The University of Wisconsin and its collective said in a lawsuit that University of Miami representatives had impermissible contacts with former Badgers football player Xavier Lucas to lure him to play for the Hurricanes.
Lucas refuted the claims in a recent court filing, noting specifically that he was unaware of a Miami coach and alumnus visiting the Florida home of one of his relatives last December, as Wisconsin alleged.
That disputed visit was one of the items referenced by Wisconsin and collective VC Connect when it filed a tampering case against Miami in Dane County court in June.
Miami asks judge to dismiss tampering lawsuit involving former Wisconsin football cornerback
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Lucas, a cornerback who now plays at Miami after a contentious effort to leave Wisconsin via the transfer portal, signed an unsworn declaration that Miami submitted with its Aug. 8 motion to dismiss the tampering case. The statement was intended to bolster Miami’s argument that it shouldn’t be subject to litigation in Wisconsin because it doesn’t do business in the state.
Lucas’ 13-point declaration, signed July 25, counters some of the allegations Wisconsin and VC Connect made in their lawsuit, which listed Miami and not the player as a defendant.
The complaint said Lucas signed a memorandum of understanding with Wisconsin and a name, image and likeness contract with VC Connect on Dec. 2 but asked to be placed in the transfer portal 15 days later after he returned home to Florida. Wisconsin and VC Connect argued in the complaint that representatives from Miami talked with Lucas between those times, but Lucas denied it in his declaration.
He wrote that he wasn’t contacted by anyone from Miami or anyone who purported to be acting on behalf of Miami while he was in Wisconsin during the 2024 fall semester. He said he returned home to Florida on Dec. 15 and decided to attempt to transfer from Wisconsin with no contact from Miami and no influence from anyone representing the Florida school.
“Once I decided to attempt to transfer to University of Miami, I initiated contact with University of Miami,” Lucas wrote in the declaration. “No one from University of Miami initiated contact with me.”
Miami’s motion to dismiss the case was based on its belief that it doesn’t have the business contacts in Wisconsin to be subject to jurisdiction in the state. Establishing that no action in Lucas seeking to leave Wisconsin via the transfer portal was conducted in Wisconsin is part of Miami’s argument, sports business lawyer Joshua Frieser said.
“I think it’s an interesting argument,” he said. “I think where that argument might fail — and this is probably the response that would come from the University of Wisconsin — is he was enrolled as a student-athlete at the University of Wisconsin throughout all of this. It doesn’t matter where he physically was. What matters is he had a contract with us and he was enrolled at the University of Wisconsin. And Miami should have known that and probably did know that.”
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Wisconsin refused to put Lucas in the transfer portal after the player’s Dec. 17 request, it said in its complaint, because Lucas had binding NIL contracts with the school and the collective. Lucas posted to social media Dec. 27 that Wisconsin was holding up his entry to the portal.
He retained attorney Darren Heitner as legal counsel, and Heitner said Jan. 17 that Lucas unenrolled from Wisconsin and was in the process of enrolling at Miami, an end around to the transfer portal to which the NCAA didn’t object. “NCAA rules do not prevent a student-athlete from unenrolling from an institution, enrolling at a new institution and competing immediately,” the NCAA said in a statement.
Wisconsin filed suit hoping to set boundaries for how schools can interact with players who have signed contracts with another school and who are not in the transfer portal. Miami, in its motion to dismiss, characterized Wisconsin’s claims as rhetoric that “the very fate of college football hangs in the balance” and the court was being asked “to save the soul of college sports.”
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One of the issues in dispute is a visit to the Florida home of a Lucas relative by a Miami coach and a prominent Miami alumnus. Wisconsin said in its complaint that it happened in December 2024, an apparent effort to connect Lucas’ transfer decision to influence from Miami. Heitner and Miami lawyer Eric Isicoff said in interviews with CaneSport that the meeting happened in 2023, when Lucas was still a high school recruit.
Lucas, who verbally committed to the Badgers in August 2023 and signed a National Letter of Intent in December 2023, also disputed Wisconsin’s characterization of the meeting.
“I am unaware of any coach or alumnus of University of Miami visiting the home of any of my relatives in December 2024 and do not believe that such an event ever occurred,” Lucas wrote in his declaration.
An unsworn declaration can be used instead of an affidavit in civil litigation in Wisconsin. The person makes the declaration under penalty of false swearing instead of under oath, according to state statutes.
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