Anti-Australian punting class action plaintiff wants equity for US kids

The lead plaintiff in a US class action against Australian punters in American college football says he just wants a level playing field.

Michael Loeffler has brought the case in the District Court of North Carolina against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the body that runs all sport in US colleges.

Loeffler said he filed the lawsuit because of the predominance of mature ex-Australian rules footballers in the US college system who were competing for and winning football punting scholarships over younger American athletes.

“Going to all these punting competitions or training sessions over the last four years or so, one underlying theme is our 17-year-old kids, 18-year-old kids, their positions are being usurped by 25-year-old ex-professional Australian players,” Loeffler told ABC Sport.

“It’s got to the point where in 2023, 12 out of the 14 (punters) out of the Southeastern Conference (SEC), which is the number one conference here in college football, were Australian.

“If you count the Big Ten [another college football conference] and the SEC, it was like 71 per cent were Australian punters,” Loeffler said.

The court documents state that in 2023, throughout the top tier of US college football, 61 of 133 programs had at least one Australian punter on a scholarship.

“And it’s got to the point where a lot of schools are only going the Australian route through ProKick,” Loeffler said

“It’s almost like a concerted funnel into the United States.”

Loeffler’s lawsuit specifically cites ProKick, an Australian company that states it can train Australian athletes in punting for American football and help them gain college scholarships.

The company, which is run by the former Brisbane and Hawthorn AFL player Nathan Chapman and former NFL kicker John Smith, boasts it has helped 270 Australians gain college scholarships, saving them a total of $54 million as of January 2022.

The company’s website lists seven of its graduates who have played in the top-flight NFL.

In January two ProKick graduates, Joe McGuire, the son of the former Collingwood president Eddie McGuire, and James Rendell, the son of the late Fitzroy ruckman Matt Rendell, played as punters in the final of the college football championships between Ohio State University and Notre Dame.

McGuire was on the victorious Ohio State team.

There is no suggestion that either McGuire or Rendell are linked to the court action.

Loeffler said he was motivated to launch the class action because he saw how difficult it would be for his son Hunter, a talented high school junior punter, to gain a college spot amid the influx of Australians.

“Everybody was a little frustrated,” he told ABC Sport.

“One time I was talking to one of the punting guys and he said, ‘A few years ago we invited a bunch of the Australian guys to come to one of our punting and kicking competitions.’

“And they got off the bus and he said, ‘If you could have seen the disparity: We had a bunch of 14- and 15-year-old kids and then these fully bearded 25-year olds getting off the bus and they’re competing against each other.’

“And it was like borderline absurd.

“It was like somebody in college going back to their junior high school and saying, ‘OK, now I want to be on the high school basketball team so let me go and compete against 15-year-old kids.’

“It’s just not historically what our educational system was set up for. College athletics was set up for the 18 to 23 demographic.”

He has drawn a distinction with US President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender athletes in the United States which has excluded fewer than 10 athletes.

“Meanwhile, the Australian punter thing has displaced hundreds and hundreds,” he said.

“I don’t think a lot of people realised how absurd this situation is.”

The court documents state that allowing Australian athletes in their mid-20s — some of whom have played professional Australian rules football — to win scholarships gives them an unfair advantage over student athletes who normally enter college aged 18 or 19.

“ProKick all but guarantees its trainees who pay tuition exceeding $15,000, will receive a full scholarship to punt in the United States upon completion of their pre-collegiate training school,” the court documents say.

“This age and experience disparity grants Australians an unfair competitive advantage in developing their physical skills, leg strength, and technical punting expertise compared to American high school graduates who lack the equivalent timing opportunity to acquire a similar skill competency.”

Loeffler said he had about 200 participants in the class action so far but expected to get about 1,000.

He said he expected the NCAA would file a motion to dismiss his class action.

“And then they’re going to dump a hundred-thousand pages of documentation at us … to try to overwhelm the prosecution and make them feel like they want to quit,” he said.

“We know that process is going to go on.

“It’s not about the money — the class action was more basically to get people together behind this … it’s to implement change.

“If the NCAA said right now, ‘Yes, we’re going to change this. We’re not going to allow ex-professional players, and everybody has to be under the age of 21. We’ll let any Australian punter come over under the age of 21 who doesn’t have prior (professional experience),’ I would walk right down to the courthouse, tear up the lawsuit right now.”

The class action is based on six legal claims including age discrimination, anti-trust and unfair trade practices laws, as well as violation of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which states that “no state shall deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”.

“NCAA policies disproportionately favour international athletes over domestic ones, granting them an extended period of eligibility while maintaining restrictive age limits in other sports,” the court documents state.

Loeffler cites the case of ice hockey in the NCAA, where athletes lose one year of tuition for every year they are over 21.

Under those rules, a 23-year-old would only be eligible for two years of tuition instead of the usual four.

“We wanted to show the hypocrisy that in other — sports ice hockey, tennis, skiing — they have these regulations in place so that you can’t just go get your proficiency and just keep going and going and then decide at 25 or 26, now I’m going to come dominate the competition,” Loeffler said.

“I don’t want to exclude anybody. If there is an 18-year-old Australian punter who is phenomenal, come on over.”

Loeffler said he began work on the class action before Fox News in San Antonio reported allegations that some Australian punters in US colleges were not eligible to receive scholarships and student visas, potentially in violation of NCAA regulations.

The news organisation reported it had hired an investigator to investigate allegations of fraud.

ABC Sport contacted ProKick’s Nathan Chapman to respond to the allegations levelled in Loeffler’s class action, but he did not return our calls.

This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.