Seth Emerson updates Georgia’s coaching situation.
Basically, if we haven’t heard something by midday tomorrow, it’s time to start wondering what’s really going on.
Daily Archives: December 5, 2015
Meanwhile, in things Stacey Osburn has no comment about…
This isn’t good, if you’re the NCAA.
A federal judge on Friday granted class-action status to a pair of lawsuits challenging the NCAA’s current limits on the compensation athletes can receive while playing college sports.
U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken’s action sets the stage for the advance of cases filed on behalf ofFootball Bowl Subdivision football players and Division I men’s and women’s basketball players against the NCAA and 11 major conferences.
… This case is being led, in part, by lawyers from Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, the same firm that is involved in an array of cases against the NCAA and represented former Arizona State and Nebraska football player Sam Keller in a suit before Wilken that also involved video game manufacturer Electronic Arts and eventually settled.
The other case is being pursued on behalf of plaintiffs led by former Clemson football player Martin Jenkins and two current Wisconsin athletes — basketball player Nigel Hayes and football player Alec James. It covers football and men’s basketball players in the power conferences, and it is being directed by Jeffrey Kessler, who gained renown for his representation of professional sports players’ unions and involvement in a case that set the stage for NFL free agency.
If the cases had not been certified as class actions, they would have been limited to the named plaintiffs only.
Neither is this.
Wilken wrote that the NCAA’s argument against class-certification depends “on the assumption that schools could not afford to spend more money compensating all student-athletes rather than cutting payments to some. That assumption … is not supported.”
She rejected what she described as the NCAA’s and the conferences’ prediction that an injunction “would increase the costs to schools of participating in FBS and Division I athletics and, in turn, schools would stop participating in FBS and Division I athletics or take steps to lower their costs, such as offering fewer” scholarships.
Wilken wrote that the NCAA and its experts for the case assume “that any increase in student-athlete compensation resulting from an injunction would force schools to offset such cost by disadvantaging some members of the proposed classes. The Court finds insufficient basis for such an assumption, because of schools’ past behavior and alternative available sources of funds.”
Hunh. She doesn’t find Mark Emmert and Jim Delany convincing. Imagine that.
Jeffrey Kessler is getting closer, NCAA. Time to get those Congressional lobbying plans in gear. Either that, or try to reach a settlement. Okay, on second thought, it’s the lobbyists.
Filed under See You In Court, The NCAA
Name that caption: it’s how we’d always like to remember him.
C’mon. You know you wanna.
See you in the comments, guys and gals.
Filed under Name That Caption
That’s why they pay him the big bucks.
East Carolina fired its coach yesterday. He’s an alum who’s enjoyed decent success there, but suffered through a losing season this year fueled in part by injuries. Anyway, the AD who made the call met with the players. For a little while, that is…
The reason people like Bobby Petrino keep getting coaching jobs is because there are people like Bobby Petrino running athletic departments.
Filed under It's All Just Made Up And Flagellant
I’m still nervous.
So yesterday afternoon, I learn my other alma mater hires Bronco Mendenhall away from BYU – a D-1 head coach with 99 wins – under the radar, with no fuss and no bother. And remember, the process to hire him essentially kicked in after UVa made a stab at Mark Richt.
So it seems it is possible for a major college athletic director to target someone relatively high profile and get a deal knocked out quietly and efficiently. Just not at Georgia, where we’re still in the “if” stage with Kirby Smart.
Don’t misunderstand. I think this deal gets done in the end, because the school simply can’t afford the fallout from Smart walking away. But the notion that the two sides are still working out the details says a lot about the Georgia Way.
Time’s running short, fellas.
Filed under Georgia Football
Get The Picture 