I am not a lawyer and do not pretend to be one on Substack. Still, I am qualified to offer my opinion on issues facing football today that have historical parallels.
The NIL world seems like the Wild West right now. Players switch schools with little keeping them where they once pledged their loyalty. Whatever anti-tampering rules may be in place appear to have little or no teeth.
That brings us to an interesting situation involving Wisconsin's football program and Xavier Lucas, a freshman cornerback who saw significant action for the Badgers in 2024. If the stories bouncing around the internet are accurate, Lucas signed an NIL deal with Wisconsin in December. Shortly thereafter, he decided to transfer and asked Wisconsin to put his information in the transfer portal so other schools could contact him without running afoul of the supposed rules. Schools have two days to enter the information when a player wants to transfer, and as of this writing, Wisconsin has not done so, and the transfer window has since closed.
Wisconsin has not commented publicly about the situation. However, they dutifully entered the names of 20+ other players who wanted to enter the portal, so the working assumption is that Lucas's signing an NIL deal is the sticking point.
The situation parallels the old days when coaches signed contracts with schools and honored the contract's life. Those signing three-year contracts stayed for three years, more or less.
Pop Warner, who moved from Carlisle to Pitt in 1915, had a contract with Pitt that took him through the 1923 season. Nevertheless, in January 1922, Warner signed an agreement with Stanford to take his talents to Palo Alto. Unfortunately for Warner, Pitt held Warner to his contract, so he remained in Pittsburgh and acted as Stanford's advisory coach, spending some offseason time coaching there. Warner's top assistant at Pitt, Andy Kerr, took the helm at Stanford for the 1922 and 1923 seasons and implemented Warner's Double Wing. The two teams even played one another in Palo Alto on the Eve of New Year's Eve 1922, a game Pitt won 17-6.
Warner took over at Stanford for the 1924 season, and Kerr returned to being his assistant.
Over the next few decades, schools and coaches generally honored their contracts, though some coaches left early, and schools seldom protested. For example, Notre Dame hired Ara Parseghian away from Northwestern after he took the Wildcats to the #2 ranking in 1963. Northwestern followed the gentlemen's agreement and did not protest the move.
Due to Washington State's misfortune, a new world order arrived in the mid-1970s. Their head coach, Jim Sweeney, resigned after the 1975 season after having little success. The Cougars hired Jackie Sherrill, an assistant at Pitt, and after going 3-8 in 1976, Pitt hired him for the head job.
Washington State's new Athletic Director, Sam Jankovich, signed Warren Powers, a Nebraska assistant, to a multi-year contract. Powers led the Cougars to a 6-5 campaign in 1977, including a win over the Cornhuskers, and with Powers' rising, Missouri hired him to take over their program, setting the stage for the Cougars to look for their fourth head football coach in as many years.
Jankovich then did the unthinkable: He enforced Powers' contract, demanding that he pay Washington State the value of his salary ($32,000) plus a two-thirds penalty. Powers went to Missouri anyway and had success there, but he paid Washington State the requested amount over the next few years. That incident changed the landscape of coaches' contracts, so every contract now has buyout clauses outlining the penalties for choosing to leave early or being told by the school to do so.
Warren Powers' 1977 salary of $32,000 is the equivalent of $172,700 today, far less than some college athletes receive in NIL money. Whether the Wisconsin-Xavier Lucas case leads to buyout clauses for athletes like the Washington State-Warren Powers case did for coaches is to be determined. However, if NIL packages start having buyout clauses, you'll know where that idea originated.
Note: Ninety minutes before this story was published, news broke that Lucas signed with Miami without entering the portal and outside the portal window.. We’ll see where this goes.
If you enjoy Football Archaeology, become a paid subscriber for $5/month or $50/year. You can also support the site via:
Football Archaeology is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts, subscribe below: