Pac-12 Guru Jon Wilner Reviews Legal Matters Involving the Conference and Also the NCAA

[Jon Joseph]

Along with his recent Mailbag, Jon Wilner (paywall) reviewed the legal matters affecting the conference and college sports at large. It isn't pretty. No one under the age of 17 should read the following without parental guidance and permission.

 

Here is a summary of the 6 matters.

 

1. Pac-12 vs DISH - The conference is, hold your breath, the Plaintiff in this action suing DISH for withholding distribution payments. This suit has nothing to do with the Comcast debacle. 

 

2. The NLRB has filed a complaint against USC, the Pac-12, and the NCAA seeking to have college athletes recognized as employees of their respective schools. This is exactly the opposite of the precedent set by the NLRB six years ago when it found that Northwestern football players are not employees and therefore could not form a players' union.

 

3. Holiday Bowl vs UCLA and the Pac-12.  The Holiday Bowl is seeking $3M in damages for UCLA canceling out of the Holiday Bowl due to COVID shortly before the game was set to kick off. I hope the conference as a whole has filed to be removed as a defendant in the matter. The conference had nothing to do with UCLA's decision.

 

4. AB 252 - The College Athlete Protection Act that would require all private and public schools in California to share revenue with student-athletes has passed the California State Assembly notwithstanding all entities in California directly affiliated with college athletics lobbying vehemently against this piece of legislation. The matter is now before the California Senate.

 

Wilner - "As the law, AB 252 would make NIL look like amateur hour in terms of ramifications for college sports."

 

5. The Comcast Cover-Up - 2 executives were terminated by the Pac-12 Network for failure to disclose the Comcast accounting error, too much money was paid to the conference by Comcast, and have filed a Wrongful Termination suit claiming that they disclosed the error to Larry Scott in 2017 and Scott did not report this to his overseers. 

 

This fiasco is expected to cost each Pac-12 member at least $1M plus in diminished future revenues as the result of having to balance the books with Comcast, The conference has yet to cross-claim against Scott which I believe in itself is a breach of fiduciary duty. No way that conference member athletic departments should bear the brunt of this cover-up. 

 

6. The Hubbard Matter - Chuba Hubbard who was a running back at Oklahoma State and now plays in the NFL, and other former student-athletes, have filed an anti-trust action against the NCAA claiming billions of dollars (anti-trust law allows for treble damages) in unpaid benefits based upon the Supreme Court's 9-0 ruling against the NCAA in the Alston case. The case is in front of the Northern California District Federal Judge Claudia Williams whose ruling in the O'Bannon case years ago sparked the era of economic changes across the NCAA. 

 

In effect, I think seeking damages retroactively based upon the Alston decision should not stand but I do not trust the NCAA to properly defend this case. It could take close to a decade for this case to reach the Supreme Court but if sustained this could destroy the operations of the vast majority of G5/P5 athletic departments.

 

The good news? Ducks baseball just made an all-time comeback and football in Autzen kicks off in a couple of months.