Duke and outgoing quarterback Darian Mensah reached a settlement Tuesday, clearing the path for him to likely enroll at Miami after the school initially pursued legal action to block his enrollment at another school.
The end result was predictable but the journey was unique to the world of NIL and college athletics. Duke took notable legal steps that could have far-reaching implications within the sport, even after settling the dispute outside the court system. In some ways, a precedent has been set for other schools and players — and judges — to study.
To understand how we got here, CBS Sports talked to six attorneys with experience in sports, NIL or contract law to better understand the Mensah situation.
What you need to know
Darian Mensah signed a two-year deal with Duke that made him one of the highest-paid players in the country, as CBS Sports first reported in December 2024. It was a bold investment on Duke’s behalf, paying above market-rate ($4 million annually, per sources) for a one-year starter at Tulane, but it largely paid off in 2025.
The Blue Devils won the ACC, albeit did not make the College Football Playoff, behind a strong year from Mensah. He finished the season with 3,973 passing yards, 34 touchdowns and six interceptions. Those passing yards and touchdowns were both the second-most of any quarterback in the country.
After the season, he considered entering the NFL Draft after receiving good feedback but ultimately decided to return for another year in Durham. At the time, sources close to Mensah said the decision was only between going to the NFL or staying at Duke, and that he was not considering entering the transfer portal.
Despite that assertion, there continued to be rumblings that Miami was interested in Mensah should he enter the portal. After the Hurricanes missed on a couple options, including Arizona State’s Sam Leavitt (LSU) and Alabama’s Ty Simpson (NFL Draft), they turned their attention to Mensah, who told the school he intended to transfer on the final day of the portal window.
What was Duke’s response?
The school sued Mensah, citing the signed contract and claiming “irreparable harm” if the QB was able to escape his contract without any ramifications. It was a notable maneuver, believed to be the first of its kind, to not only directly sue a student-athlete but to attempt to prevent from him leaving. There were similarities between this situation and the one a year ago between Wisconsin and defensive back Xavier Lucas, who unenrolled from the school to go to Miami despite signing a revenue share agreement with the Badgers. Notably, Wisconsin sued Miami and not Lucas directly, and that situation continues to play out in the legal system.
There was some risk, at least from an optics standpoint, in Duke suing Mensah.
“From a business standpoint, nobody may have wanted to be the first school to break that seal and actually sue a player because it may have a chilling effect on other players who may say ‘I don’t want to go to Duke, they sued Mensah,” said Bryan M. Sullivan, a partner at Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae LLP. “You make business decisions with knowledge of the law, but you still might not want to enforce it because business-wise it’s not a good idea.”
In its statement announcing the settlement, Duke seemed to suggest this was a reason for not going through with the preliminary injunction. Its statement read, in part, “It is nonetheless a difficult choice to pursue legal action against a student and teammate; for this reason we sought to resolve the matter fairly and quickly.”
What did Duke getting a TRO mean?
After filing its lawsuit, Duke successfully obtained a temporary restraining order (TRO) covering several key areas. Most notably, under the TRO, Mensah was not able to enroll at another school until the preliminary injunction hearing, scheduled for Jan. 29. It did, however, allow him to officially enter his name in the transfer portal, which he has since done.
In a filing last Friday, Mensah’s lawyers argued that an initial Feb. 2 court date could prevent the quarterback from enrolling at the school of his choice because of enrollment deadlines. It states that it “could permanently foreclose opportunities for Mensah to enroll at other collegiate institutions.” Mensah’s plan has been to enroll at Miami, sources told CBS Sports. The last day for spring registration was Jan. 21.
How would this have played out in court?
Even before Duke and Mensah announced a settlement, it felt like the most likely outcome. Obtaining a TRO for Duke was significant from a leverage standpoint, but going to court can be risky. Not only can an outcome go against you, but it can also open yourself up to court discussions about recruiting and contract strategy you don’t want competitors seeing.
Before a settlement was reached, we asked five legal experts what they thought could happen. Their mixed opinions spoke to the risk of letting it play out in court.
Mitch Gilfillan, attorney at Quinn Johnston: “To simply ignore the contract and rip it up after it was signed would create a dangerous precedent across the country for all athletes to explore. The moment you signed something and three weeks later a better offer comes, that’s business, that’s life, you missed out. If all of us did that and there were no ramifications for signing a contract, there’d be no purpose to even have laws. In that aspect, that should favor Duke.”
Ricardo P. Cestero, partner in Greenberg Glusker’s Sports Group: “The contract is purely for the name and likeness rights in connection with institution of higher education marketing and promotion and football. What’s really the issue is the exclusivity of his likeness for those two purposes. The contract is not for the services of actually playing football, nor can Duke compel him to play football for them, or, frankly, even to remain enrolled in their school. So it isn’t an employment agreement. The interest that Duke has in Mensah really is limited to name, image and likeness. I think it is kind of a very slender read that they’re trying to hold on to here to try to prevent him from going somewhere else. You can certainly imagine a scenario in which he could enroll in a different school and play football for a different school without granting that school his name, image and likeness.
