Hell Hath No Fury Like a Spurned Major League Baseball
Team
College Athletes should always consult their school’s Professional Sports Counseling Panel
(PSCP) when evaluating turning pro early.
This story is an outlier but a few years ago the Philadelphia Phillies
turned in an Oregon State University baseball player to the NCAA for using an
agent to negotiate a professional baseball contract. Contract discussions broke down, the player declined
the Phillies offer, and he decided to stay at OSU on scholarship. Or so he thought. The Phillies felt burned and blew the whistle
or snitched depending on how you see it.
The mistake the player made was enlisting an agent as an unofficial “advisor”
for the contract talks. The easy fix is
to avoid agents and use the PSCP to handle discussions. This protects amateur status and scholarship eligibility. NCAA compliance excerpts and story link below.
12.3.1 An individual
shall be ineligible for participation in an intercollegiate sport if he or she
ever has agreed (orally or in
writing) to be represented by an agent for the purpose of marketing his
or her athletics ability or reputation in that sport…
12.3.4 Professional Sports Counseling Panel.
It is permissible for an authorized institutional professional sports
counseling panel to:
(a) Advise a student-athlete about a future professional
career;
(d) Meet with the student-athlete and representatives of
professional teams;
(e) Communicate directly…with representatives of a
professional athletics team to assist in securing a tryout with that team for a
student-athlete; and
(g) Visit with…representatives of professional athletics
teams to assist the student-athlete in determining his or her market value
(e.g., potential salary, draft status).
