Hey hey! Welcome to your Wednesday FOIAball.
I hope you’re enjoying your week so far, and I hope seeing me in your inbox makes it just a little bit better.
As the Protect College Sports Act inches closer to becoming law, those in charge of college sports seem much more comfortable with talking about how they are already breaking the law.
In an interview this August, Matt Rhule said it was time to retire the term “NIL.”
“We gotta get rid of that; it's just payroll. It's player payroll."
In a press conference a few weeks later, Kirby Smart spoke about one of his wide receivers' eagerness to play special teams.
“He's got a deal with his NIL incentive,” Smart said. “The more special teams he plays, the more money he gets. He wants to play every snap on special teams ... I keep trying to take him off to save money.”
Excuse me for yelling, but that’s against the rules!!!! The NCAA still bans compensation for “athletics participation or achievement.”
I know no one cares about a stupid bylaw, but it’s against state law, too!
Georgia’s NIL law, passed in 2021, states “Compensation may not be provided … for a student athlete to attend, participate, or perform at a particular postsecondary educational institution.”
Arrest him! Now! Kirby! Not the wide receiver!
While coaches seem fine revealing these details, their universities still refuse to release NIL deals. The schools claim it's to protect student privacy, but I’m starting to think they might have some ulterior motives going on. We can’t know until we get one.
But there is an NIL deal that is technically already in the public record. That should be available for us to review. But it is currently being held under lock and key.
Lemme walk you through how we can get it.
Given the Brendan Sorsby scandal has faded from view, it’s easy to forget he’s still being sued by his former team.
After transferring to Texas Tech, but before his gambling predilections were publicly known, the University of Cincinnati sued him in federal court for breach of contract, alleging the quarterback owed them $1 million.
Despite Sorsby’s career completely imploding, the school hasn’t dropped the case. And in July, something happened that no one seems to have noticed. Cincinnati asked to file Sorsby’s NIL deal under seal, a move his attorneys didn’t oppose.
The contract is now in possession of a federal judge, who has a strong track record of unsealing documents.
When Sorsby’s defense filed a motion to dismiss, his attorneys argued the same point Rhule and Smart made: his contract has nothing to do with NIL.
“The entire basis of the Agreement is a legal fiction,” they wrote. “Nothing more than a pay-for-play employment contract. It is a way for [Cincinnati] to pay Mr. Sorsby for his on-field performance, but in purported conformance with the NCAA’s current rules.”
In its response, the school cited a bit of a tautology, saying that because Ohio, like Georgia, bans schools from compensating players for performance, the school can’t compensate him for performance.
“Ohio law makes clear that the relationship is strictly for NIL promotional licensing.”
Which is true. If something is illegal, you legally can’t do it. Crime, it has been solved!
But instead of having a bunch of lawyers go back and forth, the court should let us decide.
After all, Sorsby’s contract probably shouldn’t be under seal to begin with. In a ruling on unsealing documents in another case, the judge overseeing this dispute cited a precedent about how important it is for the public to be informed.
“The public's interest is focused not only on the result, but also on the conduct giving rise to the case. In those cases, ‘secrecy insulates the participants, masking impropriety, obscuring incompetence, and concealing corruption.’”
Cincinnati is 4-0, so I will grant they are not trying to obscure incompetence. But impropriety and corruption … who can say? (The coaches, if you recall! They are spelling it out in public!)
When Cincinnati filed its request to seal the contract, the school cited three arguments: FERPA, trade secrets, and Ohio law. I’m no Mr. Law Guy, but the reasons all have their flaws.
Mainly, it’s that this contract is central to the case, and documents that are part of the adjudicative process are not supposed to be sealed. That massive argument aside, FERPA exists to protect student privacy. It prevents a university from handing out your grades to strangers.
Cincinnati sued their former quarterback in federal-ass court. They named him, served him, and are demanding one million dollars from him. I know we forget football players are students, but they’re suing a literal student of theirs. Questioning his conduct and character in a court of law.
FERPA allows schools to file confidential records without students’ consent when they sue them, which is how Cincinnati was able to bring this case. But courts are not bound by FERPA. The school is arguing the court should protect a privilege they already waived. Your Honor: If I may, lol.
The school said Ohio law bars them from releasing it, though that isn’t entirely clear. After student-athlete compensation was legalized, state legislatures passed laws barring the release of NIL contracts.
But those were written when everyone accepted the kayfabe, pretending these were actual endorsement deals. Ohio law states that third-party contracts disclosed to the university are protected. It doesn’t address contracts the school has with its players.
Lastly, the school claims the contract is a trade secret. There is a very high bar for trade secrets to be protected in court filings. Quite literally, the school is supposed to go through the document to explain how every bit of information could cause explicit financial harm. But Cincinnati just kinda claimed the whole 14-page contract was a trade secret.
Why am I laying this out for everyone? Because this week I kinda got screwed over, and I’m pretty miffed about it!
But that bit of drama is behind the paywall. If you are a paid subscriber, read on!
Not a paid subscriber? Come on, we’re getting messy and petty down below. All it takes is $7 a month.
Brendan Sorsby via Bleacher Report
