Wisconsin officially sues Miami over Xavier Lucas

[Ispyin]

Your last point is why we see the lawsuit as pointless, but to UW and the Big Ten it has some meaning. This is likely the conference even more so than the school wanting a court to find that they have an enforceable NIL contract, especially if the Big Ten is encouraging all their member schools to use a similar NIL contract.

But you and I know that courts do not care to be used this way and find such lawsuits to be an absolute waste of time and resources. This will likely take 3+ years to be decided if the parties choose to take discovery, and UM may just as a way of saying F You to UW. And by that time the entire point of the lawsuit may be moot considering the evolution of college sports and player payment.

In the end it all seems like a colossal waste of time.

define them in terms of money- collective? or wisconsin? not you but in this thread peoplle are comingling two different aspects here. wisconsin has no leg to stand on. the collective has a couple of chair legs to stand on but technically they could have held lucas to fulfill his collective NIL deal until July 1- they might have opted out but nothing was blocking it.

wisconsin itself did not give one dollar, nothing was coming til july, and then only after conttingencies not inplace at the time of signing came to pass, if they did.

wisconsin hoping for revisionist history. their law school must have forgot to teach the basics of 7 points of what is a contract, and how even if one of them isn't present, in legal terms it could be go **** yourself. also, they clearly have no appreciation of the difference between MOU and a contract and when either can become enforceable.

 

[TheOriginalCane]

Now that we have both seen the actual complaint, it looks like their path to avoid federal court is even easier due to the LLC being the other plaintiff. BOP is on the moving party and the other side has had five months to prepare for this.

Now, all of this has been interesting and fun, but ultimately UM doesn't need to go to federal court to win this one as, like everyone here has already said, there just are too many flaws in their theories for both liability and damages. The complaint is amusing at times though-arguing that UM "continued to recruit" an athlete who had made a "written commitment" to another school likely means a recruit tweeted his commitment and UM, like every other school, didn't stop trying to recruit him. The tortious interference with prospective contracts because of an "expectation" took some courage to write as well.

I acknolwedged I was wrong on the 11th Am issue long ago, amigo. I have no issue acknowledging errors, and this was one of them. I can definitely appreciate a joke too, and if that is what you want to call the discussion about a 12(b)(6) , good on you, you fooled me. Lastly, I'm done with the personal back and forth on this.

It's always funny when the guy who is losing the argument BADLY then throws up his hands and says "I'm done with this". Good stuff.

Nobody ever said UM "needs" to go to federal court to win this. There are other good reasons for it as well.

What dopey people, such as yourself, have missed is that this case is being pushed by the Big 10. They used attorneys out of Chicago who are going to need pro hac vice just to appear in a Wisconsin courtroom.

This whole bull**** lawsuit is for the Big 10 to protect its rev-share template. The only operative contract EVEN POSSIBLE would have been the Collective's agreement with Xavier Lucas. The University of Wisconsin was forced to join the lawsuit by the Big 10 to try to get a declaratory judgment on the REV SHARE CONTRACT. Nobody actually cares about your garden variety NIL deal with the Collective, nobody needs a declaratory judgment on that one, these contracts have been around for years. Still, the NIL contract may not have provided consideration, and it was breached after 15 days (MAX), so there are likely no damages, and it's even questionable as to Miami's knowledge of any such agreement.

But, hey, it's funny how you are trying to backpedal from the obvious "any law student would know what I'm talking about" 12(b)(6) joke. Of course, if you had actually gone to law school, you'd probably be the dip**** to stand up and question the joke on jurisdictional grounds.

 

[Ispyin]

It's always funny when the guy who is losing the argument BADLY then throws up his hands and says "I'm done with this". Good stuff.

Nobody ever said UM "needs" to go to federal court to win this. There are other good reasons for it as well.

What dopey people, such as yourself, have missed is that this case is being pushed by the Big 10. They used attorneys out of Chicago who are going to need pro hac vice just to appear in a Wisconsin courtroom.

