I am shocked by Virginia Tech's untenable position that a decision to redshirt constitutes "opting out" and fraudulent misrepresentation under the NCAA's Bylaws, justifying immediate termination of scholarships and revenue-sharing payments under the House settlement. Redshirting...— Darren Heitner (@DarrenHeitner) September 26, 2025
Honestly, I have no idea what to make of this, but this is going to get messy. He claims to already be representing multiple players and is putting together paperwork to go after VT legally, challenging our scholarships and revenue sharing under the House settlement.
Worth noting that this guy teaches law at Miami, so there's definitely incentive for him to challenge VT directly.
Update: Pete Nakos from On3 gives some background to this:
Virginia Tech is reportedly terminating rev-share deals to athletes who redshirt and transfer out. Hokies fired Brent Pry earlier this month, triggering a 30-day portal window. To this point, three athletes have entered the portal. https://t.co/6W4cTLZUPD https://t.co/xCDtJBLxyh— Pete Nakos (@PeteNakos_) September 26, 2025
This is about the players who have entered the portal wanting to collect revenue sharing checks for the games that VT plays going forward.
Comments
My non-lawyer immediate reaction is that "student-athletes" should be able to finish out the semester if they choose to redshirt, but that house payments are contingent on your willingness to participate in practice and games.
My second reaction is that this sounds like an employer/employee relationship.
My third reaction is that I really wish this didn't happen at VT. This stuff needs to be settled, but we have enough going on and don't need this drama
I mean these players are choosing to not participate in games so they can preserve an extra year of eligibility while they are looking to transfer out. They have already terminated their work relationship with VT.
My personal take is they can fuck right off. They aren't fulfilling their end of the deal, why should VT be on the hook for paying them out?
But it's not a work relationship... that's the problem. There's no workers comp, there's no severance, right to work laws don't apply...
But none of those things were part of the deal that they signed up to get paid for, right?
Correct... because the NCAA is a cartel (the economic definition, not the drug dealing one). The United States, it's illegal for firms to collectively monopolize like this. Other sports leagues do it because they have an antitrust exemption. The NCAA does not have an antitrust exemption. They are very careful not to call their athletes employees.
Get congress to pass an anti-trust exemption. Make them employees and be done with it. Actual contracts, with language on specifically what happens when/if you decide to leave. Would get some of the vultures out of the system who are just trying to grab some of the free floating dollars while they're around.
You and I have had our differences but this time I'm 100% behind what you're saying.
Yeah, it's a weird situation. Like he said, redshirting is part of the game. Typically I would assume it's a two way street between coaching staff and player and that a player, on his own, saying "I'm not playing anymore this season, I'm redshirting," would be unusual even if their name wasn't in the transfer portal. So it's not quite the usual run of business.
That being said, if the NIL/rev share contracts are just contingent on being enrolled or whatever, might be tricky. That also being said, presumably VT has good lawyers. That also being said, the rules/law on this seem to be, lets say, fluid right now.
Mostly your third point though. Being the institution at the center of this round of all of this bullshit is going to be unpleasant.
Its going to be especially unpleasant because Heitner will certainly try to argue to file the complaint in Florida..where Attorney's fees are paid to the "prevailing party".
I.e. VT will be paying his legal fees.
While almost certainly this will be settled prior to court (I would doubt Heitner can litigate his way out of a paper bag) the settlement would certainly include a discussion of who's paying his legal fees. If not, he would then file a motion on his clients inability to pay and then probably get them paid by VT anyways.
Remember when College Football was fun and didn't include seedy South Florida lawyers???
Why would a contract in Virginia be litigated in Florida?
I don't doubt this guy would want to do that, but what standing would he have to even bring suit if he isn't licensed in the state where the contract took place?
Because its worth a shot....
Clemson/FSU tried the same thing in their case vs. ACC.
People with more legal expertise than me would have to weigh in, but I believe the basis of the argument would be it would be cost and time prohibitive for representation to have to travel recurrently to Virginia. Whether that would be upheld is very questionable.
