Florida State is in trouble. With the holiday season upon us, the Seminoles were already not going in with the best record for the season. Now the coach has more trouble on his plate as 6 former FSU players have filed a lawsuit against Leonard Hamilton, over unpaid promises of NIL compensation. The six plaintiffs are former Seminoles Darin Green Jr., Josh Nickelberry, Primo Spears, Cam’Ron Fletcher, De’Ante Green, and Jalen Warley, who transferred to Florida under NIL promises.

The total money amounts to $1.5 million, with each of the six players alleging that the coach had promised them $250,000 in NIL payments from Hamilton’s “business partners,” per Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger. This happened in the 2023-24 season, as Hamilton referred to these payments in two separate team meetings plus individual conversations with some players and their families. But the money never reached them.

This rather surprising news has prompted reactions from across the hoops community, raising discussions in favor of and against NIL. The player compensation era has been one that has been received with an equal measure of enthusiasm and caution. With this latest drama, some are leaning more in favor of bringing back the old model of college athletics.

NIL needs more rules, say fans after Leonard Hamilton fiasco

None of the six plaintiffs are on the current team. For two of them (Green and Nickelberry), eligibility expired this year. Whereas the rest transferred elsewhere. The Report also revealed how players had repeatedly asked Hamilton for updates on the status of their payments in various text message chains. But after no concrete update, those extreme measure was taken.

Sharing different takes on the situation, one fan said on Reddit, “The sport needs to go to a contract model so bad.” Currently, there’s no set model for how NIL works. The two main types of NIL deals, with brands, and with collectives, incur different results. Where brand deals are more directly beneficial to the athlete, those with collectives are not usually straightforward and therefore subject to criticism.

Another fan said, “I don’t know how successful this suit will be, given that Ham was pretty circumspect about not putting any of the promises in writing. That said, seems like there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence about the promises, so there’s definitely enough meat on the complaint to survive any early attempts to dismiss it.”

They also pointed out why this might be the reason AJ Dybantsa chose BYU, whose promised money already exists and is not a future assurance.

“The NIL system where the coach and even university are disconnected from actually paying people makes no sense,” said one. Whereas another fan wrote, “I mean I’d be going after him too if I was promised $250k and the coach and NIL boosters strung me along for an entire season. It had to be infuriating for the players.”

It was indeed aggravating to continue playing without getting paid, as the report also revealed that the team had boycotted a practice in protest. It was before a Feb. 17 game against Duke, in which the team “walked out of the gym” during practice and were ready to do the same for the actual game as well. But Coach Hamilton discovered their plan in time, later sitting down in a meeting in the team’s film room to promise them that the money would appear in their accounts by next week. As it now appears, it didn’t.

One fan asked, “Doesn’t matter, do the players expect the coach to pay them now or something?” The report must have been filed keeping this in mind, asking the 76-year-old to honor his promise to the players who only came to Florida State because of the promised $250k.

Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported that several messages had been exchanged between players and Will Cowen, an executive with one of Florida State’s NIL collectives. The players had said they were “tired of the lies” and told Cowen that “this money situation is weighing on a lot of guys and affecting guys on the court.”

This is not the first NIL horror story of it’s kind and it won’t be the last. All these six plaintiffs can now hope for is that Leonard Hamilton and Florida State cough up what is due to them.