No, Damon, you can’t take your ball and go home. The Classic City Collective paid you to play, so they also paid you to stay.
Wilson signed a term sheet with Classic City Collective in December 2024, shortly before Georgia lost in a quarterfinal playoff game to Notre Dame to end his sophomore season. The 14-month contract — which was attached to Georgia’s legal filing — was worth $500,000 to be distributed in monthly payments of $30,000 with two additional $40,000 bonus payments that would be paid shortly after the NCAA transfer portal windows closed.
The deal states that if Wilson withdrew from the Georgia team or entered the transfer portal that he would owe the collective a lump sum payment equal to the rest of the money he would have received had he stayed at Georgia for the length of the contract. (The two bonus payments apparently were not included in the damages calculation.) Classic City signed over the rights to those damages to Georgia’s athletic department on July 1 when many schools took over player payments from their collectives.
Georgia’s legal filing claims Wilson received his first $30,000 payment on Dec. 24, 2024. Less than two weeks later, he declared his plans to transfer.
Legal experts say Georgia’s attorneys will have to convince an arbitrator that the $390,000 in damages are a reasonable assessment of the harm the athletic department suffered due to Wilson’s departure. Liquidated damages are not legally allowed to be used as punishment or primarily as an incentive to keep someone from breaking a contract.
It later goes on to say the case could “set a precedent” in future NIL severance cases.
Glad to know that we’re serving as the pathfinders in the new age of college sports. Sounds like Kirby’s had enough of the mother.
Needless to say, Damon would come in handy on the defensive front this weekend and beyond, but if Smart’s taking measures to ensure that roster depletion doesn’t occur after a guy’s been able to showcase his talents and then bolt for greener pastures, I’m all for it.
I hope we talked privately to other SEC schools about doing the same but that would likely result in a collusion lawsuit we’d lose. What a f’ing mess. You know the media will make us out to be villains in order to hurt our recruiting. This is a righteous lawsuit but may cost more in the long run.
I had this same thought. This has the potential to be a short term gain (for a relatively small amount of money) and a significant long term loss.
Liquidated damages clauses in contracts are enforceable if the contracting parties in good faith estimated the harm to the non-breaching party would be that amount. Liquidated damages that are penalties for breaching or incentives not to breach are uninforceable. The role of an award of damages in contract litigation is to put the non-breaching party in as close to the situation it would have been in had both parties fully complied. A fundamental rule of contract damages law is that the law of damages does not put a litigant in a better position as a result of the other party’s breach than it would have been had the other party fully complied.
The issue, then, did Wilson’s transfer harm the Collective (the original contracting party) in an amount reasonably calculated to be $390,000.00?
If Wilson can show that before transferring to Mizzou he actually provided services to the Collective’s clients (meet and greets, endorsements, etc.) that was worth $30,000 to the Collective then Wilson would have a defense to the claim. I doubt that the facts would support that but that would be the issue.
I do not get UGA AA’s strategy about this.
First, the NIL money was, and still is, supposed to be tied to some commercial value of the player’s association with a product or service. It still is not supposed to be an additional salary for being a Bulldog or a Gator. The evidence at the arbitration could reveal some uncomfortable details about whether the Collective can make any claim that it was anything more or less than a pay-for-play paymaster.
Second, the message that recruits will hear is, “If I sign with Georgia and it doesn’t work out I will have to pay back a bunch of money I never even received. “
Thanks for the breakdown. Somebody asked me about this yesterday but I hadn’t thought of contract laws since I took the bar nearly 25 years ago. But I could say with “authority” this is a bad look.
I heard of this situation when it was going down from a kid who worked for the Collective while at UGA. He is now in law school at South Carolina. Back then it was thought Mizzou was going to pay this and knew of it before he went there. It was also the reason he didn’t go to Ohio State because I had been told the Buckeyes weren’t willing to pay his NIL deal and what was owed to UGA/the collective for the reimbursement. He really preferred OSU for his transfer, but screwed it up by depositing a check from UGA. It was a OSU/UGA battle for him out of high school.
I also read that Mizzou paid the $300k as required to Damon but Damon didn’t pay it back to UGA.
My solution – schools require athletes to sign over their “NIL rights” to the schools for 5 years. Write the NIL contract to be incentivize so starters/playmakers make more than backup which is representative of an athlete’s “monetary value”.If the kid leaves, the school must agree or the kid can’t take the NIL rights with him. That change would mirror the NFL’s draft and free agency system.
One dirty secret about the transfer portal, coaches like the ability to get rid of kids. The coaches whine about the portal but don’t what to lose the ability to cut kids.
Convince Congress to legislate an exception for the NCAA to the Sherman Antitrust Act and NCAA could do that.
I’m all for this. I was never against them being paid or being able to transfer. This absolutely no reason for them to have ALL the leverage though.
Looks like we’re looping back to signing day’s letter of intent. As we all know, once a kid signed it he was essentially owned by that school.
In my book all Wilson ‘may’ owe is the $30k. Major billion dollar organization goes after poor schmuck to set an example.
When you sign a contract, you are bound to abide by its terms. Whether said terms can stand up in a court of law is a completely different question.
If I’m UGA, I take my chances with the reading of the contract by a former business litigation partner at King & Spalding to determine if this is worth pursuing. At any point, Kirby likely could have stepped in and said, “Guys, this isn’t worth the effort to us. Leave it be.” Apparently, he hasn’t done that.
Sorry if I don’t have sympathy for Wilson as a poor schmuck in this case. I’m guessing he had representation review the terms of the deal prior to signing.
I am not expressing any opinions about which party is a poor schmuck. My post addresses UGA AA’s legal burden(assuming The Classic Collective did not pay Wilson after he announced he was transferring) and the wisdom of asserting a claim.
Pandora’s Box is full of surprises..
We’re just getting started.
I don’t know if Georgia should attempt to claw back the money plus for recruiting reasons.
I think it’s BS that Wilson signed this deal after the SEC championship and before the playoff and then decided to enter the portal and not pay the money back. That to me smacks of bad faith on Wilson’s part. The precedent that would be set for not enforcing the terms of the deal pretty much send the message that no contractual restrictions on the athlete really apply.
What this really does tell me (along with the Curtis fiasco) is that Kirby should be looking for players that want to be Dawgs first and foremost and any hint of something else should be a reason to tell a recruit, “Thanks but no thanks. You aren’t going to fit here.”
Said differently, I’ll take 22 Javon Bullards over 22 Damon Wilsons any day of the week.
If there is no lawsuit and therefore no ruling there is no precedent.
We will get crucified on the recruiting trail for this.
That is what I fear. Anyone think Texas Tech ( among others) isn’t going to use that against us?
There have been rumors of an extremely active transfer portal, and I wonder if this was timed to be filed against a major player in order to be a further deterrent for players considering transferring out next month.