But it certainly worth a try as law in Florida is quite favorable to those filing civil lawsuits. There's a reason Morgan&Morgan exists.
Florida St and Clemson filed in their home states because the financial losses would effect them there the most. They also tried to utilize stipulations in state laws that would hope to neutralize agreements reached in North Carolina.
How would filing the complaint in Florida work?
You can file anywhere, it would be up to the other parties to fight jurisdiction.
I think it would be an easy fight unless the athlete is from Florida. Would he be filing on behalf of all the redshirting athletes that were trying to collect as a group, or individually?
He will make money running up the billable hours during the jurisdiction fight process AND, his costs will be lower because it is close to his home.
I agree, they should be allowed to finish the semester on scholarship, but House and NIL payments cease when they cease being a member of the team.
If they are redshirting but staying with the program the scholarship should be offered. If they have put their name in the portal, they voluntarily ended their relationship with Tech.
This is my take as well. If you want to earn with the team you should be, you know, with the team.
But really it is going to come down to the language of whatever contract is in place. From my understanding, universities are permitted, but not required, to share revenue (edit: under the House settlement).
Worth noting this lawyer works for Miami, who was recently sued by Wisconsin for tampering with Badger players to convince them to transfer in last year. They're actively testing all the boundaries and making everyone else hold the bag while they do.
Works for Miami, has his hands in NIL @ Florida too.
If this doesn't tell you all you need to know..he rebranded himself as an "NIL Lawyer" after his efforts to become rich off the NFT market went up in flames.
Has somehow got himself involved in NIL policy, representation, and supposed advocacy.
Meanwhile, he's making money from every angle. The sad part is these are the real people that are benefiting more than anyone from pay for play in college sports.
You wouldn't believe which lawyer Miami chose for this fight against Wisconsin, too.
Redshirting is a coach's decision - not the player. A player cannot self declare a red shirt year and unilaterally claim a future roster spot or fifth year scholarship.
College football players currently have more power than any other professional athlete in the world. It's ridiculous.
Lmao this comment is ridiculous.
College athletes can be cut at any time. Not only is there no such thing as guaranteed money in college sports; There are numerous stories of athletes being promised NIL money that has just never been paid (USC, Kentucky, and others)
The NBA gives 51% of all revenue to its players. Even at Oregon - which allegedly paid around $18m for their roster last year - is sharing less than 10% of revenue with their athletes.
What other sport / league has 100% unrestricted free agency, even in the middle of a season. Per the reports, these guys have accepted scholarships and NIL money and are deciding to transfer mid season or at least deciding not to play to preserve their future options (and apparently still want the money). No other pro league allows that kind of player rights for personnel under contract (which the scholarship should create).
I get it, it sucks. I'm not saying this system is good. But this is what happens when the ncaa (which is made of universities) refuses to acknowledge that the labor funding their multibillion dollar organization is actually labor.
Again, the nfl is allowed to limit free agency because they have an antitrust exemption. To get that protected legal status, they gave up a lot. They share a predetermined percentage of their revenue, the collectively bargain, etc.
Beyond the second half of this being silly, I'm also pretty sure the first half isn't really true either. If you play less than four games you don't burn a year of eligibility. No coaches input there. Obviously you aren't guaranteed a roster spot at a given institution, but in terms of NCAA eligibility, it really isn't a coach's decision.
You do if you already used your Redshirt at least for now
Sure. If you still have a red shirt available to you, if you play in four games or fewer, you can avoid burning a year of eligibility on that year. My point is that you don't need the coach to actually hand you a physical red shirt for it to apply. To that extent it isn't a coaches decision.
But the coach that would make the decision was fired. That's why the NCAA allows the athletes to transfer.
Plus, I'm not sure that's accurate. My understanding is that you have 5 years to use 4 years of eligibility. Not playing one year uses one of the five years of potential eligibility, which, almost by definition os the same as redshirting.
