Public university payments to student athletes to be confidential under proposed bill

From Tyler Whetstone with the Knoxville News Sentinel:

In order to keep pace in the arms race that is college athletics, Republicans in the Tennessee General Assembly are prepping legislation that will keep secret public money paid to student athletes.

How much student athletes (at least those at public schools) are paid for their name, image and likeness and who is paying them already is private information since the transactions are handled through a third-party company not subject to open records.

But revenue sharing is coming to college athletics, and soon athletic departments will be paying athletes directly from the money they bring in from sources as varied as fans, television deals, postseason payouts and marketing deals. Read rest of the story here.

This bill (HB194 / SB536) is up for a vote in House and Senate education committees this week. The bill would allow only “annualized aggregated compensation data representing actual amounts provided by such institution to its intercollegiate athletes for an academic year” to be available through a public records request. But payments per athlete or per sport would be confidential.