Seigfreid Bingham launches name, image and likeness legal services

Curry Sexton has a unique appreciation for the pressures that young athletes and their schools will face as the rules that once prevented them from profiting from their talents crumble away.

“I don’t think I would have read any of that fine print,” said Sexton, who helped lead Kansas State University to the Alamo Bowl in 2014.

Sexton is now an associate at Kansas City-based Seigfreid Bingham, where he and shareholder Greg Whiston are leading “Empower U,” a new effort to provide legal guidance to conferences and institutions as they navigate the new rules and laws that govern name, image and likeness issues for student athletes.

The initiative by the firm’s sports and entertainment group offers a suite of legal services aimed primarily at smaller schools and conferences, including the Kansas City-based Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association. 

In addition to NCAA rules, the MIAA must follow different name, image and likeness laws in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma, where its 14 member schools are located. Many of those laws are fairly new and untested in court — including Missouri’s, where a recently signed bill that governs compensation for student athletes is set to go into effect on Aug. 28.

It’s a rapidly evolving area of law with the potential for a lot of money to change hands. University of Alabama coach Nick Saban, for instance, recently announced that Bryce Young, the team’s presumptive starting quarterback this year, already has earned close to $1 million in endorsement deals before even playing a game.

Smaller schools, of course, likely won’t see deals of that level. But if anything, their legal issues are even more acute.

“These big schools, like Alabama, LSU, any Power Five conference schools, are going to have all the resources in the world to deal with this,” Whiston said. “They can probably go out and afford to hire new compliance folks just to focus specifically on name, image and likeness, or maybe even put money into an outside consulting firm that just takes care of all of these issues for them. But then you’ve got schools like those here in the MIAA locally. At the smaller division II schools, their compliance department is pretty small, and already their workload is pretty full. And then you add this craziness to it.”

Although the Empower U service is aimed at institutions, it also promises to benefit the athletes themselves. Whiston and Sexton won’t represent the athletes directly, but they plan to hold seminars through the schools to help the athletes appreciate the issues they will face.

“They think it sounds good – we’re going to be able to make money with our name, image and likeness,” Whiston said. “But as we all know, when you’re essentially doing business for yourself as these folks are, there’s a lot more to it and a lot to navigate … It’s not as simple as signing an autograph and getting a paycheck.”

After all, despite their youth and inexperience, those athletes will now have to understand not only their classes and their sports but also business concepts ranging from taxes to contract negotiation.

“It’s all very exciting. It’s well past due,” Sexton said. “But I think it’s important that everybody involved proceeds with some caution and really exercises a lot of due diligence in navigating this new world.”