Sonny Vaccaro Plans One Last Push Against the NCAA

Stephen Osman, Getty Images

They called him when the case went to trial, and they called him when the rulings came down. And when the Supreme Court declined this month to hear the matter of Edward C. O’Bannon, Jr. v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, reporters from the biggest media outlets called Sonny Vaccaro again.

Everyone wanted to know how he felt about the court’s action, which let stand rulings that found the NCAA had violated antitrust laws but allowed colleges to continue restricting payments to players beyond their full cost of attendance.

They also wondered: What was Mr. Vaccaro, a former shoe marketer turned athlete advocate, going to do next?

Anybody who knows Sonny knows that the O’Bannon case was his baby. He helped dream up the lawsuit, which pushed the NCAA to pay players for the commercial use of their images, and he lined up the plaintiffs, including Mr. O’Bannon, a former UCLA basketball star, whom he met as a teenager. Over the past half-dozen years, as the case wound its way through the federal courts, Mr. Vaccaro hardly missed a hearing, working as an unpaid consultant for Mr. O’Bannon’s lawyers.

Considering that the case has consumed so much of his life, Sonny is taking the news in stride. He once saw O’Bannon as his last hope to help players. Instead, he says, the case has inspired him to find new battle fronts in his fight for athletes’ rights.

In recent days, he has consulted with Michael Hausfeld, the lead plaintiffs’ lawyer in O’Bannon, and Charles Grantham, a former executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, about enlisting new plaintiffs to challenge a variety of NCAA restrictions.

As they see it, the O’Bannon case found the NCAA guilty of a restraint on trade, so all the other NCAA restraints are up for debate. That includes limits placed on high-school athletes as well as rules restricting players’ rights once they are enrolled in college.

Mr. Vaccaro is also collaborating with Kenneth Feinberg, a lawyer who specializes in alternative dispute resolution, on the Former College Athletes Association, a group they helped set up in 2011 to negotiate with colleges over potential new benefits for players. And he plans to step up his work with current athletes to help them organize.

“I’m ready now, I can rally. And they’re more vulnerable than ever,” Mr. Vaccaro says of the NCAA. “If I get an audience, I feel I have a chance to win.”

Boycotts and Rallies

Mr. Vaccaro, who is 77, helped shape college sports into the big business it is today. As a former executive with Nike, Adidas, and Reebok, he signed wealthy athletic departments to multimillion-dollar marketing contracts, providing his companies exclusive rights to outfit players.

But as the money got bigger — the NCAA now brings in almost $1 billion a year — Mr. Vaccaro found it harder to justify the fact that none of it was going to the players, outside of their scholarships. (He was accused of using his influence to steer players to certain colleges, a charge he has denied.)

In 2007 he quit his $500,000-a-year marketing job and began railing on hypocrisies he saw in the NCAA’s system. Since then he has spoken at more than three dozen colleges, encouraging students to join his fight against the association. (On Monday he will talk to students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.)

He hopes to expand his audience, moving from business and law schools into major-college locker rooms. When football players at the University of Missouri at Columbia said they planned to boycott a game last year over a university leader’s response to racial incidents, it planted a seed.

“I would have loved to go down there and speak on the back of a truck,” Mr. Vaccaro says. If a protest like that ever happens again, he says, he wants to be there.

College athletes have demonstrated in a variety of ways, including by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem to protest racism. Two years ago, football players at the University of Oklahoma sat out practice to protest leadership problems at a fraternity whose members had been captured on video chanting racist slurs.

In 2013 dozens of football players, including the entire starting offensive line at the University of Georgia, wrote “APU,” for “All Players United,” on their wrist tape in support of plaintiffs in the O’Bannon case and other federal lawsuits arguing for improved treatment of players.

Some athletes, seeking to eliminate what they considered “unjust” NCAA rules that create academic and financial hardships for players, have run into roadblocks. In 2014, when football players at Northwestern University tried to unionize, coaches and administrators campaigned against the idea.

Mr. Vaccaro hopes to counter such measures by enlisting other people to educate players about their rights. His job, he says, will be to provide the spark.

“You’ve got to have the war,” he says, of his efforts to provoke the NCAA. “Because they’ll never pay attention if you don’t.”

‘Arbitrary’ Limits

His latest idea is to challenge restraints he sees on high-school athletes, who he says must abide by NCAA rules before they even commit to a college. For example, he says, why are Division I recruits limited to five official visits? He wants to know what’s behind such a limit, which he considers arbitrary, and what right colleges have to restrict athletes from more paid trips to different campuses.

He also questions the scholarship limits outside of the major sports, which often leave players with little aid. For example, he says, why are colleges allowed to distribute only the equivalent of about 13 scholarships in men’s track and field when many teams have more than three times as many athletes?

Even benefits that wouldn’t seem to cost colleges much money, such as a room in a residence hall, are limited outside of the so-called revenue sports like football and men’s and women’s basketball. With all the money flowing into the major programs, he says, there’s no reason why every athlete shouldn’t get free lodging, if not room and board.

And if colleges are allowed to cover thousands of dollars in travel expenses for the parents of college football and basketball players whose sons play in prominent bowl games or NCAA championship events, why can’t programs provide the same allowances for the parents of runners and wrestlers?

NCAA restrictions on player transfers are problematic, too, Mr. Vaccaro says, particularly in men’s basketball, where some 40 percent of Division I athletes either change colleges or drop out by the end of their sophomore years. Under current NCAA rules, players who change colleges lose a year of eligibility. The rules governing players, Mr. Vaccaro says, should not differ from those for coaches, who can leave without such penalties.

David vs. Goliath

In recent years, the wealthiest NCAA programs have signaled an increasing openness to providing more benefits to players. As a result, the association is not likely to go even further and eliminate its restrictions on players unless it is forced to in court, says Mr. Grantham, the former head of the NBA players’ union, who is now director of the Center for Sport Management at Seton Hall University.

That should keep lawyers like Mr. Hausfeld busy — assuming Mr. Vaccaro can find more players willing to attach their names to lawsuits. Mr. Vaccaro has deep connections in youth basketball. But he knows the challenge of finding plaintiffs, understanding the risk it poses for players who are still competing.

But there are signs that some of the most-talented high-school athletes are willing to exert their power before they enter the NCAA system, says Ellen J. Staurowsky, a professor of sport management at Drexel University who has written extensively about players’ rights.

In some cases, she says, star recruits have tried to negotiate scholarships for their teammates. And a growing number of high-school athletes have reneged on their verbal commitments to colleges without facing repercussions.

“I wouldn’t underestimate the power of athletes,” says Ms. Staurowsky, who co-founded a faculty coalition that has pushed for college football and basketball players to be paid. Through social media, many young athletes have learned the importance of expressing their views and controlling a message. But they are also realistic, she says, knowing that colleges often limit them from speaking out once they sign their letters of intent.

“They know that door’s going to shut,” she says, “once they do the deal.”

Ms. Staurowsky, who has known Mr. Vaccaro for nearly a decade, says she would also not underestimate his impact. As he proved in the O’Bannon case, she says, “it took something to get to the right lawyer, and it took something to encourage players to sign onto the case.”

Whether any of the new challenges he is proposing have legs, however, is unclear.

“At this point, it’s still a David versus Goliath thing,” Ms. Staurowsky says. “It’s winnable, but you have to hit it just right.”

Brad Wolverton is a senior writer who covers college sports. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter @bradwolverton, or email him at brad.wolverton@chronicle.com.