Assembly Standing Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, and Tourism

Good morning. We're gonna go ahead and get started. I'm a very punctual person, chair, and I wanna welcome you all here to the, Tuesday, May 5 hearing for the Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism, for informational hearing on the name, image, and likeness financial literacy programs, and particularly, how that benefits many of our student athletes.

I wanna welcome, all members of the committee to Swing Space Room 1100 here for this hearing and, certainly welcome all of our guests that traveled so far to be able to be here as either as part of a panel or or supporting those, that are here to be able to discuss this issue. As I mentioned, we're gonna be focusing on name, image, and likeness policies, common refer commonly referred to as NIL, and how they've affected college and high school athletes and athletic programs in our state.

And more specifically, this hearing is gonna highlight some of the financial literacy programs provided to students, which are intended to be able to give these athletes the tools to be able to responsibly manage the funds that they're able to earn through the monetization of their NIL. California has been at the forefront of NIL policies nationwide.

We became the first state in the nation to enact NIL laws for college athletes when the Fair to Play Act or SB 206 by former state Senator Nancy Skinner was signed to law in 2019. The state's NIL rules officially became operative in September 2021, just two months after the NCAA adopted its own interim nationwide NIL policy in July.

And while these policies have the potential to be able to help provide a wide range of financial opportunities for California's top athletes, there could be a number of pitfalls.

The level of compensation that these athletes are receiving has a lot of variables, with some receiving a share of revenue from their school while others receive endorsements from third party entities. So the purpose of this hearing today is to be able to learn from individuals which are who are dealing with this new landscape of amateur athletics firsthand, as well as to be able to get a better understanding of some of the impacts to our universities and college campuses throughout the state.

As NIL opportunities continue to grow, the committee believes it's equally important to examine whether student athletes are receiving the financial education and guidance necessary to navigate this rapidly changing environment. The committee is particularly interested in understanding what financial literacy financial literary financial literacy resources are currently available for student athletes, whether those resources are consistent across institutions and how schools, athletic organizations, and policymakers can better coordinate educational efforts. As NIL continues to evolve, it is important that public policy evolves as well.

Our responsibility is not only to expand opportunity, but also, to, be able to make sure that our student athletes are equipped to navigate those opportunities safely and responsibly. So we're grateful for all of the expertise and those that have traveled here today to be able to participate in these hearings, and I really am grateful for some of the perspectives that you're gonna add to this conversation. We're gonna have our panelist testify in three different panel groups.

And then after those sort of panel group presentations, we'll open up discussion for members that are able to join us here as well if they have any questions or any comments. And at the conclusion of all three panels, we'll have time for public comment.

We're hoping to include additional individuals and organizations who would like to provide their own unique perspectives. With that, we will begin with our first panel. And if members can make their way to Room 1100, certainly, we'd welcome you for your opening remarks as well. I'd like to invite to give us a a a broad overview of some of the NIL financial literacy programs. Tyree Dillingham and Brendan Copeland.

This is our presentation table. You might just wanna take, center stage right there. And when you are situated and comfortable, you would wanna press the little mic button to activate your microphone, and we would welcome you to begin your presentations.

Good morning, Chairman Ward, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today, and thank you for giving student athletes a voice in this discussion. NIL and revenue sharing are the most talked about issues in college sports. But too often, people are talking about student athletes instead of talking with them or giving them a seat at the table. Your willingness to hear directly from those affected is meaningful and important.

My name is Tyree Dillingham. I'm a financial educator. Together with NFL Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk, I created a financial literacy curriculum for professional and college athletes. When I started teaching when I started teaching, I thought I understood the importance of financial education, but I wasn't prepared for what I would hear. Story after story from student athletes made it painfully clear that this wasn't just about money.

It was about vulnerability, exploitation, and unprepared young people trying to navigate adult decisions without support. That's when I realized we had to bring these issues into light. California created the modern NIL era. We opened the door for student athletes to finally earn from their name, image, and likeness. But today, the landscape around them has changed faster than the protections designed to keep them safe.

NIL created opportunity, but it has also created a new and unregulated financial marketplace. One where young people, some of them minors are being targeted by predatory actors, deceptive contracts, and financial schemes that they are not prepared to navigate. Across the country, we do not have a model for financial literacy in the student athlete space. Some states have passed laws requiring it, but even where it exists, there's no structure, no standard, and no accountability.

A single work workshop can check the box even though financial literacy is a lifelong skill that cannot be taught in an hour.

California recently recognized this gap and passed a law requiring every high school student to take a stand alone financial literacy course. But up to 70% of division one athletes in California come from out of state or internationally. They will never receive that high school financial literacy. A 2025 peer review study found that student athletes score lower on financial literacy than their non athlete peers. Research from Kansas State University shows athletes enter college with less financial education than the general student population.

And importantly, students themselves are asking for help. They want workshops. They want first year courses. They want ongoing module modules built into athletics programming. They want one on one mentorship.

A 2021 NCAA funded study and a 2019 NCAA studies both found that student athletes are asking for more structured, more consistent financial education. NIL has only intensified that need. Athletes are navigating contracts, taxes, budgeting, and business decision without the foundational knowledge to protect themselves. At the same time, their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for judgment, discipline, and long term thinking, isn't fully developed until around age 26.

This is why teens and young adults are more vulnerable to impulse spending, peer influenced purchases, predatory contracts, high interest debt, and short term rewards over long term stability.

It's not a character flaw, it's neurodevelopment. Student athletes are lacking basic budgeting skills, knowledge of taxes, rainy day funds, compound interest, credit, let alone advanced concepts like business structures, the consequences of sports betting, disability, loss of value, or endorsement insurance. We're asking young adults to make six figure decisions with the brain that isn't fully built for long term financial judgment yet. That's why education, structure, and support matter. Student athletes now move two, three, sometimes four times.

Without a standardized model, they may receive a little education at one school, none at the next, and something entirely different at the third. At the same time, we've seen the rise of cash advanced NIL deals, high interest loans, and contracts disguised as marketing support. Arrangements that often function like predatory payday loans, but with fewer guardrails and far greater consequences.

And the highly sensational nature of college sports, the rankings, the media, the social media attention, and the public reporting of students' NIL earnings, this already vulnerable population becomes an even bigger target for exploitation. Bad actors can watch the nose and know exactly who these young people are, how much they make, and how inexperienced they are.

In our assessment, only about thirty percent of student athletes follow a written budget. Fewer than half track their weekly spending. Confidence in banking, taxes, credit, and investment averages at about three to six out of 10. Only 40% know their credit score. These are not small gaps.

These are structural vulnerabilities. In one on one meetings with student athletes, not a single one could clearly explain how much they would be paid, when they were supposed to be paid, whether it was NIL revenue sharing, stipend, scholarship, or other income sources. In every meeting, no athlete understood how to read their paycheck. Gross versus net, tax withholdings, any deductions or pay periods. If you can't read a paycheck, you can't verify income, identify errors, or detect fraud.

Tax literacy is extremely low. Most athletes don't understand self employment tax, quarterly payments, multi state tax obligations, or what expenses are deductible. These vulnerabilities are not theoretical. They're happening every single day. We have parents and grandparents opening credit cards and athletes' names without their permission.

Family members are withdrawing NIL earnings without permission. Scammers are posing as investors, predatory lenders offering upfront cash in exchange for long term NIL rights. Some students are

spending upwards of pay the most staggering statistic, 98% of student athletes have been asked for money by friends or family with no idea how to manage those difficult conversations. That's not a red flag. That's a crisis. There's no model right now, no standard, no safety net, and these issues fall hardest on athletes in revenue generating sports like football and basketball, which are largely composed of minority athletes and athletes from low income or first generation households. Without protection, NIL widens existing inequities instead of closing them.

Even the NCAA requirement for financial literacy is unregulated and inconsistently implemented. I've seen one off workshops run by car dealerships who give coaches free vehicles and pay to play financial product companies sponsoring schools in exchange for access to athletes. That's not education, that's marketing. California has been the national standard for NIL opportunity. Now it must set the standard for NIL protection.

California opened the door for athletes to earn. Now we must ensure they're not exploited the moment that they walk through it. There was a time when the the life changing moment in a student athlete came under the bright lights of a draft stage, but now that moment comes at 18. The first financial foothold that their family has ever had. And while less than 2% will ever go pro, every one of them deserves the chance to change their trajectory.

Financial education must reach them before financial exploitation does. California has led the nation in consumer protections and in NIL, and this is our chance to lead once again to ensure that NIL opportunities become one of empowerment, not exploitation. While we cannot control the entire NIL ecosystem, we can control whether student athletes in California are prepared, protected, and positioned to win. Thank you.

Great. Thank you.

Awesome. Alright. Well, one, thank you for that. That was incredible. And Tyree covered a lot.

I appreciate you all being here. First, introducing myself, my name is Brandon Copeland. I'm the executive director of Athletes.org. We are the Players Association for College Athletes. We have over 5,200 college athletes who, from multiple sports, who believe that they deserve the seat at the table that Tyree was referring to.

I played ten years in the NFL myself. When I was with the New York Jets in 2019, I went back to my alma mater University of Pennsylvania and started teaching a course I nicknamed Life one zero one, but it was about money. Since the Jets, we weren't winning, had a little more time in the off season to go and, help my community, but basically a younger version of me.

How to buy a house, how to buy a car, what's your four one k, credit, all of those things that I feel like you should learn in school, But a lot of these things I had to learn about live in the NFL.

And so during the the latter part, I'm happy to dive into specifics and details of what our athletes are experiencing, what I've experienced, what my teammates have experienced because as Tyree alluded to, now instead of you having to wait to get to the NFL to have your big moment and change your life forever, now you can do it in college.

