Skinner seeks NIL transparency with new bill

For Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Oakland) the effort to ensure college athletes are fairly compensated for their hard-earned stardom in competition is still game on.

After effectively rewriting the rules of American college athletics with her SB 206 in 2019 – a bill that make made California the first state to give student athletes the right earn money from the use by their schools of their name, image and likeness (NIL) – Skinner has introduced new legislation (SB 906) seeking to bring some transparency to what has become a Gold Rush for some college athletes and their schools.

The original NIL law allowed college athletes in the Golden State to be legally compensated for endorsing products or appearing in advertisements (among other things), granting them the chance to share in the enormous revenues colleges make from athletics. It also instantly gave California a distinct advantage when recruiting the best athletes: come here, get paid.

Skinner successfully shepherded another NIL-related bill into law as well, following up her original 2019 bill in 2021 with SB 26, which accelerated California’s adoption of NIL rules and expanded it community college athletes.

Not surprisingly, fanbases across the country were not going to stand for schools like USC, UCLA, Cal and Stanford having a leg up in the year-found fight for new talent. So, scores of state legislatures across the country quickly followed Skinner’s lead and passed similar NIL bills of their own, changing the way college sports operate.

The biggest of those changes has been the creation of something known as “collectives,” private entities loosely – though not directly – connected to universities to facilitate NIL deals for college athletes. Collectives have in very short order have become central figures in the recruitment of high school stars and transfers.

Notable collectives include Yea Alabama, which primarily supports the University of Alabama’s dominant football team; Texas Aggies United, which also primarily supports a Texas A&M football team desperate for big wins; and The 1890 Initiative, which (you guessed it) primarily supports a once-powerful but now struggling Nebraska football team looking for any wins at all.

As Skinner noted in a press release announcing the introduction of SB 906, “To date, these collectives have formed predominantly to support men’s college football and basketball players.”

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