A University of Maryland soccer player is the latest student athlete to sue the NCAA over eligibility concerns related to previously playing professionally, bringing the issue clouding the future of college sports to a courthouse in Prince George’s County.
This case involves 22-year-old Antoine Coupland, a Canadian citizen who enrolled as a freshman at the school in January. But in denying his case, the NCAA cited his experience with a team in Croatia, as well as the Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2 in the MLS Next Pro developmental league, where he was loaned out to Vancouver’s first team in Major League Soccer.
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He played a total of 14 minutes and scored a goal in two games for Vancouver’s first team.
“They’re trying to say he went pro, which he didn’t,” said Tim Maloney, Coupland’s attorney in the matter, in an interview with WTOP.
He’s asking for a temporary and permanent injunction that would allow Coupland to play. A hearing on the matter is set for next week in Upper Marlboro.
“This is a young man who did what thousands of young soccer players do, which is he had youth training experience in the minor leagues, but never went pro,” Maloney said.
Neither the NCAA nor the university would comment, though documents filed with the courts show Maryland officials arguing strenuously on Coupland’s behalf.
“The NCAA’s decision to deny Mr. Coupland’s reinstatement of eligibility is comprised of opinion-based characterizations that are contradicted by factual statements,” university President Darryll Pines wrote in a five-page letter appealing the decision.
It’s part of the court record submitted by Maloney.
“Mr. Coupland’s case sits at the intersection of multiple evolving, and, at times, inconsistent areas of NCAA pre-enrollment legislation and eligibility certification practice,” Pines added.
The MLS Player’s Association also wrote the NCAA, saying it wanted to help the organization in “accurately assessing” Coupland’s eligibility status as it pertains to the contract he signed. It specifically pointed out Coupland did not receive the benefits or pay MLS first-team players get.
In the complaint, Coupland argues the NCAA was wrong to say he was given compensation beyond actual and necessary expenses, and that some of the numbers offered up by the NCAA as compensation he received, or expenses he incurred, were arbitrary and done in bad faith.
“NCAA uses opaque average expenditure data and frequently changing criteria to make its ‘actual and necessary’ expenses,” the lawsuit argues. “This data and criteria are not transparent. They are published nowhere.”
However, the lawsuit says the NCAA’s decision about Coupland is focused on the MLS games he played, and is a result of ongoing debates in the media and on Capitol Hill about professionalism in college sports.
Coupland’s lawyer says in the complaint the NCAA was looking to make “a result-oriented decision,” and that NCAA staff “confirmed that NCAA senior leaders were focused on controlling the amateur narrative of intercollegiate athletics and permitting Antoine to compete might undermine that narrative.”
“Student-athletes routinely sign short-term professional agreements without forfeiting eligibility,” said the complaint. “But the NCAA mistakenly believed Antoine signed the standard professional (MLS) agreement, not the short-term agreement.”
It also points to other soccer players with appearances in England’s Premier League, as well as the growing list of basketball players who played professionally in Europe before going to college, and says if injunctive relief isn’t granted, it jeopardizes Coupland’s academic career.
“Yet the NCAA portrays Antoine’s signing of these agreements themselves as violations, or an intent to professionalize, when they are not,” it argues.
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