And I think that that's more than fair. But I do believe that the system has just been I do some real estate as well. And sometimes when you look at a home, you debate whether you renovate it and tear it down to the studs or whether you rip out the foundation and start from scratch. And I think that the system that, we are living in in college athletics right now is one that needs to be ripped down and start, on a new foundation.

And so right now, you hear a lot of people describe college athletics as chaos, and a lot of those people are the NCAA and the conference commissioners and they're pushing for a lot of legislation.

But let's be honest about what's actually happening. Ratings are up, revenue is up, and the only thing that has changed is that the athletes finally have rights. They can transfer, they can earn money, and they have some level of control over their futures. So what people are calling chaos is really just a shift in power. And it's important to understand that athletes didn't actually create this system.

They don't control the rules. They don't negotiate the contracts. They're not in leadership positions. They're simply navigating a system that was built without them. A system where this year alone, over $270,000,000 has been paid out to fired, released coaches.

Okay? And I use the term fired because in the NFL, they say we were released and that's a nice way of saying we were fired. But $270,000,000 have been paid out to coaches who have failed at their jobs and their responsibilities. And meanwhile, the NCAA, the conference commissioners will come and complain to Congress and complain politically that they're at risk of cutting women's sports and cutting Olympic sports. But, again, you have $270,000,000 for people who are sitting on the couch.

This system was built on multibillion dollar media deals, and we don't call that chaos. We call that business. And in that same system, that business is taking programs like staff Stanford and Cal and forced them to leave the Pac twelve to join the ACC for money. But we don't question their loyalty. We don't criticize their decisions.

We highlight the business acumen. And even as these athletes are frying across the country on Tuesday nights to play their conference games and people claim that this is about education, ultimately, we have to again look at this system and wonder who built it because again, it wasn't the athletes. And at the center of this issue is a fundamental conflict of interest. The NCAA presents itself as a protector of athletes trying to develop student athletes.

But by its own definition, if you go to its website, it says it represents the interest of its member schools and the conferences.

That means the same entity that's negotiating against athletes is also trying to claim that they protect them. Multiple courts have ruled that the model that the NCAA has had violates federal antitrust law. And so the question is no longer whether change is needed. The question is, are we going to finally fix it the right way?

Because we keep letting the NCAA in these conferences try to complain about the agents and complain about the collectives and complain about the rules, but they're the first to break the rules when it suits them or their schools, the members, are the first to break the rules when it suits them.

And I can go into details later. But right now, we have op athletes, as Tyree alluded to, operating in a system where they have very little protection. They're signing contracts, and some of these contracts are absolutely egregious. On October 3, one of our members, unfortunately, was given a black trash bag and told to clean out his locker and his scholarship was gonna be removed.

Because at the coach's determination, and I have a presentation that has, excerpts from the actual contract if you'd like to see it, but at the coach's determination, his play, his effort had declined.

That's subjective. And ultimately, this young man is in the middle of I won't say the state right now, but is it's a school that we all know and figuring out life at this point in time because his financial package was taken away at the coach's determination to try to get a roster spot.

So now at the same time, schools are paying athletes, but we're calling it name, image, and likeness and again, applaud the state of California for allowing these athletes to earn money off their name, image, and likeness. But I always tell people, my mom gave me my name, image, and likeness. You should have never been able to stop me from earning off of that in the first place.

And so the world, we kinda cheer that athletes can finally make money off of something they should have always been able to make money off of. But the problem here is when Pat Mahomes you know, I know I'm in California right now, so let me try to think of a of Matthew Stafford. Okay? Matthew Stafford throws he gets paid by the Rams to throw touchdowns. He's not getting paid by the Rams for his name, his image, or his likeness.

Matthew Stafford can go do a a marketing deal with Sleep Number to get paid for his name, his image, and his likeness. But right now, we have the entire football team at University of Texas, Maryland, Cal, insert whatever school you want there, being paid for the value of their name, their image, and their likeness.

And unfortunately, all of that payment is being done in that manner simply to dodge employment and to dodge all of the repercussions that potentially, the negative and positive consequences that come with classifying athletes as employees. Because of this, the schools are now forced to try to make these contracts with these athletes adhere to marketing policies when they're really, again, pay for play and pay for performance contracts.

So it puts athletes in a situation where, for example, a quarterback decides to transfer from Washington to go to another school and the school decides to sue him saying, well, we own your name, your image, and your likeness.

Well, you don't own my ability to play football. So who's right here? Okay. There's a quarterback right now that transferred to Texas Tech who's suing the University of Cincinnati University of Cincinnati be cut for Cincinnati is trying to charge him a million dollars for transferring, but he is arguing that you paid me for my name, my image, and my likeness, not to play football.

So you can still go ahead and use my name, image, and likeness if you'd like to, or you are admitting that you are violating NCAA bylaws by charging me a million dollars for transferring and going to play football.

Because the NCAA bylaws say that I am not able to be paid for my play. Right? So I'm I'm sharing this and it gets a little convoluted because it's just the way the system is.

But ultimately, my message today is the NCAA and the conferences, instead of calling instead of accepting and acknowledging the talent that athletes have and the value that they bring to their institutions, the billions of dollars that they generate every single year, the NCAA is the second highest revenue producer outside of the NFL. It generates more money than the NBA and the MLB every single year.

Instead of accepting that and setting up contracts and guardrails in that manner, the NCAA and those conferences have had to have tried to dodge that responsibility and ultimately, they've leave leaving athletes in this broken system. And finally, in order to solve this broken system, this is a professional model. Know that a lot of people wanna call college athletics amateur, but again, the NCAA in 2024 did $19,000,000,000 in revenue. The NFL did 23,000,000,000. The NBA did 12,250,000,000, and the MLB did 12,000,000,000.

So this is a professional model. Right? In all those all professional models, they have a player's association whose sole job and sole purpose is to represent the interest of the players alone, to help negotiate a standard contract, to create an agency registration process, a financial adviser registration process to to hold the schools and the conferences accountable to well, it's not conferences at the pro level, but to hold the the teams accountable to the rules that they collectively bargain together.

In the college athletics landscape, there is none. And they're trying to push this score at so badly because that would ban employment forever, That would give the NCAA antitrust exemption that would allow them to roll back the clock, put caps on athletes, but ultimately, it does not solve for the things that you're trying to solve for today.

A player's association is the best and and frankly, the way that has been proven to actually help solve for that for the long haul. Thank you.

Great. Thank you both for a really, fantastic high level overview of, I think, what we're discussing here today. And, you know, in particular, I also wanna thank you for your, yeah, personal commitment to be able to address this issue for all of our student athletes out there that have not, to date, had, I think, this level of advocacy.

And so our hope is through this discussion and some of the panels that are gonna be following you as well, we can think about some action items about how California can continue to lead in that space, and be able to support more protective measures as well. Let me sort of dialing back for a second, to, you know, maybe address, miss miss Tylian, your your overview just to be absolutely clear.

You know, we have no current standards right now for student athletes at the collegiate or or younger levels as well, right, as far as for anybody that's entering into an opportunity to, I I guess, have a situation where somebody's approaching them, wants to use their name image image likeness. If somebody is approached and and they're attending, say, San Diego State in my in my district, what do they do? What do they know?

They're just approached and and offered, hey, a million dollars if we can use your NIL. And what do they do?

So it depends on on the school, and you can, of course, add to this, Brandon. But I think that it it depends on the school. So, you know, some schools have third party entities that are called collectives, where they will help manage NIL deals.

So depending like San Diego State actually has a third party organization where, you know, if you want to engage with students, you know, have them drive your car or whatever, you know, your whatever your product is, and they sort of you can go directly to them. There are other schools that do not.

So the students are receiving revenue share and from the school, which is basically, like, the payments, although right now, it's currently lumped as everybody calls everything NIL, but there's actually different pots of money, like Brandon was talking about, but where it's NIL or rev share. Rev share is what came under the house settlement, the which I think is at 22,500,000,000 per school.

Right.

And then NIL is separate. So some some brands will go directly to students and, you know, offer them an NIL deal directly. And then there are some schools that write into their contracts. I think this is what Brandon was alluding to. Correct me if I'm wrong, is that they will the school says that they own your NIL.

And so they don't allow their students to actually, go do their own NIL deals.

Yeah. And and, to that point, there's some schools so to your point, every athlete and every school is operating differently now, which is one of the reasons why in the NFL, the NFL PA, the NBA, MBPA, they negotiate a standard contract that basically sets the floor for all athletes. And then you allow for Aaron Rodgers to negotiate above the the p five salary or or Lamar Jackson. Right? But there's a minimum floor of how you can treat an undrafted free agent like me and Lamar Jackson.

But, again, athletes are able to negotiate above based off of their talent and their value. And right now, there is no one that has, been recognized formally to be able to protect the players and set that standard. So to to your point here, there are some schools who will say, hey, you can do NIL deals, but you can't do them with anybody that conflicts with our brand. That that doesn't happen in the NFL.

So if we're a Nike school and Under Armour wants to offer you a million dollars, you can't do it.

Right? There's other deals that say we own your NIL for the rest of your life. There's also deals we had, literally last week, two different athletes. One is actually a California athlete who earned a quarter of $1,000,000 for last season's play, but entered the transfer portal and the school will not pay him the quarter of $1,000,000. And so the athlete and the agent are trying to figure out what to do.

Now this is a school. It's not a random agent. It's not a lending party. This is the school. There's another athlete, not in California, on the other side of the country who's dealing with a $200,000 dispute right now.

