(CN) — Attorneys for sports marketing firm Prime Sports Marketing and NBA star Zion Williamson sparred before a Fourth Circuit panel Tuesday in a debate over a fundamental question: What makes a student-athlete?
It was the latest salvo in the legal battle between the New Orleans Pelicans forward and the marketing firm led by Gina Ford over Williamson’s now-void 2019 contract with the firm. It’s a case that weighs whether courts should wade into disputes over student-athletes’ eligibility.
Williamson successfully sued in North Carolina federal court to have the contract voided, ultimately signing a marketing contract with a different firm, Creative Artists Agency (CAA). His case hinged on the fact that Ford and her agency failed to register as agents in North Carolina and that the contract he signed did not include disclosure warnings required by state law — both requirements of North Carolina’s Uniform Athlete Agent Act (UAAA) that protects student-athletes.
But Prime Sports and Ford appealed, leveling claims that Williamson had violated NCAA rules by taking improper benefits in exchange for his commitment to Duke University. While those accusations never surfaced during Williamson’s one season at Duke, Prime Sports attorney Doug Eaton argued a court should consider those accusations in determining whether Williamson was ever actually eligible to play college basketball. At the time Williamson signed the Prime Sports contract, he had just finished his only season at Duke University, having declared his intent to enter the NBA draft, Eaton noted.
The lower court deferred to the NCAA’s classification of Williamson as an eligible student athlete, arguing that the association’s determination was the only one that mattered. But Eaton argued that district courts typically don’t defer to outside organizations, and that the NCAA’s eligibility determination was based on no prior finding of fact – just a blanket certification that Williamson was playing college basketball.
“The issue here is whether or not we’re entitled to look behind the fact that he played college basketball to determine whether or not the statute applies to him — whether he met the statutory definition of a student-athlete,” Eaton told the court. “Our contention is that he did not because he took improper benefits prior to coming to Duke.”
But Ford began contacting Williamson over the course of his freshman season at Duke, and the contract was the fruit of those conversations, argued Williamson's attorney Zachary Tripp. That alone was enough to render the contract illegal because Ford was not registered to act as an agent for student-athletes, and couldn't legally engage Williamson at all.
“Under any reasonable understanding of the term ‘student-athlete,’ including the one that is defined in the text, of course he was a student-athlete,” Tripp said. “He was playing college basketball for Duke, wearing the Duke uniform at Cameron Stadium, he’s at the absolute epicenter of the statutory definition.”
When asked by U.S. District Judge Jamar Walker, a Joe Biden appointee sitting by designation from the Eastern District of Virginia, if agents should ever have the ability to challenge an athlete’s eligibility, Tripp answered plainly: “Under this statute, no.”
He responded similarly when U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz, a Barack Obama appointee, asked if a student’s egregious conduct should play a role in disputes like this one.
“If the agent actually knew and believed of some kind of outrageous misconduct in advance, she could have brought that to the attention of the NCAA and set this process into motion,” Tripp said. “The other thing an agent could do before recruiting a high school or college student is simply register, and provide the requisite warnings. This is not hard.”
But Eaton argued Ford didn’t believe that she needed to register as an agent. Regardless of any potential contact that occurred during the season, at the time contract was signed Williamson had publicly declared he intended to join the NBA and leave Duke.
“This is not an unscrupulous agent preying on some naïve young man,” Eaton said. “This is CAA trying to get Zion Williamson out of this based on this technicality.”
Also at issue is a dispute over trade secrets. After Williamson sued in 2019 to void his contract with Prime Sports, Ford countersued in 2020, claiming Williamson had shared Ford’s marketing strategies with CAA and ultimately signed deals with many of the brands that Ford had already started negotiating with. The court also dismissed these claims, in part because of the voided contract but also because it found that the ideas didn’t amount to “trade secrets.”
But Eaton believes that was a decision that also warranted further fact-finding.
After the hearing, Tripp and Eaton did both declined comment.
U.S. Circuit Judge William Traxler, a Bill Clinton appointee, rounded out the panel.
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