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SAY NAY: Bruce.
Stanford Athletics |
Exchanging their Speedos
and football jerseys for dark business suits, swimmer
Michael Bruce and linebacker David Bergeron, both ’04,
traveled to the California General Assembly in January
to ask legislators to vote nay on a so-called “student-athletes’
bill of rights.”
The bill, introduced by Democratic state senator Kevin
Murray last year, was passed by the senate and is now
in the higher education committee of the assembly. On
the surface, it appears to support student-athletes.
It mandates more coverage for athletic scholarships
and health insurance, and it allows students to earn
more money through employment, transfer without sitting
out a year if their head coach leaves and hire agents
to help them make decisions about whether to turn pro.
But the bill conflicts with NCAA rules, and if it became
law, California schools would not be able to participate
in the NCAA unless the organization amended its rules.
No Rose Bowl. No March Madness. No NCAA revenue (a loss
of $8 million for California’s four Pac-10 schools).
In short, student-athletes say, a bad idea.
“We appreciate any efforts to increase student-athletes’
welfare, and we agree with a lot of the ideas Senator
Murray has brought up,” Bruce says. “But
we feel like student-athletes are being used as bargaining
chips by the California legislature to pressure the
NCAA into reformation.”
Bruce, a management science and engineering major,
says SB 193 originally was presented as a protection
for disadvantaged athletes. The NCAA was depicted as
an institution that would go into lower-income neighborhoods,
recruit talented athletes and train them for a few years,
but not support them academically. “That’s
why it generated a lot of momentum,” Bruce says.
“Unfortunately, this bill doesn’t directly
address those issues.”
Bruce, Bergeron and student-athletes from UC-Berkeley
and the University of Southern California spent a full
day talking with 11 of the higher education committee’s
13 members. After presenting a petition signed by more
than 700 California student-athletes, the four students
left Sacramento with promises from nine legislators
that they would not vote the bill out of committee.
“We said, ‘Look, the NCAA is addressing
these issues,’ ” Bruce says. The student-athletes
pointed out that the NCAA is considering changes in
scholarships and insurance, and also had recently instituted
advisory committees to solicit student opinions.
Bruce thinks the student-athletes had a stealth weapon.
“We didn’t have briefcases to carry, like
a lot of lobbyists,” he says. “We just had
our backpacks. But I think it made us look like we weren’t
inside the system.”
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