This is all about NIL money. NCAA rules keep them on scholarship this semester regardless of when they transfer.
Am I confused that "entering the portal" does not necessarily mean they're leaving. If I recall, we had some players enter previously, but ultimately stayed.
Depending on who we hire and when, isn't there still a chance they stay? I thought the tie wasn't severed until they actually leave.
That was the case under Fuente but seems to have changed now. Dante Lovett has already been erased from the roster. Sounds like Djonkin has been removed as well.
It sure as hell does if we burn the bridge by terminating their NIL contract.
Ahh yes. More fallout from the NCAA complete inability to do anything actually in the interest of anyone except their own short term paychecks. Nobody knows what these contracts say, so who knows how this will go. It might go all the way to NCAA athletes being determined as employees. What college football needs is some sort of standardization and bargaining clause. On one hand it is easy to see how the player could be perceived as wanting to have his cake and eat it too. On the other hand it is easy to see how VT is wanting to have their cake and eat it to. While the player could ostensibly redshirt and claim they aren't transferring and then immediately after the last check of the season clears. SO what happens in that situation? Tech just got shafted if they paid out.
Perhaps the player truly doesn't intend to transfer without seeing how things play out. Tough to argue they shouldn't receive their due in that case if they're practicing and on scout team. Who makes these redshirt decisions anyway? Is it truly the coaches or the player? Some sort of mutual agreement? Can the coach redshirt me even if i dont want to take a redshirt? I have no idea. Too much messiness.
Probably time to just end redshirts and give everyone 5 years to play 5 seasons and NIL payments should reflect this.
The billable hours snake saw an opportunity to strike.
Oh. Great.
So here's the thing..Scholarships are paid by donations, correct?
So...why do people who are donating to VT Athletics have to "honor" having their money given to young athletes who no longer want to compete for VT?
While its not nice...its also the real world. This is an extremely common practice in the private sector where sign-on or education bonuses are tied to remaining employed for a certain period of time with that company. I'm just having a hard time drumming up tons of sympathy here.
Want to stay in school??? Use your NIL to pay for it or file a fucking FAFSA like everyone else.
It's like college athletes want to live in this alternate reality where they get to be amateurs when it suits them but also be paid like professionals without any of the potential consequences.
This really gets at the heart of what bothers me about this whole thing. They want to have their cake and eat it too. And it's like everyone just woke up one morning and decided they should get to without any thought to anything else.
More accurately... we (collectively) have been loathe to admit that this isn't an amateur sport any more, and have only recently been dragged to that not-quite-yet realization by a bunch of court loses. We (some representative body of college revenue sports) needs to admit the obvious, that we're a professional sport, and go to congress to get the kinds of anti-trust and labor exemptions needed to maintain things.
Until we have the courage to abandon all pretense of amateurism, we'll keep figuring things out as we go along, applying bandaids to deep wounds.
I mean everyone else was living in the alternate reality that athlete were amatuer while playing a sport that generates millions in profits every year. That the athletes weren't employees even though they coach could dictate their major the classes they take, when they take their classes, how much time they spend at a facility, what to eat, etc. while being able to remove them from the university at anytime they wanted.
I was gonna type something out here but honestly just copy and paste any DCWilson Baller Industrial Complex rant here.
Everyone knew the score for decades. And now we just decided to throw all the rules out the window and this ambulance chasing opportunist bullshit is the result. That is not better.
You can't compare this really to the private sector. The rules are set where the player more commits to the coach than the school. If the coach is fired, they can transfer - that's a tie between the player and coach. In the private sector, the distinction is made that it's a tie to the company, not the boss, so it wouldn't matter if your boss left, you'd still be expected to stay with the company. You can argue that the college is paying the scholarship, but in the private sector, there isn't some governing body that says if your boss gets fired, you can get out of agreements with your current company.
It is my understanding that the "redshirt" is not a decision unilaterally made by the athlete, it is in some way with the collaboration of the coaching staff and the athlete and possibly well informed by medical staff.
