University Press: Institutions are suing their former players for breach of contract, why is this happening?

Christine Brown, Emily Staker and Ben LaCourse provided legal insight to the University press about an NIL lawsuit involving Florida Atlantic University football players.

Anthony Ortiz, Reporter • June 11, 2026

Universities suing their former players for liquidated damages is not new in the NIL (Name, Image, & Likeness) era. Yet, this has started to happen much more within college athletics, and Florida Atlantic University is the latest school to face this issue.

Four former FAU players, Asaad Waseem, Zion Paret, Gemari Sands, and Tyler Stolsky, were all sued on May 18 due to allegedly breaching the liquidated damages clause in their NIL contract.

According to LegalClarity, a liquidated damages clause is a fixed amount of money written into a contract that one party agrees to pay the other if a specific breach occurs. According to Palm Beach County Circuit documents, FAU is entitled to recover 50% liquidated damages for unpaid licensing fees if the student “fails to enroll in the University, withdraws from the University, provides written notification of transfer, or enters the transfer portal.”

Wide receiver Asaad Waseem, who in his lone season with the Owls had 66 receptions, 699 receiving yards, and 5 touchdowns. According to TAPintoBocaRaton, Waseem signed a 15-month NIL contract with FAU on Sept. 22, 2025, under which he would receive a $69,000 licensing fee, paid in monthly installments of $3,000 for the first three months, then increasing to $5,000 per month for the remaining 12 months. Waseem notified FAU that he was entering the transfer portal on Dec. 29, 2025, and he now plays for the Purdue Boilermakers.

Linebacker Tyler Stolsky, who previously played for the Minnesota Golden Gophers, totaled 33 tackles, including 22 solo tackles, and 1 sack during his two seasons with the team. In one season at FAU, he had 86 total tackles, 41 solo tackles, and 1 sack. Stolsky signed an agreement with FAU on July 1. The university paid Stolsky a total of $2,000 to $12,000 per month from July 1 through Dec. 31. Stolsky provided notice of his transfer to FAU on Dec. 30, 2025, and now plays for West Virginia.

Running back Gemari Sands, who spent two seasons at FAU, totaled 582 rushing yards on 136 attempts, 2 touchdowns, and 4.3 yards per carry. Sands signed his NIL agreement on July 1, 2025, and was paid $1,000 per month. Sands gave FAU a notice of his transfer to Florida State University on Jan. 9, 2026.

Defensive back Zion Paret, who played in 9 games in his only season with the Owls, had 15 total tackles, including 8 solo tackles, and 1 pass deflection. Paret signed his NIL agreement on Sept. 26, 2025, and his contract called for him to be paid $30,000 in monthly installments of $2,000 through Dec. 31, 2026. Paret provided notice of his transfer to FAU on Jan. 2, 2026.

There could be factors that contribute to these cases, rather than the player just breaching the clause. One key factor is players thinking the contract is pay-for-play and not pay-for-promotion.

According to SportsCourt, pay-for-play is a direct compensation to student athletes for their athletic performance or participation in a team sport. Pay-for-promotion is the ability of college athletes to profit from the use of NIL with promotional and marketing activities. 

According to the NCAA’s NIL policy, pay-for-play includes payment to attend or compete for a specific school, or compensation for athletics participation or achievement. While the policy states this, from the perspective of the Director of the Sports Law Program for 14 years at Temple University, Kenneth Jacobsen, this is still happening.

“Athletes could earn money directly from revenue that universities are making off their media contracts, their ticket sales, and their merchandise sales untethered to any kind of third party,” says Jacobsen. “To me, that is pay-for-play.”

ChristineBrown&Partners is a law firm that focuses on protecting and advocating for the rights of student-athletes, coaches, and teams. A sports law attorney from ChristineBrown&Partners, NFL agent, and adjunct sports law professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Emily Staker, told the University Press that if a player performed most of the required NIL services, and the university cannot explain why 50% repayment reasonably reflects its loss, the clause may look punitive.