38% of our p four football p four football player survey have said that they've been promised and and or contractually obligated to money that they have never ever received by the school or the collective. And so to your point, when an athlete is vetting these deals and these contracts, one, you you are basically flying solo and so you're dependent on who you have in your immediate circle or your family.

A lot of times the schools won't vet other outside entity deals for you outside of the because of the liability. But I I guess I'm here to say too that there also needs to be protections in place for athletes with their own schools. Because I think we can all agree that a quarter of $1,000,000 is a whole lot of money Sure. To have earned and not to have received.

Sure. So it sounds like, you know, having those standards that we have just this wild patchwork of opportunities or lack thereof. Yes. And it really is just, you know, coming down to the individual level and they just don't know what they're walking into sometimes.

Correct. And then they don't have the resources. I mean, if it's hard enough for us to figure out and, like, this is what we spend time doing, you can imagine what it's like to be an 18 year old student trying to navigate this and fit and then they don't have anyone to go to necessarily. Like, they don't know who to talk to.

Or family members that, you know, see you're floated a million dollars and is that a good deal or not? You just you don't know. But, you know, if you're coming from, you know, a a home without, you know, you might you might get taken advantage of. Yeah.

And I also add on one thing too because I know there's a lot of times, again, being a guy who's played and is is teaching at the highest level as well too, A lot of times people say, well, you know, the athlete is they're they gotta read. They gotta understand the contract. Be be careful what you sign and and I agree.

But as a 17, 18, 19 year old and even for me as a 21 year old when I went to the Baltimore Ravens, my hometown team, you put that contract in front of me. The last thing I wanna do is find a reason to not sign that contract. My dream is finally coming true.

And so I do believe that there's a responsibility that I'm not gonna say the adults in the room because a lot of times we try to refer to college athletes as kids and they're they're not. They're 18, 19, 20, 21 year years old. But that's some of the wiser folks in the world or people who have more experience.

There's probably some things that we can put in place to help alleviate the conflicts of interest that come in a multibillion dollar sports and entertainment business that is college athletics.

Yeah. And contracts are complicated for just about anybody, but you're right. When you're sort of, you know, trying to balance, like, your academics and, you know, your own, your own well-being, the opportunities in front of you that you might be nervous that you're passing up, and and I'm deeply concerned about some of the examples that you were given for individuals that it felt like any basics of a contract should have at least come to the defense of a a student. Right?

Maybe something didn't work out during that season, but to be let go and then lose your scholarship You know, and just really have the entire underpinnings pulled out for me. Some something is deeply unfair.

Yeah. And I don't and I'm sorry to cut you out there. There's a lot of those stories. And frankly, it's one of the reasons why we do this work because I think it is horrible.

I would just say I think it is horrible for you to encourage somebody to move all the way across the country, you know, transfer, uproot their lives, their lifestyle, and then promise the money knowing and there's a lot of these schools, unfortunately, that know as soon as that athlete gets injured, as soon as they don't perform, or if we have a losing season, we're never gonna pay them.

And what can they do?

So schools are coming in, and you mentioned the rev share opportunities. But also, once you're already in, you know, they might be approached by sort of a third party NIL opportunity.

Would would it would be fair to say too, I think, just depends on the school whether or not they even have a a liaison, a maybe not a direct agent and but, like, just somebody there to be able to assist a student in in in some of these more complex and and and and difficult decisions or or, you know, opportunities that that they're being presented. Kinda depends on the school?

Definitely depends on the school. I mean, there are some schools like, San Diego State has is really forward thinking. Right? They they have an who you're gonna hear from later, you know, an athletic director who's dedicated sort of meets at the intersection of NIL and revenue share. And, you know, he is very progressive about making sure students have financial literacy, and he also knows where he gets to stop.

So it's like, okay, there's a a tax question. I can't answer that for you. So but let me send you so I get those students where it's like, okay, this is we have a student who needs help on this for liability reasons and, you know, school policy or whatever the case may be. I can send you to someone.

But not every school I mean, San Diego State's been highly recognized as being, like, on the forefront of that, but not every school is like that or has the resources or, you know, it's kind of a hodgepodge.

Yeah. And I like the analog the the analogy that you'd offered to Battle Players Association. And that's something that I think we can kind of explore a little bit more. Last question I had is, you know, for the kind of trailblazing that California has done over NIL standards.

And when I'm thinking about the fact that state laws help, you know, protect issues that happen within our borders You know, what happens when a individual might be enrolled at a California school but plays outside of another state, you know, in Texas, for example, and activity is occurring over there?

What what do we know much about, like, how our laws may be able to continue to protect that individual for, you know, actions or or advertisements or activities around that that agreement that occur out of state? In other words, you know, do do do we have any, any reciprocity between the states to recognize student athletes here in California?

So I think what I'm hearing you say is, like, if we have a student who's enrolled in California and they get an NIL deal in New York or Texas or wherever, like, you know, where is the jurisdiction, essentially? Like, what laws sort of govern govern that Or,

you know, so for for the for the weekend, they're out of state, but the activity is happening over there and

I I mean, I don't honestly, I I can't say that I know the answer to that. Like, if, you know, if they do something in another state, what laws do and don't apply to them in any way shape or form?

The best that we can do is, you know, make sure that that that we're at least tightening it up here for California purposes. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, certainly. And I and I think that and some of the things that you're gonna hear about today, you know, I mean, it it all starts with education. I mean, even having an, you know, a players association still all starts with education.

Absolutely.

And that's, like, the foundation of everything and making sure that they have that and, you know, making sure that that is kind of shored up before we do anything else.

Absolutely. And I don't wanna maybe the last question I would have is and I don't wanna jump ahead too much because we're gonna cover this, I think, in our third panel. But you have a high level overview of what you see as maybe some themes around solutions that you would wanna see, law, strengthened.

Yeah. I would like to see, standardized financial literacy, like a requirement for any students, whether it's a first year student in California, or, just a first year student in general, but making sure that everyone is getting the same thing. So if you start at San Diego State and you move to Sacramento State or wherever it goes, it's not falling through the cracks.

Like, these are the topics that we're covering, and this is what every student in order to participate in this space, you know, get gets to have access to. So I think the standardization around it is critical.

And there like I mentioned, there's a there's a lot of states right now who are requiring financial literacy, but there's not that you know, it's it's like Louisiana. It's like you get to all student athletes have to have it, but it could be an hour long. It could be five hours long. It could be all year. You have no idea.

So there's a lot of disparagement, and who has access to it, what schools have resources and are able to to, you know, currently fund a robust program without any structure around it. Because I think while most administrators recognize most administrators and coaches, I've never met anyone who said, oh, we don't need financial literacy. Everyone's like, yes. Okay. It's just the how and what's actually included in it.

So I think the the standardization, the structure, making sure that all students, in that are covered. And then, you know, I think that one of the, really important things is around this these predatory NIL deals and making sure that because they're essentially payday loans, which you'll hear about in a little bit. But, you know, where students are being advanced money, and then they're giving away their NIL rights for people who don't do anything, and which essentially is the same as payday lenders.

And, you know, we have pretty pretty strict laws in California, but these these loans are, like, sometimes 6 figures. California, I think, if excuse me if I'm wrong, but I think the limit's, like, $300 or something that you can get in, like, a payday loan.

And so, I mean, these are astronomical loans when you look at the size of it. And so some of these contracts around the the NIL, like, ownership and and marketing deals where they're actually then receiving portions of their revenue share, but not doing anything for it.

I mean, that's really important and making sure to your point that that our kids are covered, whether they're in California, going to school in California, or, you know, they're from California and studying somewhere else, I think that is is one of the most important and and critical issues of I mean, I could go on and on about all the issues that I hear, but that one to me I mean, we protect the military when it comes to payday lending on a national level because we recognize them as a vulnerable population.

This is another population that is recognized as a vulnerable population that people are targeting and much more highly publicized. And so those would be my two recommendations.

Got it. Yeah. I think, first, from a standardizing financial education, I 100% agree with that. Two, I think ensuring that there's no there's a lot of talk right now. I was in DC a few weeks ago and there's a lot of talk right now about basically jumping in and trying to limit transfer rules, limit put limits on eligibility rules and things like that.

And my only fear in that is that there's very there's some very unintended consequences that happen as a result of it. So if you guys if California is going to jump in, I think the best way to jump in here is to ensure that players actually have their own organization to negotiate those rules. The byproduct that I shared with folks recently was, you know, if there's a limit on the amount of times that you can transfer, which our athletes agree that there should be limits.

But if the lawmakers do it for the athletes, well, then now what happens when an athlete decides to transfer, use their one transfer, go to a school, get promised 250 k in a contract, and then the school says, well, we know you can't transfer. So you only got 50 k.

That's all we have for you. That will absolutely happen. We've we unfortunately watch it happen now even when athletes can transfer. And so so I I wanna be clear. I I would suggest that California does not jump in creating laws that they believe are intended to help athletes, but ultimately end up handcuffing athletes and taking away rights that they've earned in courts previous to to now.

And then finally, again, making sure that athletes have that players association that they can go to because that players association is not only their voice and their negotiating partner, which is led by the players today, but it's also their negotiating arm and that thing that holds the other side accountable ten years from now, twenty years from now. Private equity is coming into college athletics now. Right? There's deals being cut literally. There's news about this now.

And so if we thought that the conflicts between an athlete's development and maybe sitting them out with that bad ankle versus, hey, we need you to play because we make a million dollars if we go ahead and make it to the CFP this round. It's it's only gonna get worse from here for the athletes.

Great. Thank you very much for, this overview and presentation here today. We'd like to welcome up our next panel, who's gonna talk a little bit, I think, more about, you know, the student experiences. In fact, some, student athletes as well, about that lived experience, some of the legal realities, and some of the vulnerabilities. So, for our second panel, we'd like to invite up Mikey Williams, Anthony Caroni, and Adam Shore.