If the athlete unilaterally declares a redshirt without the agreement of the coaching staff, they may be in violation of the terms of agreement for attending the school and/or scholarship and/or NIL agreements.
It sounds as if this lawyer may be making the claim that there were some athletes that put themselves in that position and the ramifications are about to be unpleasant.
The NIL agreements need to be examined. Those are contracts, and like any contract i'm sure there are clauses in there that cover specific terms that must be upheld which could void the contract if violated. This guy is probably getting wind of some some player complaining without actually seeing the NIL agreement that was signed and the language within.
Oh fuck off. They want to be paid for games VT plays after entering the Portal?
I could maybe get it for guys that are redshirting and still with the team (even if they are intending to transfer at the end of the season). But guys entering the portal? This is just absurd.
But if the player just decides I am not playing and taking a redshirt and the coach has given no approval and there's is no medical issues, this would be like me saying I am no longer coming to work and I expect you to pay me until I find a new job.
I my scenario I am assuming they are still participating in practice and training
It would be like any of the developers on my teams to want to partake in training exercises to get certifications but adamantly refuse to do hands on coding and still demand to get their full pay.
But participating in practice still has benefits for other players on the team as well. You are equating the redshirt with someone who left them program, but there is a middle ground where they are essentially the same as a player who doesn't earn play time
Edit: and to further clarify. I am speaking about players who take a redshirt and don't enter the portal immediately. I'm fine if they want to wait and see what the new staff is an earn a spot there.
It's not fully participating if the coaches waned them on game day.
This is essentially a test of how far they can stretch Redshirt rules. Essentially, players want to be able to call it quits after 4 games and still be paid for the rest of the season.
It is obviously in their best interest to continue to be able to use team facilities to train, possibly practice.
But make no mistake, this player was not coming back to VT..that was bullshit. This is no different than when a verbal recruit "reopens" their recruitment....they aren't going back to the original school 99.9% of the time.
From the school's standpoint there is little benefit to having the player around and lots of risk involved-they would clearly be on the hook for any injury that occurs while there.
NIL:
Step 1. Pay us to show up
Step 2. Pay us more to stay
Step 3. Keep paying us until we find someone else to.
And if at any point, we feel we aren't being paid as we like or just want to get paid longer, we'll file lawsuits.
Can we please finally agree that this has reached a level of utter insanity at this point??
yes
I have three words that everyone needs to get on board with:
Collective
Bargaining
Agreement
.... College athletics needs a players association because this group aint it - https://www.ncpanow.org/
It makes me wonder why I watch at all anymore.
We tend to think that with all the conference realignment, this was the worst time for us to fall off a cliff as we risk being left out, but maybe it's the best time. What better time to suck than when college football as a whole is completely ruined?
Anybody else very happy that Tech has supposedly been paying the NIL monthly installment amounts rather than lump sum? You leave the program, gravy train turns off.
Tech hasn't been paying NIL at all, that is seperate from the university and is an agreement outside of the university and the student athlete.
Weird how people complain they aren't getting paid any more when they quit the job they were paid to do...
Bitter with more clarification:
Well.... yeah. if the player tells the coaches he's not willing to participate in any games for the team going forward, against the coach's wishes, then yeah, he's a non-participant of the program anymore. What the fuck are we doing if these players can just decide to not fulfill their duties and still be able to collect a scholarship and a NIL payment. Holy shit, the schools have to get SOME control back here. This is fucking ridiculous.
I refuse to attend class or take tests, i should still get a passing grade
I made Deans List one time in college, why aren't they still paying me a Deans List Bonus? That was 12 whole years ago I'm suing for lost wages and suing them again for not getting me a job lined up right out of school
I refuse to go to work again until... ever. I demand to be paid my full salary with an annual inflationary increase until I reach age 65.
Plus, since it will be saving more for reduced headcount for employee support, training PPE, etc, Demand a performance increase.
Hmm, no class or tests, but passing grades. So you obviously want to go to UNC.
Now it's both Pay for Play and Pay For No Play.
