Dan Lanning gives blunt response on tampering in college football

The University of Wisconsin football team made headlines last month when it took its concerns about tampering to the court of law. The Badgers program filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the the Miami football team for allegedly tampering with former Wisconsin freshman defensive back Xavier Lucas, who transferred to the Hurricanes this offseason.

During Wednesday’s Big Ten Media Days in Las Vegas, Oregon head coach Dan Lanning expressed support for increased consequences — likely the non-legal kind — for any teams that are found to have tampered with another team’s roster.

“Yeah. Just play the game the way it’s supposed to be played, right?” Lanning said Wednesday. “There has to be consequences to actions, and if there aren’t consequences, then there’s going to continue to be issues like that.”

Back in January, Wisconsin released a statement accusing Miami of tampering, citing “credible information” and threatened to pursue legal action as a result of the situation.

Wisconsin files tampering lawsuit against Miami over Xavier Lucas recruitment

“The lawsuit details what transpired in the winter among the three parties: Wisconsin, Miami and Lucas,” Yahoo! Sports insider Ross Dellenger reported in June. “UW claims that Miami communicated with Lucas despite knowing he had entered a contract with the school, something it terms as ‘intentional’ interference that ‘was not justified or privileged’ and caused Lucas to ‘breach’ his contract.”

Additionally, the suit alleged that “Miami interfered with UW-Madison’s relationship with Student-Athlete A (Lucas) by making impermissible contact with him and engaging in tampering,” per Dellenger.

It’s been reported that Wisconsin and Lucas agreed to a two-year revenue-share agreement that was set to begin July 1, Dellenger noted. That’s why Wisconsin refused to enter Lucas’ name into the portal when he requested a transfer, but he found a way around it, withdrawing from classes and enrolling academically at Miami in January.

The Big Ten Conference has expressed support of Wisconsin taking legal action against Miami: “We stand by our position that respecting and enforcing contractual obligations is essential to maintaining a level playing field,” their statement read, via Dellenger “In addition to our legal action, we will continue to be proactive to protect the interests of our student-athletes, our program and the broader collegiate athletics community.”

Whatever comes next is bound to set a precedent for college sports moving forward. Tampering has become a hot-button word since the advent of the transfer portal and NIL, but this is certainly a first-of-its-kind lawsuit.

— On3’s Steve Samra contributed to this report.