Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill making college athletes in California able to earn a profit off their name and likeness, a step in the right direction but missing a key element with not allowing community college athletes to profit.
Community colleges are not included in the Fair Pay to Play act that passed at the end of September after Newsom signed a bill making it a law.
Being a college student can be very complex, full of deadlines, lots of studying and much more. Yet, for a college athlete, most of those are hours are used to practice their sport.
College athletes have practices at least 4-5 times a week, lasting around two hours minimum, and that doesn’t change whether you are an athlete in community college or at a university.
It’s clear that the NCAA and California’s Division one sports make much more money than your average community college does.
Although, that shouldn’t be a factor because the money the athletes would make from this law doesn’t come from the college’s pocket.
Being a student can be expensive, but being a student athlete is even more expensive. Those hours dedicated to sports could be used for working a part time job and getting school work done.
That is a big part in why community college student athletes should be able to earn some sort of profit even if it is on a much smaller scale than D-1 California college sports.
Any athlete at Long Beach City College would be able to make money off giving lessons in their particular sport like basketball or swimming for example, or even do promotional ads with a local business of Long Beach.
Community college athletes could use this law to their benefit and help the community out at the same time.
Players on the football team could collectively hold a camp for the local youth and regardless of if they make $100 or $500, it would still help them more than they are being helped now.
This does not only go for the football teams though, this goes for the entire college athletic department.
The swim team could even give swim lessons to kids in the summer along with the football team having their camp and it could be a whole LBCC summer sports camp.
These are just a few things, among many, that student athletes at LBCC could benefit from if the new law included community colleges.