Kris Jenkins sues NCAA for limiting pay while at Villanova
Former NCAA tournament hero Kris Jenkins, in a lawsuit filed last week with the Southern District of New York, is suing the NCAA and six major conferences for limiting athlete pay and restricting his ability to capitalize off his name, image and likeness while he was at Villanova University.
Jenkins' lawsuit alleges that the NCAA and the major conferences, including the Big East, violated federal antitrust laws by impeding the ability of college athletes to make money based on their performances and collective market values. The lawsuit also claims that the defendants "unjustly enriched themselves and their for-profit business partners while causing extensive damage to the student-athletes."
Per the lawsuit, Jenkins "seeks the compensation that he would have received absent Defendants' unlawful restraints on pay-for-play compensation, a share of game telecast revenue and compensation that he would have received for media broadcast uses of his NIL ('BNIL'), and the compensation that he would have received for his NIL from third parties for use in video games and other opportunities including marketing, sponsorship, social media, branding, promotional, and other NIL deals."
If this is successful, and there is very little reason anymore to think it won't, there are going to be lawsuits everywhere and it's only a matter of time before everyone is filing bankruptcy.
Which, maybe that's what we need.
Comments
I'm all in for team burn it all down. But in this one case I really have to ask
Only hit one of the greatest shots in basketball history
You mean you don't remember Kris Jenkins?
34th on Villanova's all-time scoring list.
Drafted 14th by the Sioux Falls Skyforce in the 2017 G League Draft (waived in December 2017).
Signed with Eisbären Bremerhaven in 2018.
That Kris Jenkins?
I know you're trying to downplay, but he has an extremely good argument that he is owed a hell of a lot of money for his name, image, and likeness being explicitly used by the NCAA to market their tournament every year since he hit that shot in *checks notes* 2016. (damn, that's already 9 years old?!?)
Why is he owed a heck of a lot of money? Did he sign a contract?
I mean if that's how it works, can I go back and get more money from my past employers? Or even Virginia Tech, since they were clearly the beneficiary from my having attended there?
What's next? TKP gets billed because someone posted pre-NIL pictures on this site? You get the deal you sign, not the one you wish you had signed.
Totally with you. All of this retroactive BS should lose in court. It's not like he was owed anything and it was withheld. The rules were different. When the minimum wage was raised from $3.40 an hour (yeah, I'm going back a long way), I did not get retroactive pay from my job at the discount department store for the prior years before the minimum wage was raised to whatever it was raised to. These cases should all be tossed. They won't be, but they should lose. Whether they will or not is a different story, but the should be tossed and/or lose.
I disagree with your comparison to minimum wage. In this case, the NCAA, Villanova and other entities have continued to use his image, performance, etc to profit/advertise off of. Your discount store is not using your likeness in advertising etc unless you posed for commercials etc.
At no point did he sign over the use of his likeness and in most of these cases it has been proven that there were no clauses included in scholarship documentation turning over those rights.
I don't like the re-ringing the bell but this seems a clear case that NIL is a legit impact versus pay for play. If his performance wasn't a big deal, why have they continued to use it?
Didn't the NCAA require players to sign over their likeness as a condition to participating in NCAA sponsored sports?
You can claim they got ripped off or signing over your likeness as condition of playing is overreach, but they did have to sign something. Maybe that was just EA sports with the video games before it got cancelled, but I thought that was the NCAA as a whole.
Yes they did, probably still do.
Won't matter if the courts deem them illegal, and we've been hurdling down that path for a while now
How have we been hurdling down a path that a player signing a contract for NIL with the school and ncaa is illegal? The courts ruled that you can't prevent players from signing NIL contracts. So the courts can't say the NCAA can't have NIL deals with players, its against their own ruling.
If the NCAA can't have NIL rights then they aren't televising games any more, there is no match madness. Frank Loria's number is no longer honored in Lane stadium, Kitley's jersey is no longer hanging in cassel, Beamer Way becomes Spring Road again.
Except the NCAA wasn't giving the kid an NIL deal in this case.
Since when did they stop that? im the early 2000s it was standard paperwork every athlete had to sign pretty much the moment they first step on campus. I've seen the form, I've seen players sign it, even the walk ons signed it (which you could argue walk ons is an issue)
And he is suing because the NCAA did just that while at the same time profiting off his image
Unless the NCAA can convince that the contract he signed with the NCAA was an NIL contract.
That might be worse though. That would mean they forced players to either sign the nil deal with them while prohibiting seeking other NiL deals or take their ball and go home. Thats the antitrust part that comes into all of this. The NCAA would 100% control the price of an NIL deal (scholarship) without any competition
The courts ruled they couldn't do that already.
Exclusive contracts are not uncommon, I am sure a good lawyer won't have a problem working that angle.
