Student athletes can be paid by universities in Colorado under a bill that easily cleared its final vote in the state Senate on Friday, despite continued bipartisan concern about hiding individual contract amounts.
The bill is now on its way to Gov. Jared Polis. A statement from his office said he would review the legislation then decide whether to sign it into law.
The bill’s supporters, including CU Boulder, argued for secrecy around Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) payments to athletes to protect them from criticism from the public and from bad actors who may prey on them. Payments to football stars, in particular, could be substantial, perhaps millions of dollars.
“We're trying to protect the privacy of the students,” said one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Judy Amabile, D-Boulder, in debate on second reading of the bill on Thursday.
News groups, and a small handful of Democrats and Republicans, opposed the provision to exempt the payment amounts from disclosure under the Colorado Open Records Act.
The bill passed the Senate 30-4. Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, was among those who voted no. She cited the lack of transparency.
“How might members of say this General Assembly, or members of the public, be able to determine whether or not there is unequal payments being offered to say women basketball players versus men basketball players?,” Gonzales said during Thursday’s debate. “How might that play out within one team, if an athlete of color were to be paid more or less as opposed to their white counterparts?”
Supporters of transparency never had the votes to amend the bill to make public the individual contract amounts. Instead, CU Boulder, and other universities will produce a report that gives aggregate NIL payments amounts by sport every year.
CU Boulder representatives said that disclosing the contract amounts paid to athletes would put the university at a disadvantage because private universities are not subject to open records laws, and other states have put similar secrecy provisions.
For several years, student athletes have been allowed to sign third-party NIL deals with companies, like Rolex, Nike, and Gatorade, totalling millions of dollars for the most high-profile sports stars. Federal court settlements, however, will soon force universities to also pay athletes directly for their NIL rights. CU Boulder’s top sports bring in millions in ticket revenue and media rights deals.
Proponents of the bill emphasized that the athletic department is largely self-sustaining, and taxpayer dollars will not be used to pay athletes for NIL rights.
Still, a small number of lawmakers seemed uncomfortable with the lack of disclosure.
Sen. Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, offered an unsuccessful amendment when the bill was previously in committee that would have revealed individual payment amounts. He said he wouldn’t offer the amendment again on the Senate floor, but he cautioned that the legislature will likely revisit this issue in future sessions.
“Knowing what's going on athlete-by-athlete helps us figure out what the next round of policy on the set of circumstances looks like,” said Lundeen on Thursday’s Senate floor debate. “I think it's got an element that's missing: we should know the dollar amounts on the student athletes.”
Ultimately, Lundeen voted for the bill, despite no changes to the secrecy provision.