This whole bull**** lawsuit is for the Big 10 to protect its rev-share template. The only operative contract EVEN POSSIBLE would have been the Collective's agreement with Xavier Lucas. The University of Wisconsin was forced to join the lawsuit by the Big 10 to try to get a declaratory judgment on the REV SHARE CONTRACT. Nobody actually cares about your garden variety NIL deal with the Collective, nobody needs a declaratory judgment on that one, these contracts have been around for years. Still, the NIL contract may not have provided consideration, and it was breached after 15 days (MAX), so there are likely no damages, and it's even questionable as to Miami's knowledge of any such agreement.

But, hey, it's funny how you are trying to backpedal from the obvious "any law student would know what I'm talking about" 12(b)(6) joke. Of course, if you had actually gone to law school, you'd probably be the dip**** to stand up and question the joke on jurisdictional grounds.

Miami could have had knowledge of the collective deal but there was nothing directly prohibiting the wisconsin collective from utilizing their rights through June 30- miami didnt even sign a collective deal when he enrolled.

 

[RightSaidFred]

American courts are a corrupt joke. We’re probably going to lose—not because we’re wrong, but because this is happening in Wisconsin. The judge likely has ties to UW or another Big Ten school.


Here’s the deal: judges aren’t neutral—they’re political. They decide who they want to win, then twist the facts and laws to make it look legit. It’s not about justice. It’s about picking sides.

Truth and justice don’t mean **** in this country. Politics, money, power and connections mean everything. We’re gonna lose.

 

[caneingville]

define them in terms of money- collective? or wisconsin? not you but in this thread peoplle are comingling two different aspects here. wisconsin has no leg to stand on. the collective has a couple of chair legs to stand on but technically they could have held lucas to fulfill his collective NIL deal until July 1- they might have opted out but nothing was blocking it.

wisconsin itself did not give one dollar, nothing was coming til july, and then only after conttingencies not inplace at the time of signing came to pass, if they did.

wisconsin hoping for revisionist history. their law school must have forgot to teach the basics of 7 points of what is a contract, and how even if one of them isn't present, in legal terms it could be go **** yourself. also, they clearly have no appreciation of the difference between MOU and a contract and when either can become enforceable.

Lucas did receive money on 12/2/24 when he signed the agreements. The complaint doesn’t say if it was for one or both, and it is a little murky, but he did allegedly receive some money that day, I’m assuming they will argue as consideration.

 

[AtlAtty]

define them in terms of money- collective? or wisconsin? not you but in this thread peoplle are comingling two different aspects here. wisconsin has no leg to stand on. the collective has a couple of chair legs to stand on but technically they could have held lucas to fulfill his collective NIL deal until July 1- they might have opted out but nothing was blocking it.

wisconsin itself did not give one dollar, nothing was coming til july, and then only after conttingencies not inplace at the time of signing came to pass, if they did.

wisconsin hoping for revisionist history. their law school must have forgot to teach the basics of 7 points of what is a contract, and how even if one of them isn't present, in legal terms it could be go **** yourself. also, they clearly have no appreciation of the difference between MOU and a contract and when either can become enforceable.

Let’s stick to the collective as the NIL contract appears to have been between Lucas and the Collective.

But the problem with all such contracts is defining any damage to the Collective. A court is never going to enforce specific performance, meaning no court will ever say to Lucas, ‘you signed a contract with the UW Collective so now you have to play for UW’. So that form of “damages” is unavailable.

From a larger perspective, the entire point of civil suits is to make the plaintiff “whole”. Meaning that the plaintiff lost ____ due to some action by the defendant, and it will cost $X to make plaintiff whole again. In a car accident plaintiffs are typically paid a multiple of their injuries. In a contract dispute, often the parties will agree on the damage if either party breaches the contract. Or sometimes damages are easy to prove.

For example, let’s say a particular musician is supposed to play at a club and the club sells 500 tickets at $40/ticket=$20,000. Then the artist does not appear. The club will argue that it should receive back any money paid to the artist, as well as $20,000 from lost revenue due to the artist not appearing.

