The University of Wisconsin and its name, image and likeness collective sued the University of Miami on Friday, alleging it interfered with what it said were binding NIL revenue-sharing contracts with former cornerback Xavier Lucas.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in Dane County (Wis.) Circuit Court, alleges Miami made “impermissible contacts with (Lucas) and his representatives this past December and January, leading to Lucas’ withdrawal from Wisconsin and enrollment at Miami.

“As a result of Miami’s actions, (Lucas) abruptly left UW-Madison’s football program and enrolled at Miami, causing plaintiffs to suffer substantial pecuniary and reputational harm,” the lawsuit states. The lawsuit, which Yahoo Sports first reported on, does not name Lucas but refers to him as “Student-Athlete A.”

The suit adds another layer to the power struggle between schools, conferences and athletes, as athletes sign NIL deals but abandon those contracts to enter the transfer portal.

The House v. NCAA settlement, which will allow schools to directly compensate athletes through revenue sharing for the first time, was approved June 6. For months, schools have signed players to revenue-sharing deals contingent on the settlement’s approval, with the intention it would eliminate tampering and slow player movement. The two-year revenue-share agreement Lucas signed shortly after the end of his freshman season in Madison was set to begin July 1, the first day schools can begin directly compensating athletes.

In January, Wisconsin released a statement accusing Miami of tampering, citing “credible information” and threatening to pursue legal action. The Big Ten backed Wisconsin in a statement Friday.

“As alleged, the University of Miami knowingly ignored contractual obligations and disregarded the principle of competitive equity that is fundamental to collegiate athletics,” the Big Ten said. “The Big Ten Conference believes that the University of Miami’s actions are irreconcilable with a sustainable college sports framework and is supportive of UW-Madison’s efforts to preserve it.”

A Miami representative declined to comment on the report of Friday’s lawsuit because the school had not been served papers yet.

Wisconsin is seeking unspecified damages in the lawsuit, as well as “a declaration that Miami’s conduct directed towards (Lucas) constituted tampering.”

Lucas unenrolled from Wisconsin after school officials denied multiple requests from him and his attorney, Darren Heitner, to place his name in the transfer portal during the 20-day winter window (Dec. 9-28). Wisconsin maintains it told Lucas and his mother it would not put his name into the portal because of the two-year NIL contract he signed in December.

In the lawsuit filed Friday, Wisconsin alleges Miami’s “wrongful conduct” led to Lucas’ reaching out to a Wisconsin assistant coach on the evening of Dec. 17 — two days after returning home to South Florida for winter break — and asking to be placed in the transfer portal.

A day later, Lucas “offered a personal, family-related reason for wanting to enter the transfer portal” in a text message. Three days later, however, a relative of Lucas’ contacted a Wisconsin coach and provided information “inconsistent with his family-related rationale for seeking to transfer,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit alleges Lucas told his position coach before heading home for winter break that he had been contacted by other schools to enter the portal but “reaffirmed that he was committed to UW-Madison.”

Wisconsin said it obtained information indicating that Miami had impermissible contact with Lucas and his representatives on multiple occasions in December and January, including sending a coach and “prominent Miami alumnus” to Lucas’ South Florida home; and offering him a “more lucrative” compensation package than the one Wisconsin was paying him.

Lucas enrolled in classes at Miami in January and participated in the Hurricanes’ spring football practice in March and April. The sophomore, who had 18 tackles as a freshman, is expected to be one of Miami’s best defensive players this fall.

The NCAA said in January that its rules “could not prevent a student-athlete from unenrolling from an institution, enrolling at a new institution and competing immediately.” Wisconsin, though, was not punished for keeping Lucas’ name out of the portal.

“Enforcement is shaky — schools can block portal entry, even if it is against NCAA rules, as seen with Lucas,” Heitner told The Athletic earlier this month. “Wisconsin appears to have escaped punishment, at least for the time being, despite the clear rules violation.”

Wisconsin’s lawsuit also alleges Miami’s conduct toward Lucas was not an isolated event but part of a broader pattern of Miami’s tampering with student-athletes.

“Now more than ever, it is imperative to protect the integrity and fundamental fairness of the game, including in connection with NIL contracts,” the lawsuit states. “Indeed, student-athletes’ newfound NIL rights will be rendered meaningless if third parties are allowed to induce student-athletes to abandon their contractual commitments.”

— The Athletic’s Chris Vannini contributed to this report.

(Photo: John Fisher / Getty Images)

Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — LSU and Coastal Carolina have met only two times previously as they enter the College World Series finals Saturday night. Those games back in 2016 have not been forgotten.

Coastal Carolina swept the Tigers on their home field in super regionals on the way to their first national championship. The Chanticleers’ opponent in the CWS finals that year was Arizona. Jay Johnson, now at LSU, was Arizona’s coach.

Tigers outfielder Jake Brown was 11 years old and living in Sulphur, Louisiana, at the time, and he recalled Friday how the players on that LSU team were superheroes to him.