I feel like I need to channel DC for just a bit.
There is no other profession (beyond being the owner or controlling executive of your own organization) where you get to continue to reap benefits and payments when no longer participating.
Professional athletes don't get this sort of treatment.
98.8% of these college football players are not good enough to play professionally. It is not the NCAA, individual Universities, nor the general public's fault that there is no compelling economic interest in semi-pro football after College. It is even less their responsibility to subsidize athletes indefinitely because they really like getting paid to play sports.
These arguments are fallacious, illogical and lack any merit.
This is the end result of years of "everyone gets a trophy" logic compounded, mutated, and taken beyond the point of sanity.
I would say DC approves that message, but it needed a couple more expletives.
To me this sounds like the player wants to skip out on this lost cause of a season and save his eligibility for another year when we are hopefully better. I get it, but unfortunately that isn't how this works right now, and the player can't just decide that on his own
That's how the lawyer is framing it.
My guess is he 100% wants out but wants to find a loophole to still be a "member of the team" and still get paid.
Then once the next Portal opens...**poof**
VT read through the tea leaves and said.."yeah...fuck that."
They lawyer is also framing it that the player wants to remain at VT after redshirting.
Yep, complete bullshit.
Because saying..."hey this guy really wants out of VT, but also wants to keep getting paid til January while not playing" doesn't evoke public sympathy and pull on the heartstrings like---this massive, monolithic University is unilaterally forcing my client out.
Burn it all to the ground and start over.
RELEASE THE CONTRACTS
I won't buy a word this "NIL Lawyer" says until I see the contracts. Fuck, and I mean FUCK, all of this. Somebody get DC on a plane to Miami to duke it out with this guy
It would seem to me that whoever is paying the NIL would be able to argue that his value was based on his attractiveness to HOKIE fans. No fans, no value.
This really makes me want to watch college football. What a shit show.
I like Montgomery more and more each day, though.
At the very least lock them out of the facilities while this plays out. I hate that we are in an environment where average at best players on a shit team feel entitled to show up and cash a check without playing an actual game.
I want the guys who are going to give it their best, no matter the results vs these entitled guys who are worse for team morale then good scout team members.
Don't worry I'm sure the lawyers will sort all this out! /s
You know what they say- one lawyer in town is honest and helpful, two lawyers in town are rich.
Speaking of shirts, I wouldn't be posting about how I'm a lawyer and yada yada yada with a profile pic wearing a grey t-shirt and looking like a total douchebag.
I wonder whom he rented the kids from for his profile pic.
The whole NIL thing was fucked from the start. As someone who paid off student loans by their damn self (as I'm sure a bunch of us on here have), I would have done anything they wanted me to for a free education, meals, travel, etc. I'd be willing to bet large sums of money to say those benefits beat the hell out of working 3 jobs for 10 years to get loans paid off.
Idk, maybe I'm just getting more and more into the "get off my lawn" attitude..
So here's the easy counter-argument from VT:
VT competes in the ACC, where revenue is now shared partially based on TV Ratings.
If you are not competing in games, you are not aiding us in advancing our revenue and your absence may actually be reducing our revenue and producing economic damage to our University. You are now officially a tort feasor.
How about we file a Countersuit for damages from lost TV revenue????
Oh, what's that Darren....you don't want to spout your stupid mouth off on Twitter anymore??? Yeah, thought so.
"How about we file a Countersuit for damages from lost TV revenue?
Do. It!!!
So, there are a couple of issues that may be in play here.
If lawsuit ends up being many players, especially players with expensive contracts, then maybe there is a monetary incentive for VT to pursue it in courts or arbitration. I doubt it gets there, and this will likely be settled quietly or VT just pays.
"Does VT just give in and give the full payment?"
Would doing so set a legal precedent that would be used in other cases forcing all schools to do so? I highly doubt VT wants to be the one to open that Pandora's Box.
