Attorney Louis R. Cohan, who represents Georgia Bulldogs baseball player and graduate student Dylan Goldstein, motioned U.S. District Judge Tilman (“Tripp”) E. Self III late Friday to vacate his order earlier in the day in favor of the NCAA and to recuse himself from the case.
Self denied Goldstein’s motion for a preliminary injunction to allow him to play baseball for UGA beyond his NCAA eligibility. Self reasoned that Goldstein, 24, had failed to establish a viable antitrust claim, including because Goldstein couldn’t persuasively establish he would lose out on NIL deals if not allowed to keep playing.
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As Sportico detailed after the ruling, Self has a college sports background that could raise questions about his objectivity. He has moonlighted as a college football referee, mainly in the Southern Conference, and that topic was raised during his Senate Confirmation hearing in 2018. Although it does not appear the judge has worked or been paid by the NCAA, his X account identifies him as an “NCAA Football Official.”
College referees are typically paid by conferences or schools. It is possible that at some point in Self’s career he was compensated (directly or indirectly) by the NCAA, such as when he refereed the 2017 FCS national championship, but there is no known record of that occurring.
In a six-page brief, Cohan recounts Self’s college sports ties and insists “there is clear evidence of bias which reasonable minds can conclude would affect the Judge’s ability herein to remain unbiased, impartial, and unimpaired in making a legal determination which impacts an association to which the Judge is directly linked and affiliated.”
Cohan notes that Self has the discretion under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to vacate Friday’s ruling and recuse himself. Cohan also points out that the U.S. Code recommends that judges disqualify themselves when their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
Cohan also complains that Self “didn’t tell” the parties that he is, as Self puts it, an “NCAA Football official,” when it is (Cohan argues) “impossible to tease out where the Court’s bias may begin and end when ruling on issues which directly impact the NCAA.”
Self will likely deny the motion since he was obviously aware of his connections to the NCAA and didn’t ask to be reassigned. The judge could surmise that there is no conflict since his work as a referee for college football involved a different sport, in a different conference (UGA plays in the SEC), and refereeing a football game arguably has no relationship to whether a college baseball player should be able to play another season. Self might also assert that his self-identity as an “NCAA Football Official” reflects not working for the NCAA but functioning as a referee in a sport governed by the NCAA.
The judge can also reason that his side gig as a college football referee is no secret and has been publicly known for years. He could wonder why Cohan didn’t raise the topic during the 10 days of the proceeding and waited to ask for a recusal until after his client lost. It would be a different situation if Self had hidden ties to the NCAA.
Tom Mars, a longtime sports attorney and former member of the NCAA’s complex case unit, offered a critical take of Self.
“I would have expected the federal judge to disclose his status as an NCAA official to the lawyers as soon as he was assigned the case,” Mars, whose client list has included Jim Harbaugh, Justin Fields, Houston Nutt, Bret Bielema and John Brannen, said in an interview. “It’s not the lawyers’ job to look into the judge’s background, and reasonable minds could question the judge’s impartiality.”
Assuming Self denies the motion for recusal and to vacate the order, Cohan could raise it on an appeal to the U.S. Court for the Eleventh Circuit.
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