LOS ANGELES — The sheer definition of control rested on the broad shoulders of one Brandon Outlaw, a man who had recorded all of two tackles across two uneventful seasons playing for USC and was now being tabbed to help determine the future of collegiate football.
For two days, in a small hearing in West Los Angeles, a group of suits picked apart every finite detail of Outlaw’s experience playing football as a Trojan in 2021 and 2022. And slowly, Outlaw’s testimony began to build a record that peeled back the realities of what it means to be a USC football player: 50-60 hours a week of football-related activity, required weigh-ins and drug tests, fingerprint scanning to monitor mandatory team meals.
He was the first witness of the first in-person hearing in this titanic case, the National Labor Relations Board’s crusade against USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA arguing the classification of USC student-athletes as employees, a case that could pave the route to a salary cap and free agency in college sports. And during testimony and cross-examination that totaled several hours, one innocuous comment – that was, frankly, speculation – stood most critical.
After USC lawyer Adam Abrahams’ cross-examination on Monday, NLRB lawyer Amanda Laufer countered with a re-cross that dove into the program’s nutritional standards. If players were told to eat something, Laufer questioned Outlaw, was that optional?
“I don’t think the player would’ve taken that as optional,” Outlaw said.
“If Coach (Bennie) Wylie were to hand someone a sandwich and say ‘Eat this,’” Outlaw followed, in reference to USC’s strength coach, “I don’t think there was a single guy that wouldn’t have eaten it.”
The IRS’ definition of an “employee,” under common law, follows as such: anyone who performs a service for you “if you can control what will be done and how it will be done.” And that theme – control – was the underpinning of the first in-person hearing of the NLRB’s case against USC Dec. 18-20, with each party trying to color the picture through witness testimony of how tightly USC football holds the reins over its players.
THE BATTLE FOR CONTROL
The NLRB’s position, as Laufer stated in her opening statement, was simple enough: USC football and basketball players were subject to USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA’s “control in performance of their services.”
And Laufer worked, over the course of three days in examination of Outlaw and subsequent witness Miles “Kohl” Hollinquest, to establish that USC football players put in an incredible amount of labor that was tightly monitored by USC. Hollinquest testified, in addition to Outlaw’s established record of nutrition management and urine tests, that players were tightly monitored on road trips and at the USC Hotel on Friday nights before game days, not allowed to leave unless it was with the team.
USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA, meanwhile, didn’t attempt to disprove that control in cross-examination – merely trying to establish that players’ participation under such control was voluntary, and related to the academic pursuits typically aligned with the definition of “amateurism.”
The Pac-12’s lawyer Daniel Nash, in fact, compared Wylie’s sandwich directive to that of a professor assigning a student a homework assignment. Abrahams, meanwhile, tried to establish that practices such as weigh-ins and conditioning-related punishment instilled values of accountability.
“College athletics at USC is part of the comprehensive set of opportunities we offer students as part of their educational experience,” read a statement provided by USC to the Southern California News Group after the hearing. “We deeply value our talented students who participate in athletics. Testimony during the hearing, along with 75 years of precedent, establishes that our student-athletes – including those on our football and basketball teams – are not employees.”
Ramogi Huma, the director of the National Collegiate Players’ Association – the party that originally brought an unfair labor practice against USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA – pushed back on USC lines of questioning that established participation in football-related activities wasn’t voluntary.
“Every employee has employment that is voluntary … no one in America is forced to be an employee, but that does not mean they’re not an employee and they don’t have rights under the labor law,” Huma told the Southern California News Group. “That was maybe the weakest argument I’ve heard the whole trial.”
The case will only get more complex in late January, when the next phase of the hearing will resume and likely call upon current or former members of USC’s athletic administration to testify. It invites a wealth of questions: will football head coach Lincoln Riley, a figure mentioned throughout this December hearing, be subpoenaed and take the stand? What about former athletic director Mike Bohn?
“Very, very important pieces are now on the record,” Huma said. “There’s no undoing that.”