But that doesn’t make it legally separate from a star player’s earning potential (NIL) or the “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity the draft provides. At least not in the opinion of the federal judge.
So these are the two other things that really bothered me about the decision's reasoning.
First, there's no question a suspension costing Shannon NIL money is something UI could wind up legally liable for, and that's new ground in college sports. But one of the main qualifications for getting a TRO is the lack of an adequate remedy at law, aka the issue can't be resolved by money. NIL very obviously can, that is a
reparable harm that could be handled in a year or whatever.
Second, beyond the kind of shocking sloppiness of drawing a conclusion from two Bleacher Report mock drafts, the idea that merely not playing the remaining games does some sort of large definite harm to TSJ's draft standing is at best highly contestable and arguably completely untrue? The negative impact to his prospective draft status is
because he was charged with felony rape! As a matter of his NBA prospects, supposing for the sake of argument that the Kansas charges were dropped between the end of the season and the draft, the last impression TSJ left on film was outstanding and would put him in fantastic draft shape, pro scouts DO NOT CARE ONE LITTLE BIT about how Illinois' season turns out. Sure there's some potential to have more great performances against top opponents, but in Shannon's case the remainder of the season after the charges were filed very obviously presented more potential downside than upside to his then-career-high NBA stock.
Since the order itself includes the exception for OSCR Policy, there would be no need to modify the order if UIUC chooses to follow that path. UIUC may think it's too fine a line to take that risk, but that's another issue.
We're going in circles, so we'll have to agree to disagree.
As Whitman and the decision made clear, the OSCR process is already active and ongoing, and could hypothetically result in Shannon being kicked out of school, which would render any DIA decision making moot.
The decision also states: "
Defendants are enjoined from suspending Plaintiff from the basketball team without at least affording him the protections of the OSCR Policy." so that OSCR process can in theory proceed and reach its conclusion without being impacted by the TRO.
But both for timeline reasons and the inability for UI to meaningfully investigate an event that occurred out of state involving non-UI people who live nowhere near Champaign and can't be compelled to offer evidence, I don't really see how that's going to prevent TSJ from finishing the season. Based on what the insiders are saying that seems to be the expectation within the team as well (though, I will just note, the team's expectations have been upended in this saga before).
Though happy with the on-court result, I'm befuddled too. Mainly thinking about the precedent this case could set. If the fact pattern was different, and we had a superstar athlete pull a Ray Rice and beat the bleep out of someone on camera, the University really has no recourse to suspend or expel an athlete? Because really the charge in this case could be been just about anything, with or without lots of evidence, and any suspension should be overturned because of the lack of due process.
"Hard cases make bad law" as the saying goes...
