Six members of Florida State University’s 2023-2024 men’s basketball team have filed a lawsuit against head coach Leonard Hamilton in yet another NIL dispute in the college sports landscape. The plaintiffs in this case have retained prominent sports attorney Darren Heitner, and it is somehow only the second lawsuit filed over unfulfilled promises of payment in the NIL era. While there have been plenty of other public disputes over NIL payments (like Matthew Sluka and UNLV), most have not risen to the level of legal action (yet). None of the six plaintiffs are still with the Florida State basketball program.

This suit and the lawsuit filed by Jaden Rashada earlier this year against the University of Florida share a common theme: athletes were promised NIL payments, and payments were never made. The allegations in this lawsuit are arguably even more troubling than Rashada’s. According to the complaint, the situation was bad enough that players were prepared to boycott practice leading up to a home game against ACC rival Duke University and were even considering refusing to play the game until Hamilton reiterated his promise of payment. That would have been a remarkable moment in the NIL era, but it never came to fruition. In addition to the narrowly averted game boycott, there are several other factors that make this lawsuit unique from other NIL disputes.

There is only one defendant: Head Coach Leonard Hamilton.

The allegations, and therefore the overall lawsuit, are much more straightforward here than they are in the Rashada case. Rashada’s complaint read like a Grisham novel and, as such, featured four defendants, including an LLC owned by one of the other defendants who is a prominent University of Florida booster. This time around, there is no multi-party conspiracy, no confusing mechanisms of payments, and no allegations of welching boosters. According to the plaintiffs’ complaint, their head coach repeatedly promised to pay each of them $250,000 and the source of that money would not be a collective but from his “business partners.” There is nothing in the complaint that would suggest that any of the players had direct contact with these “business partners” that Coach Hamilton repeatedly alluded to. This allegation of direct involvement by the coach may create more issues with the NCAA.

An NIL collective was not the alleged bad actor.

Per the complaint, the only other party that discussed NIL payment with these athletes was a representative from one of FSU’s collectives. The text messages screenshotted in the complaint seem to show that the NIL executive was doing his best to perform some degree of damage control for Coach Hamilton’s unfulfilled promises. This starkly contrasts the Rashada lawsuit, where the allegations paint Florida head football coach Billy Napier as a middleman trying to do damage control on a booster’s/collective’s unfulfilled promises.

The amount of money in dispute is far lower.

Although there are six plaintiffs in this case, the alleged money owed is $1.5 million ($250,000 each), or roughly 10% of the alleged damages in the Rashada case. While “only” and “$1.5 million” seldom belong in the same sentence, in the grand scheme of NIL money, this is a reasonably low sum for a school in a Power 4 conference. It seems implausible that an FSU collective or boosters could not put together that money to prevent this, indicating that they may have simply been unwilling. Hamilton has been FSU’s head coach since 2002 and has had a lot of success, taking them as far as the Elite-8 in the NCAA tournament. However, they have missed the NCAA tournament each of the last three seasons.

The FSU Lawsuit Alleges Breach of Contract

The Rashada lawsuit featured seven tort claims, but notably absent was a claim for breach of contract. Claim one in this suit is precisely that. While, as the complaint states, Hamilton was “smart, in a sense,” for never making these offers in writing or over text, verbal agreements are generally enforceable under common law contract principles. The difficulty with suing for enforcement of verbal agreements is proving that they existed. Hamilton will almost assuredly deny ever making the $250,000 offers; the burden is on the plaintiffs to prove that he did. The complaint contains several screenshots of a group text among the plaintiffs and other text messages that included the representative from the NIL collective. One screenshot features a text conversation between plaintiff Josh Nickelberry and Coach Hamilton, but he does not directly address any $250,000 offer. Fortunately for the plaintiffs, they do not need a “smoking gun” or proof beyond a reasonable doubt as is necessary in a criminal case. In a civil case, the standard of proof is “preponderance of the evidence,” meaning more likely than not. Whether there is sufficient evidence to reach that standard remains to be determined, but the included text messages are compelling for the plaintiffs.

Will the NCAA Investigate?

The NCAA dropped its investigation into the Rashada saga in Florida after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the organization from enforcing its rules regarding booster contact with prospective athletes. The allegations of direct involvement of Coach Hamilton as the promisor and his direct affiliation with the proposed payers (his “business partners”) would appear to violate NCAA rules in their current form. If the historic House settlement ultimately comes to fruition, these types of promises by coaches will be commonplace. However, the NCAA may receive enough pressure from other schools and coaches who frequently complain about the prevalence of the behavior alleged by the plaintiffs and ultimately open an investigation.

How Will Hamilton and FSU Respond?

FSU issued a statement indicating that they have begun investigating the matter and that “at this point we know of no unfulfilled commitments by FSU in terms of scholarships or other appropriate benefits or the Rising Spear Collective relative to NIL payments owed to the athletes.” They went on to say that they “support Coach Hamilton’s right to defend himself against these allegations and look forward to an expeditious resolution of this matter.” It will be interesting to see how much involvement the University has in Hamilton’s defense of the case. The word choice could indicate to Hamilton that he is on his own here, but it’s possible that his contract contains an indemnification clause, which is essentially a promise to foot the legal bill if a lawsuit is filed.

A motion to dismiss the suit from Hamilton is likely forthcoming, but the odds of such a motion succeeding are low. Hamilton is in his 70s and has had three straight disappointing seasons. He could follow fellow longtime college basketball coaches Jim Larrañaga and Tony Bennett into retirement instead of trying to figure out the new NIL landscape. While such a move may keep the NCAA off his back, it would not fix his legal problems. He has to respond to this lawsuit, and it appears he has little support.