And I understand. So do we have a presentation to accompany this that you wanted to be able to overlay with your You're okay? Okay. Great. Well, when you're comfortable ready, you can begin.

Good morning, chairman Ward and members of the committee, and, thank you for having me here to testify. Tyree and Brandon did such a great job talking about the big picture. I'm gonna scrap some of my comments and go right into the experiences that I've had working with, with Mikey Williams who's sitting here next to me and you will hear from shortly. So I'm an an attorney by trade and I work for a venture consulting firm in New York, Oaktree Solutions.

I'm the CEO, and we work with a lot of high level sophisticated business businesses and and individuals in in the real estate world and in all sorts of different walks of life and sort of got introduced to working with athletes by accident, working with some professional athletes, and we were introduced to Mikey just in a casual conversation.

I was I was being told about this contract that Mikey signed with his NIL rights, and I and I said to myself, that can't possibly be true. There's no way that a contract like that should be permissible.

And having experience working, you know, through the the subprime mortgage crisis and working with hard money lenders and predatory lenders of all different types, I found it hard to believe that in something in in an industry so so so so so big and popular as college sports that contracts like this would be even possible. And so I was given a copy of the contract to review, met with Mikey and his family, and they told me what they believed this contract to be.

And they believed that they were signing a contract that would help bring deals to Mikey, help him utilize his NIL to earn money.

And, Mikey had come through some difficult times in his life. I mean, Mikey was the face of NIL. He was the first person to sign a major NIL deal with Puma and his first school that he went to. And then he had a a legal situation that he was able to overcome. The same type of legal situation that is very common among 18 year olds that could happen.

It ultimately wound up being resolved. But the time period under which it happened and when it was resolved, a lot happened in Mikey's life. And similar to what the comments that Brandon stated is that Mikey signed a deal with with one brand and the school that he was going to, signed a deal with a different brand. And that's part of the reason that they used to terminate his scholarship when we really know it was because of his legal situation. They didn't really have his back.

But but that that was an interesting point because because that's one of the things that Mikey experienced. But long story short, he he he he worked out his legal situation. He he when he when he first signed this big NIL deal, he purchased a home with the expectation that he would be receiving a substantial amount of income. And then when that didn't come to fruition, the house went into foreclosure. So that was the first thing that I that I stepped in to try to help Mikey with.

And it turned out that the house was underwater and the value of the house was well, the the the loan was was more than the value of the house. So we were just trying to figure out a way to just close that loop and move on. And then this NIL contract that he signed, you know, was brought to my attention. And I and I reviewed it and I spoke to Mikey and his family as I said earlier.

And their expectation was that he was gonna get all these different services and they were gonna be helping him with his marketing and and and and presenting him with opportunities.

And I said, okay. Great. I read the agreement and I said, you know, the agreement says the exact opposite of what you think it says. And and they were surprised and shocked. I said, well, did you have an attorney review it?

He said, unfortunately, I didn't. I mean, he did the best that he could. And so they they advanced him $150,000 at a time that he was at the lowest point of his life. He had no money. He had house in foreclosure.

He lost his scholarship. He lost his NIL contract. He was not even sure where he was gonna be playing at that time. And so they came and they and they advanced this money. And what did they get?

They got the exclusive rights to his NIL. Not only that, in the fine print of the contract, he was required to make public appearances for their benefit under which he was not promised any compensation. He was supposed to be, tweeting about products that they made deals with not that he wasn't participating in. And he was supposed to give them, you know, a substantial port, 25% of whatever revenue he would earn.

And I think because of Mikey's popularity and the fact that he had previously earned such a great NIL deal beef while he was in high school, they assumed that they would give him this $150,000.

Within a couple of months, they would get a return that would equal around 400% of what the investment was, depending on the timing of it. And there was a certain cap, but they had the potential to make such a large amount of money in such a very short period of time and give nothing in return. In any event, my initial conversation with the folks over at the company that had made this advance to Mikey well, you gotta redefine print.

We're not required to do anything for Mikey and you gotta redefine print. We're not obligated to do to do anything to bring him transactions, but he's obligated to pay us this money and we wanna know how he's gonna pay us.

And I said, well, number one, he's not making any money right now. And so even if you were to take him to court and get a judgment against him, you know, you can't garner somebody's pay more than they, you know, they have to need to live. You don't own him. He's not chattel. He's a human being that has, you know, an asset that he's, you know, that that he's developed and that he's going to hopefully be able to monetize.

And they said, well, the contract says what it says. I said, well, did Mikey have an attorney? They said, no. They said, well, and how is he gonna fight us, if he does? I said, well, you know, we don't worry about how he's gonna fight, but that's what that's what we're here for.

We're gonna we're gonna we're gonna look out for his rights.

And it turns out the people that were involved in this company, one was a prominent attorney from a very prominent law firm and I said, you know, it's interesting that you prepared a contract and presented it to a young man without an attorney and you know you you always know when there's a problem like that when they have a clause in the contract that says he was offered an opportunity to meet with an attorney and he is elected not to do that and he waives any rights for not having an attorney present.

If you're gonna put that language in a contract, it means you're expecting that there might be some some some, you know, some issues that that that arise in the future. And so when I turned it back on him and said, wait, you come from, you know, you're working at this this White Shoe law firm and I know this is like, you know, a side gig that you have.

You weren't uncomfortable having a young student athlete that, you know, that comes from a family that doesn't have access to resources, low income family, you know, first generation, you know, having an opportunity to, you know, to to earn income of this of this of this amount.

And and they were so cavalier about it by turning around and saying, well, you know what? He how's he gonna fight us? He signed this contract and just tell us how much you're gonna pay us. And I said, well, right now, he can't pay you anything. He doesn't have enough money to live.

And then when, he signed finally with with Sacramento State, the school was very supportive. They they really they really stood by Mikey because they started writing letters to the school saying we demand his NIL money come directly to us, not to him. We want we want it and then we'll decide what we give him to spend. And and so his experience in that regard, you know, he was at a at a school that that supported him. But that's not the case in every school.

In fact, we've we've we've come to be introduced to another athlete that had dealings with the same company in a different state and and and that university actually took the side of this predatory lender or or, you know, marketing company that made the made the monetary advances and they held up this student athlete's money and he wasn't even able to have any money to to live.

I mean, Mikey has used this money to to to support himself and to to live a life and to and to to just prepare and become an athlete and do what he's he's he's in school to do is is is to is to is to perform for his team. So Mikey's experience led me to believe that if anything, students should be required to have legal representation in signing any transaction.

And I think that's something the legislature can pass and say, hey, look, you can sign a contract with a with a student athlete, but they should have legal representation. They shouldn't be even allowed to waive that that that that that right.

And and there should be uniform rules about how much they're able to collect, you know, what percentages that they they can collect from the athlete, and, and they should be transparency and education as, you know, I guess that's the whole theme of the of of of of this informational hearing is financial literacy, education, knowledge and and that equates to power. And so in a nutshell, that's that's Mikey's experience and it and it sort of led me to believe other industries where this has happened.

Like, in the music industry, you know, there were young artists that were signed to these record labels before they had counsel, before they had legal representation, before they even knew. All they all they knew was that they had talent and somebody was willing to pay them a lot of money and just show me where to sign.

And in this day and age, having especially if you look at the, you know, the demographics of of of the population that that was exploited, it's a similar population that's in college sports, basketball and football.

And so, we're just hoping that Mikey's experience, which he will talk about in a minute, will shed some light on how this actually all we've we're talking about, you know, all of these issues in the abstract and and we have a young man that's gonna speak right now and he's gonna tell you exactly, you know, how this impacted him directly. And so, with that, I'll, I'll turn it over to Mikey.

Good morning, chair and members of the committee. My name is Mikey Williams. I'm a student athlete and I'm here today to share my story. Not because it is easy to tell but because I believe it can protect the next kid who finds themselves exactly where I was.

I want this legislator to understand two things, what happened to me and why it should never be allowed to happen again. I grew up in Southeast San Diego, an area where violence, chaos and survival were a part of everyday life.

Basketball was my escape and it kept me out of trouble. It kept me focused and it kept me believing I could be more than the circumstances I was born into. I got my first basketball at 10 years old, I started playing when I was three and by 12 I was dunking.

I poured everything into the game because it was my way out and it was the only door I could see. Then California changed everything. On 09/01/2021, the NIL law went into effect. One month later, 17 years old, I became the first high school athlete in America to sign an NIL deal with a major shoe company.

The deal was worth $8,000,000 and it made national headlines. For a kid like me, it wasn't just money, it felt like a miracle. I became national headlines again but this time, it was not for basketball. I got into legal trouble and I found myself fighting for my reputation, my future and livelihood all at once.

I lost my endorsements. I lost my scholarship and chance to play ball. I lost opportunities. I was drowning in attorney fees and I had not saved properly for taxes. The home I bought that was supposed to be my escape, went into foreclosure.

I was 19 years old watching everything I had worked for disappear and that's when the payday lending company showed up. They promised me the world. They told me they could give me marketing deals that I could not get on my own. They told me they believed in my future and said they would invest in me. I had three million social media followers.

My NIL value was at $3,300,000 and the company said they would give me money upfront and only take a small portion when they secure me deals and that was a lie. What the company actually gave me was a predatory lending deal disguised as a marketing contract.

They did not show up to heal me. They did not show up to guide me. They showed up because they saw I was a vulnerable kid with a big name and no way out.

I signed that contract without a lawyer. They had one from a very prominent law firm who personally called me and told me it was a simple contract and a great decision for my future. I did not understand what I had signed until years later when I met Anthony and he sent me down and explained it.