I feel certain that the basic scholarship agreement included signing over those rights. Otherwise, how did they advertise and televise those games?
But if others are getting money why should he keep to the legal agreement that he committed to?
The basis of the lawsuit is that those different rules were illegal 🤷♂️
Good luck trying to prove that it was illegal. Should be thrown out. Won't be, but should.
There are already court precedents now stating it was because NCAA and member schools don't have anti-trust exception. Won't take much to lump this one in because defendants can be proven to have earned compensation off his efforts.
Yeah I was gonna say, if you aren't sure of why he has some pretty good standing in this case, you haven't been paying attention to college sports over the last 36 months.
If all of these are granted and the NCAA and every conference goes bankrupt Im all for it. fucking torch it to the ground- pay the past players billions and the current players get none. money is not endless- fuck all of it I hope VT goes bankrupt paying Michael Vick back pay. Im rooting for it at this point.
What? He was never employed. He was illegally blocked from making money from the video. If someone is going to use video of you for content that they're selling (at a high price mind you), you're legally entitled to your cut, just like any actor, model or artist, etc.
They got athletic scholarships. And they were clearly aware that the games were televised, and advertised.
Doesn't matter, as you said before there was no contract
yeah, when he played he AGREED to his compensation and it wasn't illegal at that time. So none of this flies.
"You play by these rules or don't play at all". That's not what an agreement is
Sure the fuck it is.. is playing basketball for villanova his birthright? that mind set is the fucking problem. thousands of kids as good at shooting as Kris Jenkins never got that opportunity. Should they sue? Playing for villanova basketball is not a constitutional right. he could have 1. started his own league. 2. went to europe. 3. went to greece. 4. went to the NBA.
Except the courts, where the NCAA has been getting absolutely routed over the last few years, have continuously ruled that those kind of contracts were not legal to begin with, which is why we are operating under the model we are now. Once we started down this path, it was only a matter of time before a former player sued with the reasoning that current rulings made the previous operating model illegal, and as such former players are due a cut.
Kris Jenkins, who has had his shot replayed probably more than any other person in March Madness highlights over the last decade, is arguably the best person to bring in the lawsuit that blows it all to hell. If he can prove that the NCAA, conferences, and schools prevented him from making money off his accomplishments for reasons that are illegal now, everyone involved is super fucked.
And at this point, I'm here for it. Burn this bitch to the ground.
No but making all the money off of dedicated semi-professionals who create/are the product is ESPN's birthright apparently
Well ESPN is a for profit broadcasting company. They compete with fox, etc in a free market. They did not agree to air games as a non profit in exchange for a world class education. They started a private company and people paid for it. Kris Jenkins should have done the same. Instead, he agreed to attend villanova and play basketball under amateur rules. That is a fact.. any revisiting or applying todays lens on it is bullshit. Yeah yeah, jenkins was an exploited slave. Doesn't change the fact that he willingly accepted those terms. Signing day was the biggest day of his life. Now what I hope happens is that CBS recreates that shot for one shinging moment with robots and digital imaging. Boom. Fuck Kris Jenkins.
Ahh the old agreeing to a deal makes it fair fallacy. You don't have to think very hard to figure out why agreement doesn't affect the legality of a deal. If it was illegal it won't stand. The courts already ruled that it was.
If you're so sure about the ruling, lets put money down on it.
Just pretending barriers to entry aren't a thing is real convenient. And that an empirical impossibility constitutes freedom of choice.
That mindset is a serious problem.
And it has no basis in law. He will win the lawsuit because him being "ineligible" to make money, was dictated by a Mickey Mouse organization doing so illegally. When it's proven that it was illegal at the time, ESPN and whoever else will owe athletes a percentage of what they made while airing their content. It's pretty simple and easy to understand
I wish these players would go after the professional leagues that though collectively bargained, have purposefully excluded college aged players from participating in their leagues.
A lot of these issues would have gone away if the NFL had fostered a real minor league rather than being content to let the NCAA develop their workforce for free.
LMFAO you really types that Kris Jenkins was forced to play basketball for villanova. lolololol. Fucking Horseshit- he wasn't forced to do a fucking thing. He could have chosen literally a million other careers, etc. or as I said- gone pro in europe. TO pretend that these kids dont compete all their lives for a scholarship you say is worthless and illegal is a fucking joke. It's more competitive than most things- but nah they are forced to play college hoops. laughable on every single level.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a monopoly is
How is the NCAA a monopoly, there are other places to play basketball such as the NAIA, NJCAA, the G-League (names D-league when he started college) and a number of European leagues.
Why does the NFL have an antitrust exemption if the USFL, Spring League, Arena Football, CFL etc exist?
Why does the MLB have an antitrust exemption if you could just go play in an independent league or in South America or Japan?
