A Case of Cold Cash

Jeremy Bloom loves playing college football. He adores the once-a-week roar of 70,000 fans at kickoff and the daily silence of 80 guys whose only noise is hard breathing at an intense practice.

Bloom, 22, also loves moguls skiing. His heart flutters when he soars off a bump in a snow, propelled high in the sky to do somersaults and rolls and twists until he lands with a soft splat on the snow.

For two years, Bloom, a football player at the University of Colorado and the third-ranked moguls skier in the world, has taken on a third job: juggler.

He asked the NCAA to bend its rules and allow him to receive endorsement income to further his ski career while he plays football. The NCAA refused, citing a rule that bars such deals for athletes, even if they are unrelated to a player’s college sport.

Jeff Howard, an NCAA spokesman, says the association allows athletes to compete in one sport while accepting a professional salary in another, such as football players Ricky Manning Jr. of UCLA and Drew Henson of Michigan, who both signed pro baseball contracts.

“But endorsement money is not salary,” Howard said. “That is the rule made by our member institutions.” Bloom sued in the summer of 2002 in state court and lost. Today he and his attorneys will face a three-judge Colorado appellate court panel in Boulder. If Bloom loses his appeal -- no immediate decision is expected -- his Colorado football career could be over. He signed several endorsement deals in January.

With the next Winter Olympics less than two years away, Bloom says he needs to hire a private coach, trainer and nutritionist, travel to Chile and New Zealand for summer training and pay for pool time so he can practice tricks. Most of this is not covered by the U.S. Skiing Assn., which funds travel and training during the competitive season from December to March but doesn’t pay for private coaching. The case is being watched as a test of the NCAA’s ability to regulate the earning power of athletes amid the rise of “extreme” events in which athletes receive no salary.

“If I want to have a chance to make the U.S. team, I had to do this,” Bloom said in an interview this week at his father’s home here.

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Bloom said he didn’t set out to be an NCAA rebel. He only wanted to be a jock.

The son of Larry, a sports psychologist and Colorado State University professor, and Char, a skiing and fly-fishing instructor, Jeremy was always outside.

When he was 12, Bloom discovered the thrill of moguls -- round bumps in the snow that allow skiers to fly high and do tricks. At Loveland High, Bloom became an all-state football player and was recruited by every Big 12 school.

“But I was always a Buffalo fan, from the time I can remember,” Bloom said. “Once a Buff, always a Buff.”

Bloom was also skiing for the U.S. national team but making little progress. When Colorado Coach Gary Barnett offered Bloom a football scholarship, Bloom was ready to step away from skiing.

But a few days before preseason practice, he received an invitation to the national team training camp in Chile.”I didn’t want to go,” he said, but his skiing agent, Andy Carroll, “said I should give it one last chance.”

Barnett agreed. In Chile, Bloom was the first one on the mountain each morning, arriving an hour before the start of training, and the last one off. “All I wanted was to prove to those coaches they had been wrong about me,” he said. “But I had no expectations.”

At the end of the camp, Bloom had earned a World Cup team assignment, but it came with a caveat. “I was told that I had to finish in the top 12 in the world or that was that. My inclination was not to go,” he said.

But Bloom came back to Colorado and met with Barnett.

“When Jeremy told me about this opportunity, I thought about what I would want if it were my son,” Barnett said. “If this would help Jeremy go to the Olympics, I told him he had my blessing.”

Barnett told Bloom he could defer his football scholarship for a year. Bloom went to his World Cup race and won it. He made the 2002 Olympic team, finishing ninth but coming away convinced that next time he would win a medal.

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Bloom has tousled dark hair with shaggy bangs. His dark eyes sparkle. He wears camouflage pants that hang low on his waist, and a ski cap pulled over his head. He is, he is embarrassed to admit, a teen heartthrob. Girls love him, scream at him, beg for autographs.

During the 2002 Games, an MTV crew asked to follow Bloom around Salt Lake City. He was a natural on television and after the Olympics both MTV and Nickelodeon proposed television appearances. Clothing and ski equipment companies also offered deals.

Bloom explained his situation to Lindsey Babcock, Colorado’s assistant director of compliance, who asked the NCAA for a ruling. She was told Bloom could play football if he received no endorsements and did not appear on television.

Bloom complied and played as a freshman in 2002, returning his first kickoff in his first game 75 yards for a touchdown. The Buffaloes went 9-5 and played in the Big 12 championship game, and Bloom made the freshman all-conference team. That winter, he won another World Cup race. But he had made up his mind to sue, and hired attorney Peter Rush of Chicago, who had represented Darnell Autry in his bid for NCAA permission to work as a professional actor while he played football for Northwestern.

At one point, Bloom offered two compromises: He was willing to forgo his athletic scholarship and play as a walk-on, or to put his endorsement income in a trust until his football eligibility was exhausted. The NCAA rejected both ideas.

In August 2002, Judge Daniel Hale ruled that although “the NCAA is missing an opportunity to promote amateurism on the one hand and support the personal and football and nonathletic growth of a student-athlete on the other,” he saw no legal basis for forcing the NCAA to grant Bloom’s request.

Bloom played football again in 2003 and competed on the moguls circuit, without endorsement income.

By January of this year, Bloom said he realized that he was competing on an exceptionally strong U.S. team -- one that would place six skiers among the top 12 in the world at season’s end in March. To pay for the extra coaching and travel, he signed with Bolle and UnderArmour for an undisclosed amount. He also appeared in ads for Equinox gyms. Scott Rawles, the U.S. ski team moguls coach, said Bloom’s upgraded training was typical among elite skiers.

“The reality is that the national federation does not have the resources to fund all the training athletes at the top level need anymore,” Rawles said. “It is a fact that most of the top athletes have personal trainers. They need water ramp training for their aerials. There is no off-season.”

Babcock, the Colorado compliance official, said Bloom may have the misfortune of being ahead of his time.

“Jeremy’s is an exceptional situation,” she said. “The NCAA is having a difficult time with this. They want to be consistent with their policies. But there is this new group of emerging sports which are run on an unconventional model where an athlete does not receive a salary. It may be there will be more athletes in these kinds of sports who will face Jeremy’s dilemma.”

Howard, the NCAA spokesman, said the organization “must do what we think is in the best interests of 360,000 student-athletes and not just one athlete.”

Rush said he expected to argue today that the NCAA has made exceptions to its rules, citing the case of Iowa football player Tim Dwight.

Dwight, a fourth-round draft pick of the Atlanta Falcons in 1998, returned to Iowa after his first NFL season to compete in his final season of track. The NCAA told Dwight he was ineligible because he had accepted football endorsement money. After an appeal by his La Jolla-based agent, John Bechta, the NCAA allowed Dwight to compete and keep most of the endorsement income.

Howard says the Dwight case has no bearing on Bloom’s request. Dwight agreed to stop accepting new endorsement benefits during his final track season, he said, while Bloom seeks to maintain his endorsement deals year-round.

Howard said the NCAA was “proud” to have Bloom play football but added that the association’s members have consistently found it inappropriate for college athletes to sell their names, images or reputations. Bloom says he is tired of battling the college sports establishment.

“I’ve learned a lot during this process,” Bloom said. “One thing I’ve learned is that the NCAA is not interested in what’s best for the student-athlete. And I’ve learned that the day I walk away from the NCAA for good will be a great day.”