Sticking with the Texas Tech-Brendan Sorsby theme, I chatted with a handful of legal experts about the suit filed Monday and, well, before Sorsby decided to leave for the NFL.
The answers were wide-ranging, but they touched on a few of the more crucial legal issues and potential broader impacts. Here is a sampling of the most interesting points:
Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Kevin Paule (litigation attorney, Hill Ward Henderson) on what the average fan should know: “This is not the first time that a school or a player over the past two years has filed a lawsuit seeking to be eligible or seeking some sort of finding by a court that they’re able to play, notwithstanding what NCAA rules may say.
“This one is a little bit different by the fact that it deals with behavioral and disciplinary things. It deals with the one rule that nobody’s allowed to violate: betting on your own team.”
Mit Winter (attorney, Kennyhertz Perry) on what the lasting impact of the Sorsby saga might be: “It’s really galvanized people to want to get to some model, whether that’s a model that is governed by a federal law or some other model, if it’s employment, collective bargaining or something similar to that. People just want to get to a place where every rule is not going to be subject to a lawsuit and where there’s certainty about the rules, so there’s not just constant litigation and trying to get around the rules all the time.”
Ryan Regula (partner, Snell & Wilmer) on what this portends for college sports and how conferences govern themselves: “The analogy I think of is Major League Baseball had the steroid era. This is now the governance era for collegiate athletics. We’re in a whole new ballgame, whether people want to be admitting it or not. … To me, what does college sports look like moving forward? It’s no longer a thought experiment. We’re seeing this play out in real time, potentially through litigation, through legislation, and it’s going to dictate what our favorite teams look like moving forward.
“… Gambling is part of the story, but it’s way bigger than that. And I think the quicker everyone kind of figures that out, perhaps we can stop the Titanic before it ultimately goes down.”