Under that agreement, I did not just have to pay back the money they gave me, the contract entitled the company to a minimum 2.5 times that amount before I could before I could even get out of the deal and it went further.

The contract required me to assign conversation ties to my name, image and likeness directly to them first. They own the piece of my greatest asset, which is my NIL. They positioned themselves to take a percent of everything I earned as a basketball player, including school related payments and returned only a portion back to me.

When I told my lawyers that can't be right, that even the company's own website said they would help me unlock my earning potential and help me provide opportunity. They showed me the contract and the company had no obligation to secure me a single deal.

I fell for the trap and while I was losing my home, the company was using my name, Image and likeness, without compensating me to recruit new athletes, raise millions from investors and attract new victims. They wouldn't even let me credit the millions they gained to the money I owed.

That is not marketing and that is not a partnership. I have thought about this a lot and I want to be honest with this committee.

I take responsibility for the decisions I made. I'm not here to make excuses but I was 19 years old, I had no financial literacy and I had no lawyers. The company sitting across from me had attorneys, experience and a contract designed to benefit them and they told me it was simple.

If there had been a law requiring legal review or the option for state led financial literacy before I could sign, I would not have signed that contract in which no laws exist and that's why I'm here.

It was not until I got to Sacramento State and took the NIL financial literacy that I began to take control of my money and my NIL. I learned about the rule of 72. I learned what compound returns actually mean and I learned how to read a contract. I wish I had known any of this before I was 19 and signed my future away.

If the company could do this to me with my platform, my visibility and my social media following, imagine what they're doing to kids who have none of that.

Kids from communities like mine where sports is the one door that opens, where there is no safety net, no family attorney, no financial adviser. When a company with lawyers can walk in and walk out with years of your future, this is a dark side of NIL that no one talks about.

Teenagers and kids without resources similar to me navigating million dollar decisions against companies with deep pockets and decades of experience. I am rebuilding, I am learning and I am taking full responsibility for where I've been and where I'm going.

I'm grateful to Sacramento State for giving me the opportunity to prove myself in this next chapter of my life. I'm committed to becoming better than I was before and using my experience to help ensure others don't end up in the same position I once did.

California led once and you could lead again. Give the next kid the guardrails I never had. Thank you for listening. Thank you for fighting for me and the kids who need your voice and protection the most.

Thank you, mister Williams. Well done.

Chair and members of the committee, thank you for having us here today and much like Anthony said Mikey, Anthony, Brandon, Tyreid just have done such a great job articulating their points and my prepared statements.

I feel I'd just be reiterating some of the same things that have been said. So with that I'd like it to be, like we discussed, a little more conversational. So, again my name is Adam Shore.

I'm the director of athletics at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Been with the Tigers and the university for three almost three years now and I felt it was important, to provide an institutional point of view, with regards to these topics.

Again, very much overarching in agreement with everything that's said here but in that conversational nature, just kind of share a little bit of my background in terms of, why I do what we do and why most of my peers do what we do.

I myself, was a student athlete. I was a golfer, I played at Creighton University and by my senior year, I was burnt out. I really didn't want to play anymore.

I was ready to just find the best paying job I could. Worked in private corporate America for a couple years and after a couple years of doing that, grew pretty bored and not happy with my life and found that what I was missing was being back on campus.

Being around competition and what I feel is one of the penultimate systems of education and that's the division one student athlete experience, a true co curricular experience and being around that. So I left a really good paying job to be a grad assistant making $685 a month, did that for a couple years and rest is history.

Ball State University, University of Dayton and now the University of the Pacific and I think it's important to note that foundationally because I do think that it is worth noting that and I believe Anthony used the word Wild West earlier when we were meeting and that's an absolutely great phrase for it.

Our world right now is absolute chaos. I think it's a vestiges of an old system mixing with the courts, which have been pretty traumatic in terms of our world as we know it.

Now I'll disagree with maybe one thing that that the Brandon had said earlier in that these court cases, whether it's NCAA versus Fontenot, House, Johnson, Austin, O'Bannon, all these court cases, they were brought on those names who are those people.

They're student athletes. There's either student athletes or former student athletes that were suing for additional rights and by a large, they have won landslide victories in those cases because yes, the system needed to change and I feel of 366 division one institutions out there.

Most of my peers would agree that systemic failure at a very high level of institutions not willing to change with the times and I'll go back to my personal favorite example is an athlete named Jeremy Bloom. Jeremy Bloom was an Olympic mogul, downhill skier.

He was a male model on Wheaties boxes. I mean, talk about name, image and likeness. He was the poster child of somebody who could have earned a vast amount of money but was prevented to do because he was also a punt returner at Colorado.

That was a transformative time that institutions could say, hey, you know what? Institutions should allow this young man to go out and earn earn a living based on this. This has nothing to do with us and his student athlete experience and they did not do that.

The NCAA should have been and ought to have been more of a leader on transfer opportunities that when, for instance, a coach leaves, whether they're fired or depart on their own, that should open the door for a student athlete to be able to look for a new opportunity.

That decision that they made to go to that institution, that coach was an important factor in their decision and them not being there might lead to change. No. You you can't, you can't transfer or at least you have to sit out a year and they buckled on that. They did not.

What led to getting to a fever pitch of court cases that have led to, yes, a tremendous amount of freedom. It is a seller's market in favor of the student athlete right now in terms of their abilities to call their own shots on a great number of things.

That has led to, yes, in many cases, some predatory activity that has harmed a great number of young men and women out there. With that, I do feel that there is opportunity out there for the state. The state has been a leader in this space for a long time.

The difficulty from an institutional standpoint is that that we all compete on a national landscape and there are a lot of legislatures out there that are weaponizing their own states to put their state in front of other states purely from a recruitment standpoint.

I'll use Arkansas for instance, passed a bill recently. Well, they will not tax student athletes in their state. They will not tax from a state income tax standpoint, they will not tax their NIL or their rev share payments.

Now it's becoming increasingly clear that this comes up often when we're talking to agents. Another thing I'll also say is in this day and age, I've gone through 42 basketball players in three years on our men's basketball roster.

We have had wholesale turnover of our roster but University of the Pacific, we like to think of ourselves as a thought leader in an institution of change in this space. We are not an a four power conference institution.

We do not have million dollar coaches and $100,000,000 football programs. We do opt in, we are one of most division one schools, all but I think at 30 or so.

There was only one university in the state, University of California Davis, that opt did not opt in last year to additional house benefits but they have already announced that they will opt into it this upcoming year. This gives you the ability to pay in athletes directly.

This gives you the ability to give additional scholarships beyond the old scholarship caps that we used to have. Once you opt in, you have to abide by a number of different rules that came from the house settlement.

When we enter into conversations and why we are a little different because unless you spend up to the house settlement limit, collectives really don't exist in our world.

It's only if you spend up to that limit do third party collectives come in because that is exempt spending from the cap, that exists beyond it.

So Cal, absolutely. Stanford, absolutely. San Diego State, yes. I'm probably sure that they do. Schools like us or probably University of San Diego or University of California San Diego, where you're at, that do not deal in third party NIL deals.

It also puts universities in a difficult situation where, it is hard for us as institutions to provide financial feedback from a liability standpoint to young men and women that if we're wrong and we give them the wrong advice.

There's a liability for our institutions, that could come from that That being said, we do try and have always been proponents of what coin phrase in our world is student athlete development.

This is something that is this is the back to when I was an athlete. They called them champs life skills seminar and I remember getting career preparedness training from Wells Fargo.

They even hired a couple of my teammates eventually. The traditional don't bet on it gambling education that we would get. A lot of universities, including ours, have tried to pivot this into financial literacy, into things like educating them on what their, rights are as student athletes in terms of the yes.

According to the student athlete bill of rights that was passed not too long ago, you do have the ability to retain your scholarship. You do have rights that you can force upon the university if you find yourself in a bad situation.

Beyond that, there are mechanisms. So for instance, the tool that we use with the company called Teamworks, which is what we use to pay our athletes, the default setting on this actually sets 30% of their money aside for taxes.

Now because we as an institution, the liability I just mentioned do not have necessarily the ability to give them financial advice. They can go in themselves and turn it off, which about 4% of our athletes have, not against our advice.

They've turned that off but 96% of our athletes do have that feature enabled and there's also, other mechanisms for financial literacy. I wholesale agree that there should be more financial literacy resources out there for students, whether they're mandatory or just provided by the state.

I think that would be a tremendous advantage for California institutions in terms of a value proposition, of why their representation should take seriously sending, their young minimum, their clients, to compete in California.

The hardest thing and I think the most predatory thing from my seat that I've seen is is their representation and I have every basketball player of those 42 I mentioned, many of whom we've tried to retain, unfortunately, to no avail and God bless them.

I don't wish them any ill, you know, make better lives for themselves but they the agents themselves every one of them I've dealt, I have not dealt with them.

I've dealt we've dealt with our agents. That they all have representation by somebody. In some cases, they're high quality people. They're attorneys, they're probably professional agents or at least with professional agencies.

There's some mechanism that I have that I can use if they try to do something untoward and there have been some doozies. I've had agents tell me, well, I won't send my client to play for you guys unless you sign my other client. Which to me that seems like fraud because that client has nothing to do with this client.

I've had agents say, no, don't you need to pay me directly because I don't want my guy knowing what I'm taking because they are taking 10,20, 30%, which professional leagues because there is collective bargaining, they have caps 3,4, 5%. There's no caps.

There's no regulation in our space right now. So with that, there are some obscene contracts and relationships out there. The difficulty for the institutions is they've gotten their hooks in them well before they ever cross our campuses. These are people we deal with from day one. What can the state do?

