While taking Amateur Sports Law in school I really disliked how the NCAA exploited student athletes then used the fact they they were students first (academic integrity) and it preserved balance to win cases. It burned me that in a lot of cases, despite the courts finding that there is an unreasonable restraint on the athletes, academic integrity and competitive balance outweighs the restraint.
Right now, Brian Kelly leaving Cincinnati for Notre Dame has me reliving some of my frustrations. Football players are recruited by coaches – they get sold into a program and a certain style of coaching – so when those coaches leave for another school, why are we punishing the athletes? I’m sure in some cases, the tipping point for their decision is the history and legacy of the program, but if you don’t like the coach, you’re not playing there.
Let the athletes who signed on to the program because of Kelly get to go play somewhere else without losing a year now that their coach abandoned them, or change it so that the coaches are deterred/punished by sitting out a year, like the athletes. Now I understand that the courts do not like these type of anti-compete clauses because it unreasonably prohibits employment – so structure it so that it doesn’t unreasonably prohibit employment, or argue that it is reasonable because it protects competitive balance. The NCAA clearly knows how to leverage that argument.
The SportsLawyeress' Blog 