VanDerveer critical of law to pay athletes
Famed Stanford basketball coach says, ‘I think it’s going to impact women very negatively’
Tara VanDerveer doesn’t mince words when she’s asked about the impact of California’s new law that will allow college athletes to be compensated for their name and image. “I think women will be the losers,” she said. VanDerveer is the dean of women’s collegiate sports in California, the most well known and highly regarded coach of a women’s college team in the state. So the Stanford coach’s views on Senate Bill 206, which takes effect in 2023, are important.
“Who knows how it will really shake down,” VanDerveer said, speaking during a break at the Pac12 women’s basketball media day. “But I think it’s going to impact women very negatively.”
Her views echo a statement issued by the Pac12 when the bill became law: that SB206 could “have a negative disparate impact on female studentathletes.”
But that’s not what the bill’s author, state Sen. Nancy Skinner (DBerkeley) thinks. While she fought for passage of the bill, Skinner said repeatedly that she believes that female athletes will benefit from having the opportunity to market themselves, hire agents and raise their profile.
A small percentage of collegiate athletes have
big paydays awaiting them. VanDerveer likes that this bill would have allowed Katie Ledecky to finish her degree at Stanford rather than leave school. Instead, Ledecky took a $7 million swimwear sponsorship deal as she prepares for the Tokyo Olympics and had to leave school, though she still trains at Stanford.
But cases like Ledecky’s may be the exception. VanDerveer has been in collegiate athletics for a long time. She knows which way the money flows.
“The money that’s been under the table is now going to be on top of it,” VanDerveer said.
And that money, like most money in sports, is funneled to male athletes.
“Right now there’s only one woman in the top 100 earners in sports — Serena Williams,” she said.
Title IX, the federal law that protects against sex discrimination in education programs, is supposed to level the playing field for women’s sports. After almost 50 years, it hasn’t exactly fulfilled its promise.
The California law would create a free market for collegiate athletes. And it could tip the scales even more out of balance. There’s a fear that boosters, instead of donating to the athletic department, may donate directly to athletes they want for their school. That funds may be directed away from women’s sports instead of toward them.
Not everyone takes a dire view of the bill. Female athletes generally don’t have big professional paydays waiting for them. Skinner has talked to women who have had moments of fame in college on which they could theoretically capitalize if only they were allowed. Athletes like UCLA gymnast Katelyn Ohashi, whose stunning floor routine last winter went viral and has been viewed 65 million times.
VanDerveer may have a player on her team this season who could monetize herself. Freshman Fran Belibi created a sensation with her dunks at her high school near Denver. One video of her onehanded slams has been viewed almost half a million times. Could Belibi make money from that? Could the next generation of young female athletes find ways to penetrate the male monopoly on sports earnings?
VanDerveer has questions about how the law will impact recruiting, or transferring. Will there be bidding wars for top quarterbacks? Will boosters find new legal avenues to create cash flows to athletes? Probably, and the money will flow the same way it always has: to male basketball and football players.
Others object to using gender equity as an excuse not to change the existing system that so many find troublesome. Victoria Jackson, a former NCAA track champion and a sports historian at Arizona State, wrote on Twitter: “Former Pac12 national champ here. Stop using gender equity to justify racial inequity. Wow is it disingenuous to throw up the Title IX shield to justify a system that is fueled largely by underpaid black male athlete labor.”
It’s a complicated issue that everyone is just beginning to try to figure out.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of unintended consequences,” VanDerveer said.
But she does agree with the premise that led to a law.
“I think the NCAA has set itself up for this kind of thing by being so strict,” VanDerveer said. “It’s ridiculous.”