“I think Duke, at the end of the day, is going to have a difficult time getting an injunction preventing him from going elsewhere simply because it doesn’t really relate directly to the exclusive rights that they got under this contract. It’s sort of tangential to those rights.”
Scott Schneider, founder of Schneider Education and Employment Law: “How I ultimately think it gets resolved is one of two ways. The first is the kid says, like Demond Williams at Washington, hey I’ve thought about this, and I’m going to honor my commitment. Maybe there’s some sort of renegotiation of the agreement. The other option is he pays Duke some money to leave and I assume goes to Miami. I can’t see a situation where this actually gets fully litigated and he’s compelled to stay at Duke.
“People keep going. ‘Well, if this was an employment agreement, Duke could force him to stay,’ and that’s just completely wrong. Unless involuntary servitude, the 13th Amendment, has been jettisoned, no, we can’t compel specific performance.”
Kevin Paule, shareholder at Hill Ward Henderson: “As someone who regularly handles injunction hearings, I think Duke will struggle to show that Mensah’s breach of the agreement would cause irreparable harm that cannot be calculated through money damages. It’s not enough to show that someone has breached an agreement and caused harm — the party seeking an injunction has to show that it is a unique type of harm that can’t be remedied by the payment of money at the end of the case. Essentially, Duke is seeking to have the court require Mensah to perform under his agreement during the pendency of this trial — obtaining that type of relief is very rare in business disputes.”
Bryan M. Sullivan, partner at Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae LLP: “There’s a good argument that Duke gave up opportunities for other quarterbacks for Mensah. What are their damages there? There’s definitely a way to calculate damages for that, it’s not so speculative that it can’t be calculated. They can certainly get an expert who can testify to that. Maybe they want to be ruthless and not just get their money back, but ding Mensah for an amount of money they would have had he played for them next season.
What are the long-term ramifications?
What most people in college football — coaches and administrators especially — want is stability. One way to get that, at least in theory, was to have athletes sign binding contracts, whether for NIL or revenue sharing, to slow down free agency. Duke even took the smart step of signing Mensah to a two-year deal with a significant financial commitment in the hopes of avoiding exactly what has played out this cycle.
But if signing a two-year deal means nothing, we’re right back to a free-for-all in the market.
“I’ve been saying if you want to create stability — and I said this to clients — then do some multi-year deals,” Schneider said. “The Mensah deal…was really a high-profile attempt to do that. So there’s this part of, ‘We’ve identified a problem.’ We can’t restrict them from NCAA rules and they can transfer wherever they want, but as a matter of contract, we may be able to get some stability for the system or at least in this limited case for Duke.
“Part of Mensah leaving, especially at the last minute, makes you go, ‘Maybe we were wrong about that.'”
Said Cestero: “One of the most interesting parts of this case is it presents the fundamental question of how do schools enforce these name, image and likeness agreements? If they can’t stop the student athlete from going and switching schools on them, effectively that only leaves the school with only being able to have one year NIL agreements. I don’t know that that’s necessarily a terrible outcome but that may be where this ends up – schools will just have to accept the reality that trying to do a multi-year NIL contract as a practical matter is not really enforceable.”
Mensah’s contract notably didn’t include a buyout clause. In more recent NIL and rev-share deals, this has become more commonplace, offering a clear financial way out of a contract. It can become increasingly similar to coaching contracts that allow for significant movement as long as the financial buyout terms are met.
Last spring, Arkansas threatened legal action against two outgoing players, including quarterback Madden Iamaleava, the younger brother of Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava. Madden Iamaleava enrolled at Arkansas in January, only to leave after spring practices to follow his brother to UCLA. The two sides reached a settlement without a court filing, sources told CBS Sports.
Schools are still walking a tightrope, however, because players are not employees and these are not employment contracts. Even if they were under employment contracts, it wouldn’t solve everything. As Schneider noted above, you can’t force an employee to stay under indentured servitude if they want to leave. But employment contracts would make defining the terms of a departure and possible non-competes easier.
“In theory, you could restrict him from going to competitors if there was an employment model,” Schneider said. “You could say you can leave but you have a non-compete and you can’t go be the quarterback for a school in the ACC or anybody we’ve played in the last year or two.”
Said Gilfillan: “Revenue sharing and NIL has exposed college sports for what it is — these athletes are more or less employees for their university. Until we can acknowledge that, accept it and really embrace it, we are going to continue to run into challenges and that includes, first and foremost, filing lawsuits and letting the courts answer and not the NCAA.”
The issue, says Dan Etna of Herrick Sports Law Group, is “unfortunately, the NCAA just doesn’t seem to have enough teeth to sink into this. Their silence is deafening.”
Will revenue share contracts hold up as legally enforceable? We still don’t know. The ongoing Lucas case could provide some answers, but he was able to play the 2025 season for Miami without consequences. Demond Williams and Washington looked like it could be the big test before he ultimately returned to the school. Mensah and Duke took it one step closer, but still resolved the situation before a judge could rule on the entirety of its merits. The TRO gives us a clue, but there are still many unknowns on how judges across the country could rule if a situation like this pops up again.
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