Why does MLS have one? It's not even the premiere soccer league in the world. Or even in the top 5.
Turns out foreign alternatives don't matter in terms of what domestic law considers an antitrust matter. It also turns out you can still be considered a "monopoly" when you aren't literally the only single option, so long as the market share is such that you're anticompetitive. (If my company purchased our biggest competitor, we'd by no means be the only option on our industry, but antitrust would be invoked so fast because of how dominant the market position would be).
Also just to be nitpicky: d-league was not an option for Kris Jenkins coming out of high school due to eligibility rules.
Also just because nobody is forcing you to buy a widget doesn't mean it's not a widget monopoly.
Yes, he signed a contract for a scholarship and Villanova and the NCAA can use his likeness. So everytime they show him hitting the shot it us fine so eith his permission whether he knew what he was signing or not.
He only really was known as a player from the big east tournament his junior and after. which means no one is really paying him for his NIL until after that shot. He could have gone pro then and cashed in. It's going to be hard to show he would have gotten actual NIL money (not pay to play money). How do you calculate NIL value as all the numbers we see are fake, I dont know how you prove his worth for hitting a shot, that I'm 99% sure I've watched live and don't remember.
Yes, sarcastically I am down playing it. In all honesty, I don't care if the guy gets paid or not. I'm curious about his "but-for" allegation and how much he lost in potential earnings at the time he was enrolled at Villanova. Maybe he should also sue Villanova for a share of the $22.6 million donation it received the year after his shot. Arguably, without the gaming winning shot Villanova doesn't receive that donation.
Yes, these types of cases are a bit silly but as someone who lived within walking distance to Nova's campus for a few years, this guy absolutely has one of the better "they actually used my name image likeness excessively" arguments. Buildings plastered his shot everywhere and there were literal murals made of that moment. Not saying it's good enough to warrant any money but as Verne would say.... "Better than most"
CBS pays literal billions to air this tournament. Coaches like Beoheim used making the dance to extend his career by 20 years. Its arguably the second biggest sporting event in america. yeah Kris Jenkins, CBS is gonna show your shot. but the players will ruin this with greed of course-and cbs will be forced by a random judge to use AI generted players for highlights.
I'd say "Let the silliness begin", but it started a long time ago.
This is just the start of the end game.
I want Judges to just start tossing these cases.
At this point I'm on Team Burn It All Down. It's the only way we will get major reforms like contracts, actual pay for play, etc.
Otherwise it will just continue to be near chaos that the big 2 can exploit better than anyone else
I agree about burning it down, but the big 2 works very hard at exploiting everything better than anyone else, and crushing anyone who tries to promote any kind of equity for anyone else.
I agree, but I think the less chaos there is the harder it is for those big 2 to take advantage. Where there's mass chaos like now they can overcome that with money.
Interesting...they showed a Tweet at Halftime from this guy talking about Jay Wrights suit and my immediate reaction was...."Who..???"
Maybe making a big shot in a basketball game once that only a very small fraction of the population even remembers doesn't entitle you to a lifetime of millions?
Maybe NIL a largely a farce used by guys who things didn't turn out for and didn't get to live out their NBA/NFL dreams?
If this goes through (and it probably will)...there is a legit possibility that many Athletic Programs will have to close shop....
For instance..if he wanted to...how much in NIL Reparations could Mike Vick demand from VT??? We'd be completely cleaned out.
If this is successful, then Lorenzo Charles, Keith Smart, and Michael Jordan deserve way more than this kid.
Do professional players get compensated for use of their NIL after they retire? Is this already covered in most professional contacts?
Depending on length of service in their sport, they continue to be a member of the players association. As such if their likeness is used they receive compensation. Alumni also can reach agreements outside of the players association for being included in things like sports cards and other memorabilia. Not sure how the use of their image by their sports are handled after career but the major difference is that the professional leagues have anti-trust exceptions. The NCAA and it's member schools do not. That is the biggest reason given by the judges that continue to find for the players in these court cases.
Fuck Kris Jenkins. Fuck him- hes not entitled to a fucking thing but life and liberty. Fuck off- he would not have gotten into any major university on academic merit. he used the machine already. fuck you
This whole retroactive argument is complete horseshit on all levels. I've typed and deleted a lot, but it's difficult to articulate the atrocity that collegiate sports are becoming. It's getting more and more difficult for me to follow in even a limited capacity anymore.
I suspect the if he DOES get money, they'll simply find a way to bill current fans, and maybe nonfans, for it.
You mean subscribers to the cable providers and direct streaming services? Yeah, get ready for ESPN+ to be $87 a week.
Wouldn't the House vs NCAA settlement preclude a lawsuit like this?
No he opted out of that settlement in favor of his own suit.
OK, so yes, the house settlement does preclude a lawsuit like this.. unless the plaintiff opted out of the class