“If a contract effectively pays an athlete for athletic performance, restricts transfer rights, or disguises pay-for-play as NIL compensation, players may argue the provision is unenforceable or contrary to governing rules or public policy,” Staker wrote in an email to the University Press.

Staker also wrote that the outside counsel representing universities, collectives, sponsors, and affiliated entities use contract structures to protect NIL payments from athletes transferring or not performing in promotional activities.

In an article by Venable, Quarterback Madden Iamaleava, who enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Jan. 2025 and signed a one-year contract with NIL collective Arkansas EDGE. The contract included a buyout clause requiring Iamaleava to repay 50% of any remaining value on the contract if he left before the one-year mark. Iamaleava left four months into his contract to transfer to UCLA.

The collective sued the quarterback, claiming Iamaleava owes the collective half of the remaining value of his $400,000 contract as a result of his departure from the university, but there is an issue. Contracts cannot be pay-for-play, and if he didn’t play one snap with Arkansas and meaningfully leverage his NIL in any promotional activity, how will the school prove the remaining value of his contract is as much as $400,000?

Ben LaCourse, a sports attorney who spent several years in NCAA compliance at Iowa State University and the University of Oklahoma, where he played a key role in the implementation of NIL and advised coaches, administrators, and student-athletes on eligibility, amateurism, and other NCAA compliance matters, is now an attorney at ChristineBrown&Partners.

“The more the institutions try to control the movement of the student-athletes, the more it looks like an employment contract rather than just an NIL contract,” says LaCourse. He went on to say that these cases are being settled because schools don’t want to be the first to potentially set the precedent of whether or not these NIL contracts are employment contracts.

Other than institutions, “NIL agents” to these student-athletes could be the reason why we are seeing more contract breach cases in court. According to YahooSports, University of Florida Men’s Basketball Coach Todd Golden told a Florida panel that some people have changed careers from barbers or trainers into NIL representation in a short amount of time because they see the opportunity to make a fee off students.

Christine Brown founded ChristineBrown&Partners in 2025 and has 30 years in the legal field, with plenty of experience in Title IX cases, and has helped individuals navigate through NIL and transfers. 

“I do think we are seeing situations in which people who are non-lawyers are giving advice to athletes and calling themselves that [agents],” says Brown. “You can’t get away from the fact that there are binding elements of contracts that you will have to answer for in a courtroom if you know any of those elements were violated.”

Brown advises athletes on whether or not they should enter into contract agreements and has experience in the NIL arena; however, she doesn’t call herself an NIL agent. 

At mid-major schools, student-athletes having agents wasn’t common, but today it is increasingly happening. “It’s going to be the agent’s fault because they aren’t reading the fine print,” says Justin Backer, a writer for Sports Illustrated and a graduate of FAU. Backer wrote on the current FAU lawsuit against the four former FAU players.

“In the agreement for FAU, it says that if you transfer, you [players] have to pay it back, and I’m willing to bet these players’ agents did not tell them that,” says Backer.

Another reason why student-athletes are being sued for breach of contract is that they don’t fully understand one of the contract’s provisions, as they may be more focused on the compensation, according to Josh Lens, a former attorney and Associate Professor of Instruction at Iowa University.

According to Jacobsen, athletes are not reading the contracts, understanding what their obligations are, and not following them because the transfer portal is effectively free agency without a structure in place.

While experts look at the contract details, former FAU defensive back and content creator Joshua Moore views it from a player’s perspective.

“Suing a player [Asaad Waseem] for $5,000 a month, really, that’s what we’re doing?” says Moore. “That’s basically just a little bit higher than the cost of living checks they actually give players who are on scholarship.”

Christine Brown states that it is unnerving and sad to see situations where institutions are suing their students. “I don’t think anybody would have wished that this would be the narrative now when it comes to students looking to participate in an opportunity of sport that is going to enhance their lives.”