You're right. The NCAA has wasted time and enormous money by holding out for an anti-trust exemption. A new model will emerge and has been delayed unnecessarily by the NCAA's intransigence.
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I understand people believe this, but I don't. I think there are a lot of Title IX lawyers that are working on this as we speak.
Suppose I get a call from the Irish Mafia paying me a bribe, sorry, inducing me to go to a particular pub. I go to the pub, the pub gets my money. The Irish Mafia is literally paying me to go. The main beneficiary is the pub. How is this not an affiliation? How on earth are you going to prove or demonstrate that the bribe didn't really mean to go to that pub, but any pub? This is the type of hogwash people are being asked to believe.
I'm willing to concede if they are just employees of the university, not students, then Title IX doesn't apply and its merely an economic transaction. If the Irish Mafia pays me to go and there's an affiliation, then it's literally just money laundering, but it's not technically illegal. But since they're allegedly students, Title IX and gender equity applies.
Again, the NCAA and the Power 5 are lumbering into a debate they do not want to have, if they are smart, which they're not.
Speaking of NIL lawyers you should follow this guy. Also happens to sit on the Board of the 1693 Alliance.
Mit Winter (@WinterSportsLaw) / X (twitter.com)
FUBeAR hears ya…BUT…
https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uplo...-5.21.2024.pdf
RASHADA v. HATHCOCK et al
PLAINTIFF JADEN RASHADA’S ORIGINAL COMPLAINT - Plaintiff Jaden Rashada (“Jaden”), by and through counsel, hereby files this Original Complaint against Defendants Hugh Hathcock (“Hathcock”), William “Billy” Napier (“Napier”), Marcus Castro-Walker (“Castro-Walker”), and Velocity Automotive Solutions LLC (“Velocity Automotive”) (collectively, “Defendants”).
JADEN RASHADA [Currently a Football Player involved with the Football Program at the University of Georgia] HUGH HATHCOCK
WILLIAM NAPIER
MARCUS CASTRO-WALKER and
VELOCITY AUTOMOTIVE SOLUTIONS LLC3:2024cv00219 May 21, 2024
I. INTRODUCTION
1. The unsuccessful recruitment of star high school quarterback Jaden Rashada to the University of Florida (“UF” or “Florida”) is emblematic of the abuses running rampant in the world of big-time college football. Student-athletes can now be paid for the use of their name, image and likeness, more commonly known as NIL. Jaden’s miserable experience reveals in stark and dramatic detail what can happen to young student-athletes when wealthy, win-at-all-cost alumni insert themselves into college football’s recruiting process.
* Gator Guard - Florida Gators Collective
LAUNCH DATE - Apr 2022
STATUS - LLC
FOUNDERS - Hugh Hathcock
APRIL 27, 2023 UPDATE: Gator Guard has halted day-to-day operations.
PREVIOUS INFORMATION: Gator Guard was founded by CEO and long-time Florida fan Hugh Hathcock as a “a new, exclusive, very influential group of high-net-worth Gators” that are willing to make donations in the millions.
* BILLY NAPIER
TITLE Head Coach
Billy Napier enters his third season with the Gators after being named the 29th head coach in program history on Nov. 28, 2021.
* MARCUS CASTRO-WALKER
TITLE Director of Player Engagement and NIL
Marcus Castro-Walker enters his second year on the Gators’ staff after being named director of player engagement and NIL ahead of the 2022 season.
* Founded in 2018 by Hugh Hathcock, founder of ELEAD1ONE, Velocity [Automotive Solutions LLC] was built to help dealers streamline sales and service processes, improve communications, and maximize business opportunities.
…FUBeAR understands this is a private lawsuit, BUT we do have an Officer of a Collective (Hathcock) AND a private business (Velocity) very closely linked with a (non-operational as of the date of the filing of the lawsuit) NIL Collective (Gator Guard) as a named Co-Defendant with 2 employees of the University (Napier & Castro-Walker).
The more they get ‘tied together’ legally, the more difficult it is going to be for them to defend that they are not, essentially, a unified entity acting for a common purpose … thus, subjecting the Collective to Title IX regulations.
And, we can already see that donors to and/or officers of a Collective are subject to liability claims as a result of the actions / transactions of that collective. How will that play out when Plaintiff Attorneys get a wrongful death client whose 3 family members were run down by a 17 year old college athlete driving his new Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut @ 310 mph while they were walking down a city street - with that Absolut having been purchased with Collective $’s or even provided directly by a Collective / Collective donor. Actions have consequences. Risky actions have greater consequences.
(Georgia football players add to traffic incidents since Jan. 15 crash, records show - Jun 14, 2023 - Georgia football players and their cars have been involved in at least 10 reports of traffic-related moving violations in Athens-Clarke County since Jan. 15, when a player and team staff member were killed in a reckless driving incident allegedly tied to racing, according to records obtained by ESPN. Players have also been involved in at least 60 additional moving violations -- including speeding, distracted and reckless driving, and disobeying traffic signs -- since the beginning of the 2021 academic year https://www.espn.com/college-footbal...-records-show# )
FUBeAR is not a Plaintiff Attorney, but he does hang out with some of those types. They see a payday in EVERYTHING. Gub-mint enforcement arms tend to act like Plaintiff Attorneys. 2 types of “constituents” in their eyes - those they are suing and those that don’t know yet that they are going to be sued.
You're jumping several bridges here. Using a case where the defendants did not comply with contractual obligations and coaches likely lied to an athlete to justify independent businesses being subjected to restraint of trade is a long jump. Lawyers may try, but collectives are already organized and their legal position will remain strong.
On the contrary, the courts have had several relevant Title IX decisions. SCOTUS ruled 9-0 in NCAA v Smith that the NCAA is not subject to Title IX at all because it does not directly receive tax money. Unanimous decisions are rarely overturned, plus the NCAA's head lawyer was John Roberts, who is now Chief Justice. This is rock solid. NIL collectives can point to this and avoid any issues.
There's currently a Circuit split on if medical centers affiliated with a university are subject to T9. Doe v Mercy Catholic Medical Center said yes, O'Conner v Davis said no.
I'm very confident that if T9 becomes a problem, that problem will quickly go away by schools creating a legally separate football program that licenses school imagery. NCAA v Smith proves this is possible, but the exact format may need to be tweaked.
Those leagues didn't have 100+ years of legacies and fan base building on their side. College football has always been the NFL's minor league. These last couple years in the new NIL wild west not only is college football surviving I'd say that it's thriving. Ratings are huge and trending upward - in person attendance may be trending down slightly but stadiums are still regularly packed and I don't think the passion of college fan bases, as a whole, have dwindled much at all. I'd wager that collectively us college football fans would/will view semi-pro players (who are potentially now considered school employees) with grumbling about the purity of the game etc etc but, by and large, we're not going anywhere and we'll continue to cheer for our school's team because they're still our school's team.