UW won’t say how much it pays Huskies quarterback Demond Williams Jr. or any other student-athlete, or tell which athletes have NIL contracts with the school. (Jennifer Buchanan / The Seattle Times)
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By
David Gutman
Seattle Times staff reporter
University of Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr. shocked his coaches, teammates and the college football world in early January by announcing he would leave Montlake, presumably to play for another school.
Williams’ decision was stunning because just four days earlier he had — according to unnamed sources — signed a deal to stay at UW that would — according to unnamed sources — pay him $4 million a year for the rights to market his name, image and likeness.
The unnamed sources were all there was to go on. UW never announced Williams’ signing, they just retweeted an ESPN reporter who cited anonymous sources. And UW never announced or confirmed it would pay Williams $4 million a year.
Williams, it seems, signed an NIL contract with UW. Then, perhaps, another school, LSU was rumored, offered him more money, so he changed his mind. Then UW, essentially, threatened to sue and he changed his mind again.
Are we sure that’s exactly how all of this happened? No.
The Seattle Times has, since the beginning of the football season, been trying to get records from UW that would illuminate situations such as this — to tell the public what the state’s largest public university is paying its student-athletes and under what terms.
UW has, largely, refused.
Williams is only 19. Was his contract fair, and was he properly advised? How many contracts have been signed with female student-athletes? Are athletes signing contracts with fair terms, for fair market values? Without access to the public records, there’s no way to know.
UW’s contracts both forbid student-athletes from disclosing any of the details for at least five years — and get athletes’ consent to release that information if the university wants to.
For decades, college athletes have helped generate tens, hundreds of millions of dollars for their coaches, schools, conferences, while receiving only a scholarship for compensation. But this school year brought a revolution to college sports: For the first time in history, schools are allowed to pay athletes directly. More than 300 of the biggest colleges and universities are participating. But even though the overwhelming majority of those Division I schools are public institutions, this entire process is playing out in the dark — no school has publicly disclosed what it is paying student-athletes.
Before the days of NIL, stories of agents and boosters acting unscrupulously in the shadows of big-time college sports were legion. Today’s system is authorized, but just as opaque.
“Secrecy in college sports often accrues to the benefit of hidebound wrongdoers and the detriment of vulnerable students,” wrote lawyers Frank LoMonte and Rachel Jones in a 2023 article in the Temple Law Review on NIL secrecy. “Public scrutiny is the most effective check on the abuses and excesses that inevitably will result as untold millions pour into a minimally regulated endorsement system.”
This month, UW pointed to Williams’ situation, saying it highlights the importance of keeping everything secret.
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“The events of the past month at the University of Washington and other institutions underscore the importance of maintaining confidentiality around the specifics of an institution’s revenue share program,” UW Vice President Jane Yung wrote in denying The Seattle Times’ appeal of a public records request.
UW won’t disclose who it signs contracts with, when, for how much and under what terms because, it says, doing so would put it at a competitive disadvantage. The contracts, UW says, are “trade secrets” and exempt from disclosure under the state’s public records law.
“Student-athletes are not employees, and their agreements, payments, and relationship to the University are fundamentally different from those of University personnel, including administrators, coaches, faculty, and staff,” UW spokesperson Victor Balta said in an email.
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“In addition to concerns about students’ privacy, releasing detailed information about student-athlete compensation or revenue sharing would place the University of Washington at a significant competitive disadvantage,” Balta wrote.
Public universities across the country have been doing everything in their power to avoid disclosing the millions of dollars they pay student-athletes.
In Colorado, the Legislature added an exemption to its public records law last year, explicitly to keep athlete payments secret. South Carolina is facing a lawsuit for refusing to divulge payment information, so the Legislature is moving quickly to pass a law allowing payments to remain secret.
In response to a September public records request from The Seattle Times, UW provided 109 contracts it has signed with student-athletes, since the nationwide legal settlement over the summer that allowed schools to pay athletes directly. But in nearly every important respect, those contracts were redacted.
All names were redacted. All dollar amounts and other benefits provided to athletes were hidden. Even the dates the contracts were signed were blacked out.
A closer look: 109 redactions
UW provided 109 contracts it has signed with student-athletes. Here is one page from each contract.
Image 1 of 1. Caption: Image Description not available
Source: University of Washington (Reporting by David Gutman, graphic by Shaun Martin / The Seattle Times)
The university has continued to withhold the records through two appeals. The Seattle Times has also appealed to the state attorney general’s office. The timeline for that decision is unclear and any ruling would be nonbinding on UW.
Did athletes already consent to release?
As a public university, UW’s records and finances — who it pays, how much, when, for what purposes — are generally public information.UW Athletics is not financed by tax dollars; funding comes from ticket sales, media rights, sponsorship deals and philanthropy. But money spent by UW Athletics is still money spent by a public institution and is, barring special circumstances, supposed to be open to the public.
The contract of every UW coach is public. The salary of nearly every UW employee is public, even displayed in a handy state database.That’s how we know that football coach Jedd Fisch was paid $7,575,024 last year, including $3.2 million in base salary, $2.4 million in “additional compensation” and $2 million to a business he set up called JF Football LLC. That’s how we know men’s soccer coach Jamie Clark got a $50,000 bonus for winning the national championship. Or that men’s basketball coach Danny Sprinkle also gets paid through an LLC, got a $400,000 relocation allowance when he moved here from Utah State in 2024 and that UW paid $2.9 million for Sprinkle to get out of his Utah State contract.
UW says athlete contracts are different from the publicly disclosable contracts it signs with all of its employees in two ways.
First, these are contracts with students. UW says they are protected by FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law that regulates and restricts the disclosure of student records.
It is true that FERPA generally allows UW to disclose education records only with the written consent of the student.
But the boilerplate contract UW signs with student-athletes includes language allowing it to be disclosed under FERPA.
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“I give my consent to Institution to disclose my name and personally identifiable information from my education records to a third party (including but not limited to the media),” the contract reads.
The information can be disclosed for “collecting, analyzing, or reporting information related to my signing or as otherwise required by applicable law, without such disclosure constituting a violation of my rights, including my rights under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).”
UW says that language, in contracts signed by its student-athletes, is not enough.
“It is the University’s position that the scope of the release in the agreements is primarily to allow UW to correct inaccuracies, and to enable the University to comply with its various compliance reporting obligations,” Yung wrote this month. “It was not intended to, and does not in the University’s opinion, function as a blanket FERPA release beyond those purposes.”
But even if the contract language waiving FERPA restrictions allowed for the records to be released, Yung wrote, there’s still the issue of trade secrets.
Dollar amounts and specific details in the contracts are “valuable to the University” and “could be used by others, for example, by other schools to entice student-athletes away from the University,” Yung wrote.
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Fair enough. But that argument could conceivably be used to keep secret details of any salary or payment made by UW.
Does disclosing Jedd Fisch’s contract information make it easier for another school to poach him? Certainly. Is that reason enough to exempt Fisch’s contract from the requirements of public records law? UW has concluded it is not.
Likewise, the salaries of every professor at UW, of every doctor at UW Medicine are publicly available. That makes it easier for them to be enticed away, but UW has decided it is not justification for withholding the information.
David Gutman: 206-464-2926 or dgutman@seattletimes.com. David Gutman covers local politics and King County government at The Seattle Times, reporting on how leaders and institutions impact the lives of everyday people.