Lawyers Turn Athletic Directors in Era of NIL Deals, Lawsuits

John Cunningham went into collegiate athletics looking to get away from lawyers. Now most of his days are spent talking with them.

Cunningham, the University of Cincinnati’s athletic director, was only half kidding when making that observation. He wanted to be a trial lawyer before embarking on what’s become a two-decade career in big-time college sports, where Cunningham started in low-paying compliance roles.

“Everyone thought compliance was the worst job, but I liked it because you interacted with every sport,” Cunningham said. That gave him the opportunity to meet coaches and make presentations to the presidents of schools where he was employed, as well as some of their boards, on risk-management issues.

The fast-changing face of US college sports, with its expanding docket of rulings, lawsuits, and name, image, and likeness deals that allow players to profit from their athletic prowess, often has Cunningham wishing for simpler times.

But Cunningham, the University of Notre Dame’s Peter Bevacqua, and other college athletic administrators are adapting as antitrust litigation settlements and other cases create a new market, one that will permit schools to directly compensate their athletes for the first time unless Congress intervenes by July 1.

Game Changers

Ohio State University takes on Notre Dame, which last year named a new AD in Bevacqua, in Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship game. Bevacqua began his career at Davis Polk & Wardwell before becoming a sports business executive. He took over from Jack Swarbrick, a former partner at Baker & Daniels, now known as Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath.

Fred Glass, another former Baker & Daniels partner, spent a dozen years as the AD at Indiana University. Glass said he and Swarbrick were unusual in that they left Big Law partnerships for AD jobs at a time when money and legal issues were beginning to change college sports. Swarbrick, who joined Notre Dame in mid-2008, gave him some good advice—negotiate to be a vice president, a title that carries weight in academia, Glass recalled.

Glass retired as AD in December 2019, just before the pandemic further roiled the collegiate sporting landscape. During his time at Indiana he saw how the analytical and technical skills he developed as a lawyer—on everything from contract negotiations to labor and employment matters—were valuable to an employer in a highly regulated industry experiencing systemic transformation.

The “natural advocacy” that comes with being a lawyer helps in working with wealthy donors, Glass said. And there are other benefits.

“Lawyers are also great risk managers,” Glass said. The “blocking-and-tackling” of being an administrator is important, he added, but perhaps more so is the ability to see around corners and anticipate situations before they arise. “What will I have wished six weeks from now I had done today?” is a question that Glass said he sometimes asked himself when evaluating potential problems.

Academic institutions increasingly seem to be considering lawyers—or those with legal training—when recruiting new ADs.

An analysis last year by two Arizona State University law professors found that eight of the 64 ADs hired since 2016 by Division I athletic programs had law degrees and two had MBAs. While the number of JDs still trailed MBAs when looking at all ADs in Division I, the Arizona State study said the “flood of lawsuits facing the NCAA, conferences, and institutions may be causing institutions to tweak their criteria for the leaders of their athletic enterprise.”

Raymond Anderson, a former NFL executive and Harvard Law School graduate, spent almost a decade as Arizona State’s AD. The University of Arizona hired another lawyer, Desireé Reed-Francois, for the role last year. Nina King, a Notre Dame graduate and lawyer, became the first Black woman AD at Duke in 2021.

Joshua Whitman, a former Covington & Burling associate who briefly played in the NFL, was hired by the University of Illinois in 2016. Larry Williams, another ex-NFL player who like Glass came from Baker & Daniels, is at the University of San Francisco. Ball State University’s AD Jeffrey Mitchell got his break in the industry when attorney Daniel Coonan—now commissioner of the Eastern College Athletic Conference—hired him at Santa Clara University.

“I’ve relied on my law degree every day,” said Mitchell, who maintains active status with the Mississippi Bar despite hoping to never practice law. “My law background has given me a valuable seat at the leadership table.”

New Paradigm

John Mack, a former star sprinter at Princeton University, took another route in returning to his alma mater in 2021. He spent the prior half-dozen years at Jenner & Block, Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn, and other law firms. The Ivy League school’s AD job was one he couldn’t turn down, Mack said.

“The trend over the past 10 to 15 years clearly has been toward professionalization of college athletics,” said Venable’s Benjamin Stockman, a new co-leader of the firm’s sports practice. “It’s no wonder schools are hiring lawyers into AD positions—what they really need is an entire law firm to handle the legal demands put on athletic departments.”

Andrew Brandt, a law professor at Villanova University and ex-general counsel for the NFL’s Green Bay Packers, said a growing “need for awareness of the changing legal and business” framework in college sports is affecting staffing. He doesn’t see the traditional AD prototype as requiring a law degree, but looming revenue-sharing rules are causing some schools to be proactive by creating new athletic departments jobs similar to a professional team’s front office.

“I have been asked by a couple of schools to recommend young salary cap managers for their consideration,” said Brandt, who is also providing guidance to some athletic programs as a consultant.

Cincinnati’s Cunningham went from grunt compliance work to being the public face of his school, whose general counsel office has designated an in-house attorney to work with the athletic department full-time.

“You almost need a little team of lawyers now,” he said.