“A little bit of heartbreak,” he said Friday. “That was a great team, a team I think could have made a good run in the championship. Obviously, things didn’t go our way that time. Looking forward to turning it around and making something good happen for us this time.”

LSU (51-15) will be playing for its eighth national championship and second in three years. Coastal Carolina (56-11), which brings a 26-game win streak into the best-of-three series, is going for its second title in its second all-time CWS appearance.

“That would put Coastal Carolina baseball on a different planet,” Chanticleers coach Kevin Schnall said.

Cameron Flukey (8-1), who pitched four innings of relief against Arizona on June 13, will start for Coastal Carolina. Johnson has not named his starter. Ace Kade Anderson (11-1), who limited Arkansas to three hits and struck out seven in seven innings on June 14, is available.

The Tigers and Chanticleers each went 3-0 in bracket play. LSU had to beat SEC rival Arkansas twice, winning the bracket final 6-5 in walk-off fashion after a wild three-run ninth inning.

LSU’s Brown is 4 for 6 with four RBIs in three CWS games and Jared Jones is 5 for 9 with two homers and six RBIs in the last two games after striking out five times in the opener against Arkansas. Tigers pitchers have walked just four in 27 innings.

“I think if you’re at this point in the NCAA tournament, you’ve been battle-tested,” Johnson said. “I don’t believe there’s anything we have not seen. … I feel like we’re well-trained and well-prepared for, in my opinion, probably the best team that we’ve played this year in Coastal.”

The Chanticleers are yet to hit a home run at Charles Schwab Field. Colby Thorndyke has two bases-clearing doubles and is 5 for 12 with eight RBIs. Dean Mihos is 5 for 12 with a double and triple. Their pitchers have walked four in 25 innings.

Johnson, in his fourth year at LSU after six at Arizona, said his heart still aches for his 2016 Wildcats team. Arizona erased a 4-0 deficit against the Chanticleers in the third and final game of the CWS finals and stranded a runner at third base in the bottom of the ninth inning.

“We were one base hit away,” Johnson said, “and it took a couple of years to get past that. I think what I do remember about all of that is it has really helped me the next three times that we’ve been here in terms of knowing how to prepare for this.”

Scoring first is key

Fast starts are a distinguishing feature of Coastal Carolina’s offense. The Chanticleers have outscored their three CWS opponents by a combined 11-0 in the first inning and are a Division I-best 37-2 when they score first. LSU is 32-7 when it opens the scoring.

5 is magic number

LSU has won 16 straight CWS games when scoring at least five runs since losing 9-5 to Miami in 2004.

High expectations

Coastal Carolina’s Schnall makes it a point to remind the media that the Chanticleers are a national power, but that doesn’t mean in February he expected the 2025 team to play for a national championship.

“We were picked fourth in the Sun Belt,” he said. “No problem. We’ll move forward, keep our head down and keep grinding. That’s what this team did. But we clearly felt like this pitching staff was going to be the best pitching staff we ever had.”

The Chanticleers were 19-8 on March 29 and are 37-3 since.

Hit by pitch leaders

Coastal Carolina leads the country with a program record 176 hit-by-pitches this season, breaking UC Irvine’s single season-record 175 in 2024. The Chanticleers have been plunked six times in three CWS games.

“They don’t eat if they get out of the way,” Schnall said, drawing laughs. “No, it’s just something that our guys have bought into. Our guys are obsessed with getting on base. They understand the way you score runs is having guys on base. And any way you can get on base helps our team win.”

Line of the day

LSU’s Brown drew laughs at Friday’s news conference when he explained the straightforward and simple way Johnson prepares him and his teammates to play.

“We came here to play baseball,” he said. “We’re not really scholars.”

___

AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

The University of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Friday claiming Miami’s football team broke the law by tampering with a Badgers player, a first-of-its-kind legal attempt to enforce the terms of a financial contract between a football player and his school.

The lawsuit refers to the athlete in question as “Student Athlete A,” but details from the complaint line up with the offseason transfer of freshman defensive back Xavier Lucas. Lucas left Wisconsin and enrolled at Miami in January after saying the Badgers staff refused to enter his name in the transfer portal last December.

In the complaint filed Friday, Wisconsin claims that a Miami staff member and a prominent alumnus met with Lucas and his family at a relative’s home in Florida and offered him money to transfer shortly after Lucas signed a two-year contract last December. The lawsuit states that Miami committed tortious interference by knowingly compelling a player to break the terms of his deal with the Badgers.

“While we reluctantly bring this case, we stand by our position that respecting and enforcing contractual obligations is essential to maintaining a level playing field,” the school said in a statement provided to ESPN on Friday.

According to the complaint, Wisconsin decided to file suit in hopes that “during this watershed time for college athletics, this case will advance the overall integrity of the game by holding programs legally accountable when they wrongfully interfere with contractual commitments.”

Representatives from the University of Miami did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The pending case promises to be an interesting test of whether schools can use name, image and likeness (NIL) deals to keep athletes from transferring even though the players aren’t technically employees. Starting July 1, schools will begin paying their athletes directly via NIL deals.