There actually is already a state law on the books around the conduct of sports agents. The Miller eight I had it written down here. See if I can find it. The Miller Ayala Aycock's, Sports Agent Act of 1996. It regulates now, the conduct of agents in the professional space.

They have to register with the Secretary of State. They have to pay a $100 filing fee. They have to do a criminal background check. They have to show that they have a certain minimum coverage a liability coverage available to them. This could easily be adapted to our space.

It is a mechanism that I think would be a nice tool for us to have but again, the issue with and why I think the ultimate thing that states need to do is become a passionate advocate for a national solution. What'll happen with most of the laws and I think Brandon actually, hinted at this earlier in his testimony.

If we put laws or regulations into place that maybe our student athlete beneficial, all that's really going to happen is those agents who again, already have their hooks in those kids are just going to steer their clients away from the state of California because the other 49 states are going to do their own thing.

There is such value in what we do in college sports. Look at what the Tigers mean to our community, what a successful competitive sports program can do for a community, what the flyers meant to Dayton, Ohio when I was there, Gonzaga, your own conference, now the Pac twelve but I've been a lifelong WCC member.

You know, I've been up to Spokane a number of times. It's a nice city. Not a lot of great things going on up there. That being said, brand new glitzy convention center, doubling the size of their airport.

If you grab any civic leader in Spokane, they'll tell you it's because of the Zags and 27 straight men's basketball tournament appearances. College athletics can have a transformative effect on community and I want to make sure that California is getting the best and the brightest out there, not just in our classrooms but on the court.

So I do feel that there it needs to be taken with some thought, to ensure that we are still the penultimate place for student athletes to want to come and compete.

That being said, the ability for us to be able to, somehow collectively bargain with athletes to, find ourselves in a position to where we have as a benefit amazing financial literacy opportunities.

Maybe even things like a collective pension that student athletes can voluntarily electively put money into and pool their monies together for greater returns for their future and their family's future. I think there's a ton of great ideas that say that California can activate.

Fantastic, a lot of really good points there Mikey. I wanted to turn it back to you kind of have shown a light on your experience. If you could speak to your younger self, what would some tools that you know that you have today, that you learned, through these horrible experiences?

What would you want to see for others like yourself as well that would have helped you avoid some of the entrapment?

I'll say definitely being patient and I also agree that a financial literacy class should be mandatory because when you come from no money and you're not used to dealing with it, You don't really know what to do with it. Certain things are attractive but it's not going to help your case.

I was in a situation that I didn't see coming. You never know what can happen in life and it kinda forced me to take the loan but I wasn't advised to not do it. I was just young and made a decision.

Right and you had mentioned too that, to paraphrase your words, that you do take responsibility for those action but I would sympathize and argue that it's not fair for anyone to have to assume all that full responsibility when the information disadvantage was working against you right now.

There's an unfairness out there right now that is something that we need to be able to shore up for others like yourself that are following your leads.

Yeah. Most definitely. Especially with me having the reach that I do have, I feel like it'll be beneficial for me to help other kids that are going through the same thing.

Talk about that too with, your social media and some of the influencers and other activity out there that's a little bit after my generation I guess, that I don't have that reach but where do you see that as sort of an emerging market that's monetized?

And how do you see NIL offers or opportunities coming into to your social media world?

It's definitely new and one thing about the younger generation, they look up to us college athletes right now, even some professional players and I think we just have a very big impact on them and I think that we could definitely be used the right way instead of taking advantage of.

Because I'm all about helping helping the community and helping the kids.

Yeah. I want to turn it over to Anthony. One thing that I was disconnecting on is that, he signed a contract at 17 years old. How is that binding? Is that something that I am not aware of in our own law?

He was 18? Okay.

Yeah and one other point that Mikey made earlier that I want to just highlight, Is that they were able to use his NIL for their own purposes

His NIL without compensating him and we subsequently found out that they went out to private equity to raise money and Mikey was literally the face of their investors deck and so one of the comments we had was, how come he's not being compensated for that? You're using it.

That alone should hold, we did evaluation, a back of the napkin valuation but just by them using him to recruit other athletes, using his name and image and likeness and his story to recruit other athletes and using him on their investors deck alone should negate the loan plus a return for them, a fair return for them.

But they don't, they didn't look at it like that. They actually act as if they they literally own his ability to earn money and it's just inequitable.

Right. So what have you encountered in in the legal world? I guess it just seems like a reasonable judge would look at that and say, yes. This young man signed a contract but not understanding the full fine print of all of that, you've taken this a bridge too far. Right?

You you don't own that element of name as like this. You don't own the right to be able to, monopolize this to the millions and millions of dollars that they're exploiting. Do you find existing law is applicable or needs to be strengthened under contract law to be able to buffer against some of these situations?

I think it needs to be strengthened because the actual contract, if you read it, favors their side and taking in a vacuum, they would they're right under the what what it actually says in the contract.

Our issue was the what we believe was fraud and the inducement to sign the lack of the education and then the lack of legal representation because the terms in this agreement could have easily been negotiated in a fair way and so it's interesting in this case.

I don't want to comment too much because it could potentially become a litigation but it's interesting that they have not commenced litigation against Mikey because I don't think they want this to be highlighted because there's a potential class action aspect of it.

As well as there may be students that don't even realize that they were taking advantage of and maybe they think that this was a great thing, not understanding the full value of it.

Mikey's in a unique unique situation because of his history and really being the first student athlete in The United States to sign an NIL deal and they use that in their recruitment because all the young athletes saw the stories about Mikey. Then if Mikey's there, then we should go there, that's got to be the place to go.

You you touched on this a little bit too about the house settlement, house versus, the NCAA. Right?

I did not speak about that.

Oh, I thought I heard you talk about house settlement. That was over here. Could you expand a little bit more about how that's actually played out in the relationships between players and schools.

Yeah, the house settlement was something that there's obviously couple components to it. One was the damages that have to be paid out by all the member institutions. That was one part of it. The other part was the opening of the doors of institutions to be able to deal directly with athletes in terms of compensation.

Right? That that was one of the biggest changes and people like to conflate name, image and likeness with revenue sharing. Revenue sharing is the institutions entering into agreement.

All of our probably, let's say, 40 athletes of our 400 that that actually get some kind of compensation above and beyond Alston money or cost of attendance, they get their deals directly with us. We negotiate those deals.

We put a contract in front of them that they sign. Those relationships are fifty fifty. Half of half of our student athletes of that 40 or so have tremendous representation. They are pros. Right?

They are attorneys or financial advisors, certified people that have associations and governing bodies that they have to adhere to. They have rights and principles that they have to be mindful of.

Otherwise, they can get dragged in front of a bar association or the NBA Players Association or things like that. Half of them are just up jump grassroots coaches, people that have wormed their way from a young age into these young men and ladies' lives and bizarrely just ask us questions that are like, how are you asking me this question?

You're the one who should be providing that information to your client. What you know, clearly you don't know what you're doing and again, those are the ones that are taking the most egregious cuts, of their money and have been asking for as my women's basketball coach puts it, the blue chips kind of stuff.

That's just like, hey we're not going to enter into those kind of relationship where we're going to pay you directly because it's part of your MO that you don't want your clients to know how much money you're taking from them.

So, no, pay him that money and then sign a separate deal with me and pay me directly. There's actually an incident label that's been passed recently that prohibits that kind of behavior. For the most part, I think that the hardest thing is the transfers.

There is a culture that's been kind of born now that in order to, I'll use the phrase that my athletes use when I talk to them and they let me know that they're leaving is "chase the bag". I understand it. I get it, this can be transformative wealth and the institution like Pacific, I can only give them so much and I don't begrudge them one bit.

We want them to stay. The thing I struggle with is and this isn't just student athletes. This is all students. There is an issue nationally in education around transfers and what credits an institution will take and not take. Every time a student transfers, roughly 30% of their credits don't come along with them.

There's an NCAA rule that is referred to as progress towards degree. We have to show that they are making progress towards actually attaining a degree. Before progress towards degree existed, students would just come in and take a bunch of electives.

They get done, their eligibility is done, they're done playing and they don't have a degree because they never actually were working towards an accounting degree or a finance degree or a biosciences degree.

So now they actually have to show progress towards a degree. Unfortunately, every time they transfer, they lose credits and every time they transfer, if they're doing four or five institutions, in a four or five year, six period. I have seven men's basketball players that are done playing this year and they're all good players.

They're going to go play overseas and they might have productive careers. Of those seven, only one is actually walking with the degree. Six of them are between 17 to 19 credits short of graduating and because we like to do things the right way at Pacific. We've made promises to their families, their representatives, they themselves.

We're going to stay financially committed to paying for their classes, to help them earn their degree but that is also a burdensome cost because scholarship's a hard cost for me. It's not a soft cost that I can just fudge with the university.

I actually have to pay the university for those funds and so for me, that bucket is getting bigger and bigger and I have got to pay that and what a lot of schools are doing is they're cutting sports in order to pay for this.

There's been about 700 sport programs across all three divisions cut since 2021. There's about a 105 by my last count that's slated across the country for being eliminated, before this next 2627 academic year. Again, I'm a believer.

College sports has put more young men and women through college for free, second only to the GI Bill and probably there's maybe some people out there that want to demonize the GI Bill, doubtful but we've done a lot of good for a lot of young men and women.

Yes, should football players, men's basketball players, true revenue athletes be able to, in a safe way, without being predated by some bad actors out there, earn an income?

Absolutely but we're also seeing a lot of schools eliminating those co curricular educational experiences that people like me benefited from, that those are just going to keep shrinking and shrinking. We've seen schools in our own state cut programs and opportunities for young men and women too.