In this particular case the collective has no method of quantifying how much money it is “losing” by Lucas not playing. And that does not even take into account that Lucas may have a bad season, or may be injured thereby lowering his speculative worth.

And you are correct that the Collective still could have asked Lucas to fulfill his contractual obligations. But they did not because presumably Lucas’ value to the UW Collective decreased dramatically once he left school. Another reason why damages are hard to prove.

So in the end, UW wants a Wisconsin state court to say that UW and its collective have an enforceable NIL contract and that UM interfered in the contractual relationship between the UW Collective and Lucas. But there is no damage to award beyond that, and another court in the future may rule in opposite to this court based on different state contract laws. Not to mention that the decision of a Wisconsin state court will not be binding legal precedent; arguably not even in the state of Wisconsin, but certainly not in any other state or court. So even a declaratory judgment that UM did all the things alleged, will be legally meaningless.

Think of the USFL suing the NFL. The USFL won the lawsuit and was awarded $1. That is what this lawsuit is worth

 

[flips]

It'll be interesting to see where the NCAA falls on all of this. I think we can all agree that the B10 is the one really pulling the strings here, but what they are essentially saying is that their template supersedes and/or invalidates NCAA mandates. Perhaps the NCAA has already ceded any semblance of authority or control to the member institutions/conferences, but the fact that their argument says that they did not input Lucas' name into the portal due to to a "contractual" agreement (no matter how it was presented) is a big F U to the NCAA.

This. Multi-year rev-share contracts between a player and a school and the transfer portal do not jibe. Big10 either trying to kill transfer portal outright, or create a buyout/transfer fee system. If the multi-year contracts are valid, and the transfer portal still exists then there would have to a mechanism to buyout/terminate the multi-year contract.

 

[Ispyin]

Lucas did receive money on 12/2/24 when he signed the agreements. The complaint doesn’t say if it was for one or both, and it is a little murky, but he did allegedly receive some money that day, I’m assuming they will argue as consideration.

Wisconsin itself can’t pay him that day. There was no revenue sharing. It had to come from the collective.

 

[Ispyin]

Let’s stick to the collective as the NIL contract appears to have been between Lucas and the Collective.

But the problem with all such contracts is defining any damage to the Collective. A court is never going to enforce specific performance, meaning no court will ever say to Lucas, ‘you signed a contract with the UW Collective so now you have to play for UW’. So that form of “damages” is unavailable.

From a larger perspective, the entire point of civil suits is to make the plaintiff “whole”. Meaning that the plaintiff lost ____ due to some action by the defendant, and it will cost $X to make plaintiff whole again. In a car accident plaintiffs are typically paid a multiple of their injuries. In a contract dispute, often the parties will agree on the damage if either party breaches the contract. Or sometimes damages are easy to prove.

For example, let’s say a particular musician is supposed to play at a club and the club sells 500 tickets at $40/ticket=$20,000. Then the artist does not appear. The club will argue that it should receive back any money paid to the artist, as well as $20,000 from lost revenue due to the artist not appearing.

In this particular case the collective has no method of quantifying how much money it is “losing” by Lucas not playing. And that does not even take into account that Lucas may have a bad season, or may be injured thereby lowering his speculative worth.

And you are correct that the Collective still could have asked Lucas to fulfill his contractual obligations. But they did not because presumably Lucas’ value to the UW Collective decreased dramatically once he left school. Another reason why damages are hard to prove.

So in the end, UW wants a Wisconsin state court to say that UW and its collective have an enforceable NIL contract and that UM interfered in the contractual relationship between the UW Collective and Lucas. But there is no damage to award beyond that, and another court in the future may rule in opposite to this court based on different state contract laws.

Think of the USFL suing the NFL. The USFL won the lawsuit and was awarded $1. That is what this lawsuit is worth

Wisconsin as an entity has no standing to the collective agreement. They were not a party to it, even if we all know the realityIt was outside at the time so they are also suing on their pending agreement after the house settlement which, as of December 2 had not even been approved and their revenue sharing doesn’t go into effect till July 1 and that’s what I am talking about.

