangement between schools and student-athletes who compete in revenue-generating sports.
While name, image and likeness (NIL) allow student-athletes to be compensated for promotion and endorsement opportunities in the private sector, AB 252 would see revenue funneled directly from the school to the student-athlete.
The California state assembly passed the legislation in June 2023, but after last month’s $2.8 billion settlement in the House v. NCAA case, Holden removed the revenue-sharing language from his bill.
He initially planned to move forward with a revised version of AB 252 that focused on providing improved health and safety standards for student-athletes and preventing athletic programs and scholarships from being cut, but that was put to an end on Wednesday to the delight of the NCAA.
“The NCAA and member schools have been working hard to educate lawmakers in California and across the country about the positive changes taking place at the association to address the needs of modern student-athletes,” Tim Buckley, the NCAA’s senior vice president of external affairs, said in a statement.
“Those changes combined with the landmark settlement proposal (makes) clear that state-by-state legislation would be detrimental to college sports, and create more challenges than they solve.”