The contracts between Wisconsin and their athletes give the school the nonexclusive rights to use a player’s NIL in promotions. Part of the deal, according to the lawsuit, prohibits an athlete from making any commitments to enroll or play sports at other schools. The lawsuit says Wisconsin had a reasonable expectation that Lucas would “continue to participate as a member of its football program” until the deal ended.

However, according to several contracts between Big Ten schools and their players that ESPN has previously reviewed, these deals explicitly state that athletes are not being paid to play football for the university. Since the school is technically paying only to use the player’s NIL rights, it’s not clear if a judge will consider it fair to enforce a part of the contract that dictates where the player attends school.

The Big Ten said in a statement Friday that it supports Wisconsin’s decision to file the lawsuit and that Miami’s alleged actions “are irreconcilable with a sustainable college sports framework.”

Darren Heitner, a Florida-based attorney who represents Xavier Lucas, told ESPN that Wisconsin did not file any legal claims against Lucas and declined to comment further.

The 2025 NBA Draft does not look much different at the very top this year than in other years, where the projected stars reside. Cooper Flagg and Dylan Harper sit there now.

The overall pool for the June 25-26 draft, however, is considered to be one of the weakest in recent years, with the decline most evident in the lower third of the first round, picks No. 21-30.

Blame/credit NIL.

The benefits available to top college athletes through their name, image and likeness earnings — plus another year of a college scholarship — appear to be major factors in motivating some potential lower level first-rounders to stay on campus.

Florida forward Alex Condon, Florida transfer guard Boogie Fland, Michigan transfer forward Yaxel Lendeborg, Auburn guard Tahaad Pettiford and Houston forward Milos Uzan are among those who pulled their name from the list of early draft entrants just before the June 15 deadline.

Stay In College, Still Get Paid

“Now these kids can go to college and get paid,” an unnamed NBA agent told ESPN while discussing the 2025 draft, “and most of these kids would prefer to go to college and play in March Madness and do these things, if all things are equal.”

Add the NIL money to the factors that a player who declares for the draft while retaining the college eligibility must consider.

The NBA can provide players generalized feedback on where they might fall in the draft. Late in the first round. Early second round. Etc. Before, those evaluations may not matter to a motivated player.

Now, the NIL money adds another element.

Lendeborg is a prime example. After playing two seasons at Arizona Western junior college and two more at UAB, he entered the transfer portal in March and chose to attend Michigan while at the same time keeping his name in the draft pool.

Considered considered a potential late-first rounder or early second-rounder, Lendeborg pulled his name and has an NIL deal with the Wolverines worth $2.3 million, according on On3, which monitors NIL forces.

Fland, a transfer from Arkansas, has a $2.1 million NIL deal in place with defending national champion Florida, according to On3.

Condon had 12 points and secured the game-winning rebound in the Gators’ 65-63 NCAA championship victory over Houston. His NIL deal with the collective Florida Victorious was not announced.

The Money Has Evened Things Out

“One of the huge benefits of the NIL world, you don’t have to sacrifice for maybe as tough of a fiscal decision between going pro or staying now,” Florida coach Todd Golden said at the SEC spring meetings.

“Fortunately, he’s positioned himself nicely that way.”

The money has evened things out.

NBA rookies sign four-year contracts that are determined on a sliding scale by when they were taken in the draft, and the figures are out for the 2025 draft class. Most contracts are guaranteed.

The stated value of the No. 1 pick — Flagg — is $62,730,226 for his first four seasons, according to Sportico, with a starting salary of $13.8 million in 2025-26. There also is some wiggle room as players can sign for as low as 80 percent of a high as 120 percent of their allotted figure.

By the late first round, however, the college and NBA money is relatively the same. The No. 25 pick in the 2025 draft is scheduled to earn $2.99 million in his rookie year. The No. 30 pick is to earn $2.74 million.

Moreover, contracts for players taken in the second round are not automatically guaranteed and are not governed by the rookie scale. Sacramento’s Colby Jones signed the largest contact among second-rounders last season, at $8.8 million for four years.

Lendeborg and Fland are being paid in the same range to stay in college, which also has its benefits.

They and others like them will get another shot at an NCAA title, and they also have a chance to increase their standing in the next draft (or several) depending on their 2025-26 performance. Uzan played in the NCAA title game a year ago, Auburn was No. 1 most of the season and Michigan made the Sweet Sixteen.

For a player not in the lottery or close to it, a decision to stay can look like a win-win.

In January, a Wisconsin player (Xavier Lucas) signed in NIL deal and then left to go to Miami – outside of the transfer portal. Wisconsin is alleging that Miami interfered with a binding contract.

No idea if this will be successful. But, it calls the question on whether NIL deals are enforceable against players. If they aren’t, then it is hard to imagine what rights schools actually have. Players can theoretically just leave any time they feel like it if someone else offers more money. 

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/45552578/wisconsin-sues…