They are trying to sue potentially on the collective agreement, but also on agreement that is really nothing more than a memorandum of understanding because they were not in a position to sign a contract yet because the conditions didn’t exist for it

 

[MikeCane18]

This. Multi-year rev-share contracts between a player and a school and the transfer portal do not jibe. Big10 either trying to kill transfer portal outright, or create a buyout/transfer fee system. If the multi-year contracts are valid, and the transfer portal still exists then there would have to a mechanism to buyout/terminate the multi-year contract.

Especially without a collective bargaining on behalf of the players.

 

[caneingville]

Wisconsin itself can’t pay him that day. There was no revenue sharing. It had to come from the collective.

Right, they can’t if they want it to actually be legally enforceable, but I’m just going by the way the complaint reads. They merged the two agreements with all the alleged facts. Until we have discovery, we don’t know for sure.

 

[PalyCane]

Let’s stick to the collective as the NIL contract appears to have been between Lucas and the Collective.

But the problem with all such contracts is defining any damage to the Collective. A court is never going to enforce specific performance, meaning no court will ever say to Lucas, ‘you signed a contract with the UW Collective so now you have to play for UW’. So that form of “damages” is unavailable.

From a larger perspective, the entire point of civil suits is to make the plaintiff “whole”. Meaning that the plaintiff lost ____ due to some action by the defendant, and it will cost $X to make plaintiff whole again. In a car accident plaintiffs are typically paid a multiple of their injuries. In a contract dispute, often the parties will agree on the damage if either party breaches the contract. Or sometimes damages are easy to prove.

For example, let’s say a particular musician is supposed to play at a club and the club sells 500 tickets at $40/ticket=$20,000. Then the artist does not appear. The club will argue that it should receive back any money paid to the artist, as well as $20,000 from lost revenue due to the artist not appearing.

In this particular case the collective has no method of quantifying how much money it is “losing” by Lucas not playing. And that does not even take into account that Lucas may have a bad season, or may be injured thereby lowering his speculative worth.

And you are correct that the Collective still could have asked Lucas to fulfill his contractual obligations. But they did not because presumably Lucas’ value to the UW Collective decreased dramatically once he left school. Another reason why damages are hard to prove.

So in the end, UW wants a Wisconsin state court to say that UW and its collective have an enforceable NIL contract and that UM interfered in the contractual relationship between the UW Collective and Lucas. But there is no damage to award beyond that, and another court in the future may rule in opposite to this court based on different state contract laws.

Think of the USFL suing the NFL. The USFL won the lawsuit and was awarded $1. That is what this lawsuit is worth

Great post. Xavier could have continued to fulfill his NIL obligations to UW's collective as you stated above.

The "harm" that UW and the collective claim is tied to Xavier remaining at UW. Problem with that is it then wades into pay-for-play and an employment relationship, which are kryptonite issues for the NCAA/CSC/Conferences/schools.

 

[ICANEDOIT]

17-0 this year, *******!

 

[1mg of Epi]

Reading that made Wisconsin sound like butthurt soy boys exploiting a student athlete.

College Football Karen

 

[DamnLiesAndStatistics]

Can one of the lawyers in this forum explain why the B1G shared agreement should be considered a memorandum of understanding rather than a contingent contract? I've seen it referred to both ways here.

Also, why would the B1G want this to be their test case for the agreement they've handed out? Wouldn't it be cleaner to do with player's who have signed after the House settlement went into effect?

 

[TheOriginalCane]

Right, they can’t if they want it to actually be legally enforceable, but I’m just going by the way the complaint reads. They merged the two agreements with all the alleged facts. Until we have discovery, we don’t know for sure.

I'd also point out that ONE TIME the complaint correctly calls the rev-share deal a MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING.

Why?