To answer your question, legal precedent is not set by a settlement. Only judges can set legal precedent by handing out a legal ruling on a case. And generally, appellate courts set legal precedent (not the lower level courts).
Bold of you to think legal precedent and settled law actually means anything anymore
Nothing bold at all about my statement.
I was just commenting on how legal precedent is set. And legal precedent is changed in the same manner. How was Rowe v. Wade overturned? By the highest appellate court in the U.S, the very court that set the legal precedent in the first place.
Yep! and going further back- Dred Scot and Plessy vs. Ferguson followed many decades later by Brown vs. Board of Education for Topeka, KS...
If you want to be viewed as employees then don't complain when you get treated like one.
When you independently decide you're a non-participant, your NIL and any athletic scholarship should end.
Otherwise, you play if the coach tells you to play.
Doesn't the team decide whether to redshirt you or not?
This seems to be about a lawyer trying to get paid his customary rates while the player gets to have his cake and eat it, too.
If this were permitted, it would be a lot cheaper to just pay the guy, but then why wouldn't all college players who want to leave any team just do the same thing, and get a paid year off?
No, the player can't be permitted to redshirt on his own. And if a player DOES redshirt with the team's approval, shouldn't the NIL be reduced?
I think this can negotiated, from the team standpoint to include assurances the player will return for future seasons.
So Holloway says "I'm redshirting & entering the portal." This unnamed player says "I'm redshirting...not going anywhere."
—Were these situations treated differently? Should they be?
Doesn't seem like they were; the answer to whether they should be is whether the coach thinks the player has future value to the team. In the old world, for players on standard year-to-year scholarship contracts, if a player unilaterally told a coach he's redshirting rather than it being the result of a discussion, the coach then had to decide whether the player is getting his scholarship renewed for next year. If that's a no, then the coach had to decide whether it's a greater disruption to just boot the guy or let him hang out.
What you didn't have in that world was that second decision impacting continued NIL payments. It would be shocking for VT to offer scholarship terms limiting the coaching staff's ability to kick a player off the team, so any claim to stay with the team scans transparently as clown shit. How that decision affects the NIL payments comes down to the individual NIL contract's terms, though, and that's something we don't have access to.
But if a player redshirt and is not on TV then how is NIL still valid? Why would his NIL be of value any more?
I agree with the logic of your statement, but logic and the terms of the NIL contract don't have to have anything to do with each other.
Thanks! Sorry if this has already been discussed (I didn't read the whole topic), but I thought Holloway might be a new angle.
Sure but why is the school even involved? NIL is a contract with some one that is not VT. If a player redshirts and transfers and they lose their NIL then VT has nothing to do with it.
Again, we don't know what the NIL contract has in it. VT doesn't have to be a party to the contract for the player to possibly have agreed to a stipulation that he remain on the roster for the payments to keep flowing, or to a conduct clause that terminates the agreement immediately in the event that he is kicked off the team. In that scenario the obvious argument would be that he was wrongly removed from the roster and VT should make him whole for the money he lost as a result of that wrong VT did to him.
Yes, this would be IMO shameless and ridiculous. That's never stopped an attorney before and it ain't stopping this one now.
I still want this to get either laughed out of court or tech to fight it to the bitter end. The player decided to redshirt not the coach. That is a self termination of involvement in the program. As soon as the coach said we still expect you to play, it was the player quitting on his team.
I imagine there might be a lot of schools willing to chip into a legal defense fund for VT, while letting us fight the battle.
My point is this Florida Land Shark wants to force a settlement through the press/media. Tech needs to say never and we are going to make you pay court fees when you lose.
It's the same thing as all the patent trolling that the state of Texas allows in their courts. The patent holders (who obtained the patents via acquisition) have ZERO intentions of materializing their patents, but they want the quick settlement money from anyone who dares try to make a useful product/service from "their ideas".
If this truly turns out to be the case where the players want their cake and to eat it, too, then I agree with above...they should be laughed out of court. But more than likely VT would settle because it would be cheaper financially and publicly than litigating to the bitter end.