We've tried to buck that trend. We've actually added four sports in the last two years. We've partnered with our university to help them in, like most institutions with enrollment but at the same time, sharing in a gain share like fashion, like an academic unit.

Because, again we truly believe it's cocreapular experience. Not every college agrees with that, so it's a unique system.

A couple California schools have started to buy into this model that we've developed. University of San Diego, for instance, just started the beach volleyball program and Saint Mary's College, Muraga, has started swimming and diving and water polo programs both on the men's women's side.

I'm hopeful that more will catch on to this and keep creating opportunities for young men and women while still protecting young men like Mikey who truly have name, image and likeness value and ought to be able to monetize it.

Absolutely. I got a couple of new good ideas off of this panel as well too on represent- do you have a quick one to add?

One final thing, chairman. You had mentioned the house settlement and although I didn't mention in my in my comments. Through working with Mikey, Tyree and Aye and Sophia who's sitting here.

We connected with Brooklyn Law School's sports clinic, which is working with all major law firms in New York City to help students that can't afford to defend themselves against these bad actors.

On the house settlement, what's happening now and we're going to probably be hearing about, is these same bad actors are finding out the students that are eligible for those payments over a lifetime and then offering them a small a fraction of it upfront and then taking the right to collect that money over time.

Many students are taking advantage of that because they want the money upfront. That's a practice that is also going to be a probably widespread. There is going to be publicity and I think there's going to need to be some regulation around that.

I appreciate that. I appreciate all three of you for your testimony here today and we're going to move on to our third panel right now that I think is going to be able to help us get into some overview of potential solutions and best practices on how to address this issue going forward.

I got some good ideas off of you too, so we'll note those down and talk with the committee about opportunities to strengthen the law.

Thank you.

Thank you. So we'd like to welcome up for our third panel from my home district. We've got Sloan Bensoff and Brendan Hill from San Diego State University.

Good morning.

Good morning. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on policy recommendations, and thank you for traveling all the way up to the capital.

Yeah. Excited to be here. Thank you for having us. I was telling Brandon I was kinda chomping at the bit because there was so much good information and relevant factual information shared. So, a little bit about myself. My name is Brenden Hill. I'm the Assistant Athletic Director.

At Sacramento State--

Assistant Athletic Director for NIL and Student Athlete Development at San Diego State, so I sit at the intersection of revenue share, NIL, and life skills, and I'll talk a little bit more about that program a little bit later, but I'm a former student athlete. I played Division 1 football at Virginia Tech under Hall of Fame football coach Frank Beamer. I was first-generation college student. Life-changing experience.

When you talk about the Transfer Portal and the current climate, I was at Virginia Tech for five years, got my degree, my best friends, marriages, kids, all that type of stuff that you get to see when you're tethered to a university.

I think the current climate of Transfer Portal and so much movement has actually unearthed what scholastic-- this scholastic higher ed experience should be in my opinion where it's almost a revolving door of student athletes, and to the athletic director's comment about progress towards degree and degree credits, not only is it challenging, but in a football climate, this is all happening during the holidays and the New Year, and people who work for the institution should have some time away and spend time with their family, but they're actually locked in trying to get these-- evaluate transcripts and negotiate with agents and do all this stuff while everybody else is kinda enjoying themselves.

But we have a great program at San Diego State. It's a unique program. It's a life skills program. It's a four-year, one-credit-hour-a-year class, mandatory class for our student athletes to attend. It goes towards their degree. So the idea is after four years, they would have received four credit hours towards their degree. They would have compounded their education around everything from mental health to bystander etiquette to financial literacy, and that's how I was able to connect with TyRee.

When I first took over the program, we were doing maybe one or two sessions a year on financial literacy, and since I've connected with TyRee, we've introduced, you know, essentially, eight sessions a year. So if you're a freshman, you get two, your sophomore year, you're gonna get two, your senior-- junior year, so forth and so on.

So really great program. Sloane will speak more about it, but we do everything from internship placements to mock interviews to branding, personal branding, LinkedIn, and like I said, it's a really great program, and I'm fortunate that I sit at the intersection of-- I also oversee a brand deal this weekend. We were shooting a commercial with a local credit union, Mission Fed Credit Union in San Diego with some student athletes that played tennis and soccer and basketball, right?

So it's not just the football players who are able to take advantage of their name, image, and likeness in a traditional way. At our institution, it's everybody, right? And I think even to the contract point, some of the challenges are also that students are signing these micro deals, right?

$300. $200. Free merchandise. Well, those usually come with some contracts, too, and they're just signing it over. There's actually a predatory lender that's in San Diego that I can share with you after the fact that I was solicited. Hey, we we want your basketball players to sign this, and I'm like, we're not touching this with a 10-foot pole.

So the idea that, monolithically, there aren't people at the institutional level supporting the student athlete experience in this space is an error. There are people like myself all across the country who are sitting in seats like mine who are-- who care about our students. I always joke: I'm not a coach. I don't control your playing time, right?

But I'm here for you. My door is always open. You're having tutoring right across from my office. You're meeting with your academic adviser on our hall. Like I said, there's this perception that the students aren't being supported, and I think that's wrong. Are some schools lacking support? Absolutely. But it's not monolithic. So I'll stop there because I do want this to be conversational, and I'll let Sloane have some comments.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Hill.

Yeah, hi. Thank you for having us today. My name is Sloane, and I'm a Division 1 women's lacrosse player at San Diego State University. I'm finishing my senior year as a kinesiology pre-med student, which means my days are built around labs, lectures, practice, competition, and travel.

There's not a lot of room left over, and for a long time, that was my excuse for not thinking seriously about money. But honestly, it was not just about the time. I knew I should be doing something with my money. I just did not know what that meant or where to start. That changed when I was introduced to financial education through SDSU's Aztecs Going Pro Program.

San Diego State is already modeling what forward-thinking support can look like. They created a mandatory four-year development program that combines one-on-one coaching and hands-on learning opportunities designed to prepare student athletes for life after sport. Through that program, I met my mentor, TyRee Dillingham, who's played a pivotal role in shaping my understanding of money, budgeting, taxes, long-term financial planning, and more. I remember the time TyRee and I sat down and went through my finances.

I felt more relief than anything else because for the first time, an expert in my corner who was actually looking out for me. And also, I just wanna note that she does this just out of her altruism and her passion for her-- like, wanting to help student athletes like myself. Through our work together, I began to understand my finances in a much more intentional way. I now have a clear picture of my monthly cash flow, what I bring in, what I spend, and what is left over after covering my essential expenses.

We focus on building an emergency fund, setting aside enough to cover a few months of base expenses, and she introduced me to the idea of paying yourself first, prioritizing savings at the beginning of the month rather than hoping something is left over at the end. When she explained it, it did not feel out of reach.

It felt obvious. I just needed someone to explain it. Without guidance, it's easy to fall into cycles of poor financial decisions simply because we were never taught otherwise. I know, because that was me. My experience is not unique, but the support I received was, and that gap is especially pronounced for athletes like me.

As a women's lacrosse player, I wanna highlight an important reality. While the NIL era has completely transformed college athletics, it has impacted all athletes equally. In emerging sports like women's lacrosse, NIL earnings are limited to a very small percentage of top athletes. I've been fortunate to take advantage of some opportunities, but the majority of my income comes from academic scholarships and part-time work. Financial literacy is not a luxury for athletes like me.

It is a necessity, because the reality is, most of us are not going pro in our sport, but we all have to navigate what comes next. These strategies are not complex or exclusive to high earners. They're foundational skills--budgeting, saving, planning--that every student athlete should have access to regardless of how much NIL money they make. San Diego State has shown what it looks like to take this seriously.

Leaders like Brenden Hill have built a program that gives athletes real, practical financial education every year. All student athletes deserve access to real financial education, not just those that well-resourced programs or with existing support systems. The fundamentals of budgeting, saving, and planning should be a standard, not a privilege.

We respectfully urge the Legislature to adopt a standardized statewide requirement that guarantees every student athlete equal access to this education, regardless of background or school. I'm here today because I believe every student athlete deserves that same opportunity. Thank you.

Thank you, Sloane, and I appreciate the recommendation. I think we're coming full circle as well about, you know, exactly what the needs are out there, but, you know, thank you as well for your personal testimony that I think encapsulates, you know, a really positive experience about how all of this support infrastructure there is making it work for you. And would you characterize-- would you go a little further? How do you feel like this is setting yourself up for post-college life for these financial skills?

Yeah. I mean, absolutely. As a STEM major, like I mentioned, I don't-- I mean, I have a lot of roommates that are business and, like-- like, we're all-- I mean, I live in a house full of girls, and we're all not planning to play pro after our college experience, and so, we're all dipping our feet into, like, the professional worlds. This year, I'm graduating, like, all my houses.

And so, I mean, this course, it's-- yeah, it's mandatory. We take it every-- we take it once a year. It's an hour. It's not hard. You show up, and that's how you get your points, and it just really makes-- like, incentivizes us to go because of how much we learn at these places-- like, at these experiences. Like Brenden said, we have resume workshops.

We do that, like, freshman year. We do resume workshops to help you, like, try to land an internship. I landed one my sophomore year because of AGP or, like, Aztecs Going Pro, which has been huge.

We do networking events. That's how I was able to meet an international representative from a school I'm gonna be attending next year to pursue a master's degree in international business. Couldn't have done that without Brenden at all. So, like, in every aspect of me going forward into my professional life, AGP has helped with that.

Wonderful. Talk a little bit, too, about those conversations that you have with your peers. Do you ever talk about the value of-- or, you know, evaluation or revenue sharing or endorsements? Is there starting to become a little bit more of a common sense about how to have each other's back and what people should be asking as they're, you know, getting approached?