Because rev-share (at the time) was not yet legal. Wisconsin could not even provide Lucas for CONSIDERATION for a binding rev-share contract without it being an NCAA violation (something Wisconsin is really known for, recently).

So here's the thing. Anyone who has gone to law school (and earned a decent grade in Contracts) will tell you that you can't use one contract as consideration or terms for another contract. EACH CONTRACT MUST RISE OR FALL ON ITS OWN. And if Wisconsin couldn't provide consideration for the MOU, and the WHOLE REASON for doing an MOU is to create a binding contract IN THE FUTURE when such things are legal and permissible, then there is only one possible conclusion.

The rev-share MOU is not, and never was, a binding legal contract. No matter how many times King & Spalding call it a "contract" in a 21-page complaint that might as well have been written on toilet paper.

And if the court does what IT SHOULD and immediately dismisses Wisconsin and its claims from the lawsuit, then it's just Wisconsin Collective v. University of Miami, mano a mano. And then you petition for a removal to federal court. Or you do it at the same time, I don't care.

There is ZERO-POINT-ZERO reason for declaratory judgment on the Collective NIL deal. They've been around for years. Once we get the court to realize that Wisconsin only has an MOU for a "contract" on the rev-share issue, then a motion for dismissal should be granted (whether under federal rules of civil procedure OR STATE, just to keep that one crybaby porster happy).

 

[TheOriginalCane]

Can one of the lawyers in this forum explain why the B1G shared agreement should be considered a memorandum of understanding rather than a contingent contract? I've seen it referred to both ways here.

Also, why would the B1G want this to be their test case for the agreement they've handed out? Wouldn't it be cleaner to do with player's who have signed after the House settlement went into effect?

I just answered the substance of the question in another post, so I'll keep this one short.

Wisconsin wants us to BELIEVE that this is a contingent contract. But it's an MOU.

The REASON it's an MOU is because the subject matter of the agreement is not even legal. And also because Wisconsin CAN'T PROVIDE contractual consideration (say, $1.00) because Wisconsin cannot YET (at the time) pay Lucas directly like that.

Think of it another way. Let's say you and I agree to a true contingent contract. I am going to pay you, in the future, when you perform a service that has not yet happened yet. In that case, the "contingency" (doing something in the future) is in YOUR control. When you perform the service (let's say it's mowing my yard), you will get paid.

In the case of Lucas and Wisconsin, the "contingency" is the settlement of a lawsuit that is not in their control. They do not know if or when the lawsuit will be settled and "direct rev share payments" will become legal. What if the House settlement too, say, TWO MORE YEARS? The point is very simple, if the "contingency" is something completely beyond the control of the parties, that may not ever happen, and creates the actual legality and reason for the contract coming into being, AND WISCONSIN CAN'T PROVIDE ANY CONSIDERATION AT THE TIME OF THE MOU, because it is a violation of NCAA rules...

Then it MUST become an MOU. It cannot possibly be a legally binding contract. The CONTRACT will need to be entered into IN THE FUTURE, when direct payments for revenue sharing BECOME LEGAL.

 

[TooColdToHold]

Danny Kannell and Dusty Dvorcak were discussing the lawsuit this morning and they were strongly on the side of Luke Fickel and Wisconsin. Later in the show the brought on an attorney from ESPN who took the winds out of their sails and told them that the contract explicitly states that the contract was NOT a contract to play football at Wisconsin, Lucas playing ball at Miami doesn’t technically prevent him from fulfilling his NIL obligations.

The ESPN guy didn’t sound too confident that anything would come of this because the fact that the players are not considered employees is not viewed favorably by the courts.

 

[dycane]

Think of it another way. Let's say you and I agree to a true contingent contract. I am going to pay you, in the future, when you perform a service that has not yet happened yet. In that case, the "contingency" (doing something in the future) is in YOUR control. When you perform the service (let's say it's mowing my yard), you will get paid.

Executory contract

 

[L A M P]

I wouldn't mind flying a banner over a Wisconsin home game this year.

BARRY ALVAREZ HAS DIABETES.