Prepare to be made angry. Prepare to shake your head in disgust.
Not so much because you care deeply about or have a rooting interest in or for the organizations bickering here, although on the one hand maybe you do care somewhat, but because what follows is a ridiculous case of people of power ruining college sports and the opportunities supposedly created by them for student-athletes who really are at least mostly student-athletes. Student-athletes who have and had nothing to do with stirring so much drama.
They are just stuck in the middle of it, as the song goes, “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.” And that’s the part of this story that is as aggravating as it is asinine.
A legal dispute has arisen between the Western Athletic Conference and Utah Valley University. And that confrontation has led the conference not just to ban the broadcast of UVU basketball games on various outlets, among other assorted penalties, but the league is also banning UVU teams and its athletes — in men’s and women’s track and field, in men’s and women’s golf, in baseball, in softball, in men’s and women’s basketball — from competing this year in WAC tournaments, which, in turn, will prevent those athletes and teams from qualifying for NCAA postseason tournaments.
That’s just wicked. That’s just wrong.
But what we have here is a league and a school arguing over money, arguing over distribution and non-distribution of cash, arguing over the payment or non-payment of an exit fee from UVU to the WAC. And Wolverine athletes are being caught in that clash, empowered to do absolutely nothing about it, nothing except worry that their dreams of participating in postseason championships, after all the work they’ve put into their sports, have vaporized. They’ve been held hostage by greedy officials who have shown their hand, demonstrated that they care more about the almighty dollar than they do the college kids who generate those dollars, start to finish.
The specifics — accusations hurled in both directions — of the fight are a snooze a minute. I’ll summarize them with a brief flyover, kicking some of the boring details to the curb: Two years ago, the WAC promised its member institutions annual distributions and as a part of that had reps from those schools sign an agreement that would commit them to the conference for two years under certain conditions. If they didn’t stay, they would pay.
UVU, which announced last year it intends to join the Big West after this academic year, claims those certain conditions weren’t met and that, on account of that, it is under no obligation to pay what the league wants — a $1 million exit fee. The league, which is splintering, its schools heading in a number of different directions to new homes, with a cluster of them in Texas reforming there, wants the cash, come hell or high water, from UVU.
Neither side is budging.
The league, what’s left of it, is using the students’ participation or lack thereof as leverage. In return, UVU has filed a lawsuit against the WAC in the 4th District Court in Provo, claiming damages and injuries to — its athletes and coaches for lost opportunities for competition, recognition, awards, its programs for lost exposure and recruiting, and also losses from sponsors, donors and fans, and even losses to broadcast networks who won’t be allowed to broadcast games in which UVU participates.
The school is suing for financial reward to be determined at trial, and for the bans the league has put upon the school and its teams and athletes to be lifted.
However this mess is cleaned up, the wrongs righted, the controversies solved, the greater issue here is that adults vested with power sometimes use that power to the detriment of college athletes, most of whom simply want to see their diligence fulfilled by way of participating in their sport, going up against the top competition they can find, showcasing their talents, enjoying teamwork, making their names and their memories.
This isn’t so much about NIL, not about college athletes getting rich. It’s about college athletes having the chance — some of them for the last time — to play their games, to see how high they can fly.
I’m no master of the law, nor do I know which way this dispute will or should fall. But I will declare that it’s pathetic that these kinds of fights over institutional money avalanche down onto the backs of the athletes and their efforts without whom and which no money would be divvied out to anyone, not to leagues, league officials or to schools or school officials.
College sports is a lousy place for student-athletes, in cases like this, to learn that it is greed that hoists the trophy over everything and everyone else, that the real winners are the well-dressed dudes and dudettes in the courtroom.