Frankly, I’m very surprised our local legislators are actively supporting, or appear to support, SB 5893 and HB 1930. Both these bills would define Western Hockey League players as amateurs to avoid further investigation by the Department of Labor & Industries and also allow avoid team owners to pay them minimum wages.
I’m hoping the staff on the legislative committees who moved these bills forward were too lazy, as opposed to ignorant, to do a quick three-second search on Google to get the NCAA’s opinion.
According to the NCAA, all WHL players are ineligible to play hockey at colleges in the United States because they are deemed to have been professional players. If this proposed legislation passes, I think it would be fascinating to know if the NCAA would recognize our state law and allow these kids to play hockey in U.S. colleges. It certainly creates a nice legal quandary to be litigated.
I know and love hockey. I’ve been a Seattle Thunderbirds season ticket holder for four seasons, and we opened our home to host T-Birds players for three seasons.
These kids (many are under the age of 18) are not amateurs. They sign contracts. They have required hours of work. The hours they do work are intense, supervised, and I imagine, can often exceed 40 hours a week (long road trips).
I’m disappointed, to say the least, our local legislators are ignoring the overwhelming and obvious facts (and what the NCAA believes) in this matter and, instead, appear to be pandering to a loud minority whose only concern is financial gain.
Why pay someone $9.47 an hour or employment taxes (and no overtime) when you can pay them $1.25 an hour or less and no employment taxes?
– Russell Hanscom
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