I mean, I think-- I mean, through AGP, this is like the first time that we've really talked about it, I'd say. Again, I have business and finance major friends, and I'm sure they do a lot of that within their major with, like, their classmates and stuff, but we don't really talk about that as athletes because we were-- I mean, I got to school in 2022, and that's kind of when, like, the whole NIL era emerged, and it was very new.

And I-- there wasn't as many opportunities as there are now. There's so many platforms now that-- where kids are getting-- our student athletes are getting opportunities to do smaller exchanges, and that's definitely-- I mean, I'm graduating now, so there's not much more time for me to take advantage of that, but I have in the past.

I think there's so many opportunities for kids if they just go out of their way to look for them because big companies, like the Nikes, the-- like the Gatorades, they're gonna reach out to those-- like, they're gonna reach out to the athletes that they want. They have followings like Mikey does. I don't have a-- I don't have a following like that. So there's definitely opportunities for those athletes. I just don't know if those opportunities are substantial enough for kids to go out of their way to take the time out of their day to go search for them.

Yeah, and I-- it's gonna be the same question I asked for Mikey, too. What are you seeing in the social media or kinda other online or influencer space as a mechanism for your monetizing your NIL or creating, maybe, new opportunities, I guess, to be able to find new partnerships for you or any of your peers at SDSU?

Yeah. I mean, I think there's so much opportunity in general, especially for student athletes who already have a following or who are building a following early on in their college careers. I was always a, you know, private Instagram, like, social media for a really long time until I took advantage of a couple opportunities that required my public-- my-- required my social media accounts to be public, which is just-- I mean, it makes sense.

They want your-- what they're paying for or whatever they're giving you to be shown to the public, and it actually market their product. So that makes sense. I was never, like, an athletic influencer or that type of thing. It was more me reaching out to brands or finding brands that had already used, like-- I have a--uh, it's off--like, more like sustainable apparel and, like, health and wellness brands that are much smaller that it was more like, I already buy your product at the grocery store every single week. Let's see if I can post something and get it for free. And, like, it was that type of thing.

It wasn't me making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars like some athletes are, but those athletes, I mean, are getting reached out to by those companies and negotiating a lot of money for the-- in exchange.

Yeah. I mean, with those opportunities come a whole new world of risks and things we gotta think and get ahead of as well. Brenden, for your perspective, as you've seen NIL and especially the explosion of activity that we're seeing right now, how do you-- how might you characterize-- or are you seeing, you know, the student experience kinda go from something that maybe a decade or more ago was, you know, really about a love of a game and professional development as opposed to-- and maybe not certainly going pro but, you know, really integrating that into the college experience so then now that, you know, might be just all about the bottom line?

Yeah. It's definitely become very transactional, and I feel for our coaches. And I think one of the things that great administrators do is we also sit at the intersection of our student athletes and our coaches, right? So a coach may come to you and say, hey.

I wanna cut this guy, get rid of this guy, whatever the case might be, but we have obligation through compliance, through our obligation to our student athletes to kinda talk that coach off a ledge and say, hey, you know, this is how we need to do this in an equitable way to take care of the student athlete because this is what we signed up to do. But what's happening is there's a lot of stress on these coaches as well to win, right, because you're deploying this level of capital for rosters and for talent.

And like the athletic director mentioned, they're up and leaving in 10 months. They're on your campus for 10 months and then they're off to the next school, right, chasing it back. So imagine, as a coach, you're trying to build culture and you're trying to teach life through sport and your rosters-- you have 42 players come through your program in three years, right?

Like, that's not sustainable. But what also happens is, you know, student athletes-- you know, to me, there's skin in the game on both sides, right? Like, there's also student athletes who may decide, hey, I'm gonna shut it down a little bit because my agent thinks that I'm at risk of getting injured or something to that effect.

And, you know, my best value is being able to transfer in the coming months, so, hey, coach, my hamstring feels a little tight today. I'm not gonna play as hard. So there's risk on both sides, but to me, it's also become very transactional where both the students, the coaches, everyone is kinda burning and churning a little bit.

Got it. And then, talk about the sort of experience with the students that you're working with right now when you have a rev share experience or rev share agreement there. How do they actually-- at what point do they, I think, receive their share?

Yes--

And do you provide any stewardship over that throughout the course of their student status?

So we use Teamworks as well. I think the challenge for us is obviously, you know, we can't be a fiduciary and be the payor, right? So I think, you know, ultimately, the way our rev share works is usually there's some sort of payment plan broken down over a monthly stipend or some sort. I think we're in a unique situation because I think we have 10 programs that have received rev share, and a lot of times, it's not in addition to scholarship.

It's actually to cover the cost for a sport like tennis or golf or water polo to help cover housing or books or different things like that. So we've seen our sports like tennis even be able to distribute money through rev share through NIL. It's not just football and basketball, but it's some sort of payment plan usually, and, you know, we have nonexclusive rights to their NIL.

So when we put them on the schedule card or poster to promote the contest or-- you know, we actually are using their NIL. I know there was a comment made, and Brandon, I can agree to disagree a little bit about what a person's NIL is. Yeah, Matthew Stafford might get paid for throwing touchdowns, but he also has a brand that makes you-- you know, that he's earned, right?

He's a Super Bowl MVP, all these sorts of things. As his performance declines, his brand is still-- use Aaron Rodgers, for example, right? Aaron Rodgers is probably living off his brand more than he's living off his actual talent at this point.

So I do think those two things can coexist in the same space, but I also do agree that it is convoluted because we're technically licensing passively, non-exclusively, the student athlete's name, image, and likeness from them. So they can still do their own deals. They can still earn different things. Where it gets-- the crux is the Transfer Portal, them leaving, them going to another school.

Like I said, the investment our institution makes into, you know, these student athletes to then just watch them leave in 10 months, it's hard on the staff. It's hard on the people who are evaluating that transcript away from their family during the holiday to know that that player that they worked hard to get into that program is left. That program affects campus relationships, right? There's professors and, you know, people across campus who-- you know, if a student stops trying, you know, now that affects our opportunity to get that next student into that program, et cetera.

So it's become transactional, I guess, and it's very challenging. It's not monolithic. That's the one thing I kinda wanna say is, you know, sometimes we make these, you know, statements like it's just this way and it's not just one way. It's a lot of nuance to this.

I really appreciate that. I wanna thank you both for your testimony and coming all the way up to the capital as well and, in particular, for being able to highlight the-- you know, a really positive student experience, a really positive and, hopefully, model program that we have as well as a university. You had one final--

Yeah. One final thought in terms of a recommendation. To me, I think the best place to start is high school. I know you mentioned CIF earlier. I think what Mikey experienced at 17-- I think if we can move the financial literacy and the programming and the mandated support, because there are states like Missouri who say, you know, hey.

And obviously, we aren't Missouri, but, if you commit to an institution in the state, you can get paid in high school, right? We're starting to see institutions in the State of California actually pay high school students for their commitment while they're still in high school. So they're signing rev share agreements while they're still in high school. They're getting paid while they're still in high school.

So yeah. I mean, at college, we're gonna have transfers. People are gonna airdrop in here and there. If we can start the education and the mandates around CIF, around high school, I think that's where the impact will happen the most.

Really good point. Thank you for adding that on. We are gonna-- I wanna thank you again for this third panel. We did have a third panelist that was not able to be a part of it-- this today, but I'm gonna actually let him maybe virtually open up our public comment period. And following this video from Dr. Luke Wood, I believe-- we don't have it?

No, we do have it. We do have it.

We do have it? Great, because I wanted to be able to use that. We'll go ahead and open up the public microphone as well, too, for any members of the public that wish to make a statement to committee today. So if I could ask our tech to switch it over.

At Sacramento State, we know success is more than performance in the classroom or on the field. It's about preparing students for life. That's why financial literacy is so important, especially for our student athletes. Today's athletes are navigating opportunities through name, image, and likeness and revenue share, often making financial, contractual, and tax-related decisions for the very first time.

These are complex choices that can have lasting impacts on their future, and without the right guidance, many students can feel overwhelmed or even taken advantage of through agents who charge high percentages, through contracts that don't make sense, and through people approaching them in ways that make them feel uncomfortable and pressured to make decisions that they don't wanna make without the right information.

For first-generation and under-resourced student athletes, the need is even greater. Financial wellness is directly connected to student wellness. When students feel secure and informed, they can focus more fully on academics, athletics, and personal growth. Strong financial education helps student athletes perform at their best on the field, on the court, in the classroom, and beyond graduation.

That is why Sacramento State is proud to partner with leaders and advocates who are committed to this work, and the California State Legislature, and beyond. We support efforts and legislation that expand access to financial literacy resources for students and student athletes alike. At Sacramento State, we are committed to making sure our students don't just succeed today, but that they are prepared to thrive for a lifetime. Thank you for your support.

Okay. Thank you for that. If there's any other members of the public that wish to address the committee for public comment on the record, feel free to approach the microphone. And seeing none, I guess we'll go ahead and close public comment. I wanted to, again, thank Ms. Dillingham in particular for being able to help bring this issue to committee.

And I know earlier this year, we had good discussion about, you know, the-- about your observations and the need for both shining a light on it. That's what we were able to do today, and think about the solutions, and many of the panelists have offered some really good things to look at, too, for strengthening the law and the support to be able to provide equity for student athletes across all of California.

So, really appreciate all the organization that went into this today, and we'd love to be able to keep in touch as we think about our next steps and action items. With that, we are going to conclude this information hearing. I wanna thank all for attending today, and we will be adjourned.