Jim Dey: Courtrooms offer court away from court for aspiring hoopsters

Feb. 17—University of Illinois basketball player Terrence Shannon Jr. isn't the only one who wants to play ball. So do Florida brothers Matt and Ryan Bewley.

Suspended by the UI because he faces criminal charges in Kansas, Shannon took his case for reinstatement to U.S. District Court in Springfield. Deemed ineligible by the NCAA to play at Chicago State, the Bewleys went to federal court in Chicago.

Lawyers in both cases sought pretrial orders returning them to their teams.

Shannon succeeded when U.S. Judge Colleen Lawless determined that he is likely to win his lawsuit.

The Bewleys lost. Chicago U.S. Judge Robert Gettleman found they did not show a likelihood of success at trial, a prospect he suggested requires "conducting discovery or presenting" evidence.

While certainly not identical, the cases are all about playing time.

Owing to Shannon's status as a prominent member of a highly ranked Big 10 team, many people are familiar with his saga.

Few have heard of the Bewleys, non-playing recruits of low-profile Chicago State.

Nonetheless, their story is worth telling because of what it reveals about athletes' dreams and the reality surrounding our new, otherworldly age of highly compensated amateur sports.

The Bewley brothers — both 6'9" forwards from Florida — didn't play high school ball at a traditional high school. They played at the Overtime Elite Academy in Georgia.

NCAA czars deemed them ineligible to play at Chicago State because the Georgia academy "constituted a professional team."

Lawyers for the brothers argued their "contractual relationship" with the academy was akin to the new "name-image-likeness" (NIL) status enjoyed by hundreds of hoops peers.

On its face, that's plausible. But the NCAA argued, successfully for now, that the academy paid the Bewleys "above actual and necessary expenses," including performance bonuses, group licensing payments and apparel royalties.

The NCAA also noted the academy changed its professional model in 2022 by offering scholarships instead of salary so the recipients could retain amateur status.

But, really, what is the difference when money is changing hands?

Just semantics. But semantics, at least in contracts, are the foundation on which the law stands.

In this case, the language seems clear. The contracts the brothers signed warned them that they risked "immediately losing" NCAA eligibility.

Citing new realities, the brothers argued NIL has changed everything. They pointed out that two academy teammates received eligibility from the NCAA.

The Bewleys contended the "inconsistent" determinations require they be declared NCAA eligible, too. The NCAA replied the contracts signed by the Bewleys' teammates do not "change the contract" the Bewleys signed.

In the end, the judge found that there were insufficient grounds to grant the pretrial relief (eligibility) the Bewleys sought.

That doesn't mean they won't prevail on their various claims — including federal antitrust violations — in the end.

It means they didn't meet the requirement that they are likely to prevail that would justify the extraordinary relief they sought.

It was a different story, of course, for Shannon.

His lawyers demonstrated Shannon's property/liberty interests in playing for the Illini as a prelude to a professional career. They showed the UI summarily suspended him based on the Kansas allegations without giving Shannon a meaningful opportunity to challenge the allegations.

The two cases, obviously, are different in major ways. They are identical in their focus on the basketball business and the litigation it generates.