When Rich Rodriguez, the once-and-again West Virginia football coach, announced he was banning his players from dancing on TikTok, he made his reasoning clear.
“We try to have a hard edge or whatever, and you’re in there in your tights dancing on TikTok ain’t quite the image of our program that I want,” Rodriguez said at a March 10 news conference.
The decree was quickly forgotten by most — except Paul McDonald, the lawyer in a class-action case that has been in the background the past few years but is set to move to the front.
The NCAA is hoping to soon finalize a settlement in another case, House vs. NCAA, which centered on its past restrictions on athletes earning money for their name, image and likeness opportunities. The NCAA has agreed to pay out billions in damages to former players and revenue-sharing for current and future players and generally agreed to a new model for the new era.
But there’s another major case in the pipeline, Johnson vs. the NCAA, and it covers a thorny issue for the NCAA: employment. That’s where McDonald comes in, along with Rodriguez’s TikTok ban and rules like it.
In pro sports, where players have a union, any coach or team rule that a player deems over the line could be subject to a grievance. That’s not the case in college…
