Wisconsin Badgers’ Nigel Hayes fine with irony of Final Four trip
By Phil Watson
Wisconsin’s favorite writer at CBSSports.com, Dennis Dodd, decided to leap into the mix once again on Wednesday with an article detailing the “irony” of Wisconsin Badgers sophomore forward Nigel Hayes playing in the Final Four while also being a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the NCAA aimed at getting compensation for players in men’s football and basketball.
Hayes joined the suit filed by Jeffrey Kessler that seeks open market compensation for players. He’s also playing in one of the most lucrative events the NCAA conducts. Oh, the coincidence.
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Kessler, an attorney at New York’s Winston & Strawn, filed the antitrust claim against the NCAA last spring. Hayes was referred by a former teammate and signed onto the case as a plaintiff last year.
“I don’t think it’s ironic, I think it’s what this case is about,” Kessler said. “You’ll remember a year ago we had the player on UConn [Shabazz Napier]. He would go hungry at night. His school was prohibited from giving him a snack. I think the irony is really a function of the system itself.”
The Power 5 conferences—the Big Ten among them—have been undergoing a series of reforms aimed at stopping, or at least dulling, the potential implications of the lawsuit.
Kessler has a reputation for being one of the most influential antitrust lawyers in the country and was part of a suit against the National Football League 20 years ago that helped bring about the free agency system the league has.
Mar 28, 2015; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Wisconsin Badgers forward Nigel Hayes (10) shoots against Arizona Wildcats during the second half in the finals of the west regional of the 2015 NCAA Tournament at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports
The ages-old argument that the free education offsets any potential financial losses incurred by the players has lost most of its luster.
When an organization (the NCAA) is getting paid $10.8 billion for the rights to the NCAA tournament and $7.3 billion for the College Football Playoff broadcasting rights, it becomes much more difficult for an organization that penalizes institutions and players for providing cream cheese for bagels, deeming it an improper benefit, to maintain the moral high ground.
Hayes provided a deposition before NCAA attorneys last month that neither Kessler nor the player wanted to talk about.
“My attorneys and lawyers have told me not to speak about or talk about [the lawsuit],” Hayes said. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”
The suit is one that NCAA officials and university administrators are much more fearful of than the more-talked-about Ed O’Bannon suit involving the use of players’ likenesses, with Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick saying recently that the economic pressures building within college athletics could lead to a schism in the system that would lead to the establishment of two collegiate divisions split from the schools currently in Division I.
“There’s going to be Congressional intervention [in college athletics] or there’s going to be more than one intercollegiate athletic association …,” Swarbrick told CBSSports.com last month. “You don’t like these set of rules? Go play in that association.”
Warren Zola, an adjunct professor at Boston College and an expert on business law, says the leaders within the NCAA need to take control now before they get handed a system no one likes.
Apr 5, 2014; Arlington, TX, USA; Kentucky Wildcats guard Andrew Harrison (5) shoots against Wisconsin Badgers forward Nigel Hayes (10) during the semifinals of the Final Four in the 2014 NCAA Mens Division I Championship tournament at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports
“It would benefit leaders of higher education to negotiate and talk about a solution that benefits all parties, instead of waiting for the courts to impose the system that nobody wants,” Zola said. “The Kessler case itself is entirely different. If that case continues through and wins, now we’ve got an interesting scenario for a whole bunch of schools and players. We all know that change is coming.”
For his part, Hayes is focused on the task at hand—playing for the Badgers and trying to win the school’s second national championship and its first since 1941.
Hayes put a lot of the blame of last year’s loss to Kentucky in the national semifinals on his own shoulders and is looking for a different result against the Wildcats this time around.
“Last year I just felt that I didn’t contribute to help the team win in the way that I should have,” Hayes told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “And as I said, all I had to do was to be average for us to win and I was below average statistically.
“I think this year, just a year of being better, a year of more ups and downs, more situations in the game of basketball and especially the situations like Final Fours in the games that we have played in and hopefully it will show.”
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Hayes has averaged 12.4 points and 6.3 rebounds per game for Wisconsin this season and has added a 3-point shot to his arsenal that wasn’t there as a freshman. He didn’t take a 3-pointer at all in 2013-14; this season, he has his 38 percent of his 92 attempts.
He has also gotten better at the foul line, improving his percentage from 58.5 percent to 74.7 percent this season.
And he’s looking forward to another shot at Kentucky.
“Again, that loss definitely motivated us, not only as a team but individually my work ethic,” Hayes said. “I know I worked hard to make sure I was better so if I’m in a situation again—and here we are in the exact same situation as last year—that I will be able to perform better and contribute and hopefully we can win the game and fulfill our goal.”
Nothing ironic about that.