Four ex-Michigan Wolverines football players filed an antitrust lawsuit last September against the NCAA and the Big Ten Network for $50 million claiming they conspired to deny them Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) opportunities when they played college football. This past Friday, a judge dismissed their case.
The lawsuit was filed by former quarterback Denard Robinson, wide receiver Braylon Edwards, defensive end Michael Martin, and linebacker Shawn Crable. They were also seeking to have it certified as a class action so that other NCAA football players who played before June 15, 2016 could join them in the suit.
“The reason why we’re doing this is because it’s not fair what we had to go through, just like all the other athletes,” Michael Martin told the Detroit News at the time of the filing. “The $2.8 billion settlement that recently went through with the cutoff of 2016, that also got me thinking, because it’s like, what about all the eras of guys before 2016?”
The answer to his question is, apparently, what about them? Because a judge has now said that they aren’t entitled to anything.
“For the last hundred years, some of the most notable sports law cases have had to go to either Courts of Appeals or even the U. S. Supreme Court,” the group’s attorney Jim Acho told MLive.com. “This is an uncharted area in terms of law. I don’t think the judge misunderstood our argument. I think no judge wants to be the first to allow these cases to go forward because it’s going to open the floodgates again after House already settled NIL cases.”
In order for any higher court to allow the case to go forward, a judge is going to have to go against the statute of limitations for antitrust claims: four years. Edwards last played college football in 2004, Crable in 2007, Martin in 2011, and Robinson in 2012.
The players, however, claim that since they appeared in University of Michigan football highlights and videos in the years since they last played, they are entitled to NIL payments. The judge who dismissed the case disagreed, saying those highlights and videos were “not a new and independent act that restarts the statute of limitation.”
The players also stated in their lawsuit that they were “barely at the age of maturity” when they signed NCAA forms that gave away their publicity rights. That, combined with “a culture of secrecy and misinformation regarding the commercial use of student-athletes’ NIL” prohibited the players from being able “to assert their legal rights.” Again, the judge disagreed.
“I think it’s the wrong decision, and (Berg) did not apply the law correctly,” Acho responded. “I’m hoping the Sixth Circuit will. He just dismissed it right from the jump because these judges are afraid. None of them wants to be the first to let the NIL cases on behalf of pre-2016 guys move forward because they’re afraid of reopening the floodgates. That’s what this is.”
The post Former Michigan Football Players Fail In Bid For $50 Million In NIL Money Lawsuit appeared first on BroBible.
Former Michigan Football Players Fail In Bid For $50 Million In NIL Money Lawsuit
Pinoy Human Rights
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