Can a School Control a Former Coach?
July 29th, 2009 - byAn interesting situation has emerged at Marist College according to the Daily News Record.
At the heart of Marist’s lawsuit against James Madison basketball coach Matt Brady appears to be an unusual clause in his contract with the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., school. According to Marist – where Brady coached from 2004 to 2008 – his contract included a provision preventing him from continuing to recruit players he had tried to lure to the Red Foxes if he ever left for another job.
Not long after being hired by JMU in March 2008, Brady signed four players he had been recruiting at Marist, in breach of his contract, Marist alleges.
A pair of legal experts said Thursday that they’ve never heard of a case involving an exiting coach’s right to continue to recruit athletes to his new school, and one of them questioned its validity.
Gabe Feldman, director of Tulane University’s sports law program, said the clause preventing Brady from recruiting the same players at JMU he started to recruit at Marist could be inherently flawed.
“It just seems so difficult to enforce and prove what the coach may or may not be doing,” Feldman said. “And it also has an impact on the student-athletes. I think the courts would hesitant to enforce something that impacts on a third party, especially a student-athlete.”
Regardless of whether the provision stands up in court, though, California-Berkeley law professor Stephen Sugarman said the clause makes sense from a college’s standpoint.
“It doesn’t surprise me at all that these types of provisions are in a contract,” Sugarman said. “It’s a difficult matter, because obviously coaches are entitled to move on to other places. But schools are concerned about disrupting their own program.”
Hofstra’s Tom Pecora, said he doesn’t believe Marist’s complaints are fair to the athletes Brady was recruiting.
“I don’t know how something like that could hold up. If a coach leaves and a young man says, ‘Coach, I want to go where you’re going,’ a university doesn’t have that power,” Pecora said. “If they don’t have anything signed, how in the world could a university dictate their recruitment? As much as we want to say recruits sign with a university, there is a relationship there.”
Marist athletic director Tim Murray said a similar clause is in every coach’s contract at the school and that it never previously caused any problems. He said the clause is designed to mitigate the harm caused by a coaches’ defection.
Even if Marist could prove Brady breached his contract by recruiting the four athletes to JMU – as opposed to them deciding to follow him on their own – Feldman said it would be nearly impossible for a court to assign a monetary damage figure to the case.
“You have a breach of contract,” Feldman said. “The question is, what remedy do you get for that? It’s very difficult to prove money damages. It’s difficult to quantify that.”
The four players recruited at both Marist and JMU were Julius Wells, Devon Moore, Andrey Semenov and Trevon Flores.
Wells had already signed a national letter of intent with Marist, but the school granted his request to be let out of it. Semenov and Flores had orally committed to the school. Moore was being recruited but had not announced a decision.
Wells, Moore and Semenov all played for the Dukes in 2008-09, Brady’s first season with the team, and were key contributors on a 20-win club. Flores deferred his enrollment because of a family issue and is expected to join JMU this fall.
What do you think? Does Marist have a legitimite claim that there was a breach of contract or were the players drawn to the coach that recruited them more than the program he was with at the time?
July 30th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Get ready. Marist head baseball coach Dennis Healy left suddenly in June for Wake Forest. He signed 7 players for spring 2010. Should be interesting. The new coach is Army’s Chris Tracz……former Marist pitcher/coach.