Mit Winter is a 2001 graduate of William & Mary. A former Tribe basketball player who is now a college sports law attorney, he is one of the foremost experts on college sports law in the United States, advising athletes and schools on NIL opportunities and legal issues.
He recently sat down with the Tribe Unscripted Podcast to talk about his time at William & Mary, his journey into sports law, and answer questions about the current landscape of college sports.
The interview has been edited for clarity.
Mit, thank you so much for taking the time to do this with us today. You're a self-described college sports law attorney. Tell us what exactly you do and how your work intersects with college athletics and the NCAA.
"I've worked in the college athletics legal space since I got out of law school in 2005. I represented the NCAA and some conferences, but the last 5-6 years, my practice has been heavily focused in the NIL space."
"Within that NIL realm, I work with schools, athletes, and agents, helping them with legal issues that arise with their clients who are college athletes, and work with different businesses in the college sports NIL space. I've seen this world that college athletics is in now from all the different angles that are out there. It's been interesting to watch it change and evolve over the last five years."
Tell us about your educational background. What did you study when you were at William & Mary, and how did that catapult your career into sports law?
"I think it was the first semester of my senior year when I decided I wanted to go to law school. I've always been a person who likes to read and analyze and think about stuff, which works well with law school and being a lawyer, because a lot of your time is spent reading things, thinking about things, writing — those are the things that are kind of right in my wheelhouse. It kind of coincided with being a history major as well."
"Then I went to law school at the University of San Francisco… and graduated from USF in 2005."
What can you say about your experience at William & Mary, allowing you to pursue yourself both academically and athletically?
"There was never a time where someone said, 'You can't be this major, you can't take these classes because of your basketball schedule', or 'You're here to play basketball.'"
"It's at a place like William & Mary [where] you're there to do both at a high level — do the academic side, and then also do the basketball side or whatever your sport is. We never got any special favors for grades. You're pretty much like any other student figuring out what you want your major to be, what your schedule is going to be like. You obviously have some help from athletics, academic advisors, and stuff like that, but you're getting a real education at William & Mary."
Let's talk about how we got to the current state of college athletics. For a very long time, the NCAA had an ironclad grip on regulating athlete mobility and compensation. Now it's gone in the exact opposite direction where there's no structure. Can you give us an overarching view of where things started to turn for the NCAA?
"The O'Bannon case [O'Bannon v. NCAA in 2014] was really the first time where the NCAA's rules that limited how much compensation athletes can receive was deemed to be illegal by the court. That case was brought by former UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon, and it originally started off as a case where he saw a college basketball video game… he was in the game, it wasn't necessarily using his name, but his number and the way the video game character looked — it was clear that it was him."
"He brought a case against the NCAA and the video game makers EA [Sports], an antitrust case that really challenged the NCAA rule that limited the amount of NIL compensation that athletes could receive, which was zero. The court in that case said those NCAA rules violated antitrust law. The case went up on appeal to the Ninth Circuit, and it was mostly affirmed."
"At that time, the NCAA didn't change its rules about athletes being able to receive NIL compensation. The only thing that really changed at that point was college athletes were then allowed to receive athletic scholarships up to the cost of attendance."
You've always been a tireless advocate for the rights of college athletes. Where does that perspective come from?
"I think it just comes from being a college athlete myself. When I was in college, I didn't think about this stuff whatsoever. When you're an athlete coming from high school, you're pretty pumped to be able to keep playing college sports, to have a scholarship, now to get some NIL money, depending on what school you're at, could be a lot of NIL money. So those are all awesome things."
"But now just being a lawyer and thinking about these issues a lot, it's really just having that perspective… and just not being a fan of things being unilaterally imposed on the athletes. And I get all of the reasons that people want to do those things — to create competitive balance and because it can get really expensive without it — but I just think that the athletes should be involved in making those decisions where their rights are being limited and taken away."
There hasn't been a ton of enforcement when it comes to third-party collectives paying players. Some schools are operating like there is no cap at all. Why has it been so difficult to get any sort of regulation?
"For those people that don't know, the College Sports Commission is a new entity created by the Power Four to oversee revenue sharing paid by schools and third-party NIL payments made to athletes. With third-party payments, all deals that athletes do that are $600 or more with the third party have to be disclosed to the College Sports Commission. They review and approve them. There's a more strict review of those deals if they're with what's known as an associated entity, which is any entity supporting the school in any way."
"The CSC is treating a broader group of businesses and entities as associated entities. Right now, the CSC theoretically has the power to punish schools and athletes engaging in third-party NIL activities not approved by the CSC. However, the whole system is still subject to antitrust law and other legal attacks."
"They don't have an antitrust exemption and have been trying to get around this. They've been asking schools to sign a participation agreement where schools are giving up their right to sue the CSC for actions it takes against schools and athletes. It hasn't been signed by all the P4 schools yet, which is who needs to sign it. Various state attorney generals have advised their schools not to sign it."
"The NCAA and conferences are trying to address this through the SCORE Act, a federal bill pending in the House right now, which would give the NCAA an antitrust exemption. If that bill ever passes, then you'll probably see the CSC get more aggressive as well. The CSC and NCAA don't have subpoena power, so they can't go out to third parties and say, 'Hey, we got a tip that you're doing something that violates the rules. Give us all these documents and emails.' They don't have that power because they're not the government. It makes it hard for them to do investigations. They have power over schools and athletes but can't control what a third party does."
Where do you see the sport evolving over the next 5-7 years? One of the things that you've advocated for is having a sport-by-sport governance model. Can you tell us exactly what that means?
"We can just take Division I basketball, for example. There would be a new governing body that operates Division I college basketball. You could think of it as equivalent to the NBA. I just think that could potentially work a lot better than the system we have now where the NCAA is trying to create rules that govern all the different sports, and where the sports have so many differences in terms of the people playing those sports [and] what types of issues they're dealing with."
"I think it would be just be a heck of a lot easier if there's a basketball governing body, a football governing body, and potentially if we're talking about a future where athletes are going to be employees, it would also make it easier to potentially have collective bargaining if you just have a basketball league that can negotiate with the players that are on the teams in that league, or a football league that can negotiate with the players on the teams in that league and create their own rules and models for how the sport is going to work."
To hear the full interview, visit TribeAthletics.com/Podcasts or follow Tribe Unscripted on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
