Court Rejects Bloom in Endorsement Dispute

The Colorado Court of Appeals on Thursday rejected Jeremy Bloom’s request for an injunction against the NCAA, damaging his hopes of playing college football as he pursues a spot on the U.S. team at the 2006 Winter Olympics as a moguls skier.

Bloom, a wide receiver at Colorado with two years of college football eligibility, has said he needed skiing endorsement money to compete at the elite level in a sport in which he has earned world championship gold medals.

However, the NCAA has successfully argued that its rules prohibit athletes from accepting any money in the form of endorsement income. Though the NCAA allows an athlete to receive a professional salary in one sport while competing as an amateur in another, it prohibits its athletes from accepting advertising or sponsorship money.

In a statement he released from the U.S. Olympic training camp in Colorado Springs, Bloom said his dream was still to play football at Colorado.

“While I certainly respect the court’s decision to not overturn the lower court, it is still my intention to play college football,” Bloom said. “It is the NCAA’s responsibility to determine whether I will be eligible for collegiate competition next fall and not the court’s.

“The NCAA needs to evaluate the growing number of athletes competing in alternative sports such as winter and summer X-Games and the Olympics. It is my hope that the NCAA will realize it is unfair to exclude all of us from collegiate competition.”

The court said it understood Bloom’s argument that his endorsement money was no different than the salary a professional baseball player would get.

“We recognize that, like many others involved in individual professional sports such as golf, tennis and boxing, professional skiers obtain much of their income from sponsors,” the ruling said. “We note, however, that none of the NCAA’s bylaws mentions, much less explicitly establishes, a right to receive ‘customary income’ for a sport.”

NCAA spokesman Jeff Howard said the NCAA “was pleased that the court understood the importance of the NCAA’s right to guarantee the important tradition of amateurism in college sports.”

Howard said the NCAA’s position was that if it made an exception for Bloom “we would have to make that change for all 360,000 student athletes and that is not a policy the membership is ready to make.”

Bloom and his attorney, Chicago-based Peter Rush, have argued that Bloom was a singular exception and that few NCAA athletes would ever be good enough to compete at a world-class level in another individual sport.

Rush said Bloom had options -- appealing for an injunction to the Colorado Supreme Court; returning to the lower court and requesting a full trial; not accepting any endorsement money and continuing his football career; giving up college football and concentrating on skiing; or pursuing a course with the NCAA that might allow Bloom to get endorsement money outside of football season.

Bloom’s father said his son had chosen to stay sequestered in Colorado Springs, where he is involved in ski training, as he considered his options.

“Jeremy doesn’t want his dream to end,” Larry Bloom said. “I’m just not sure where we go.”

Bloom would need some resolution as Colorado fall practice begins in August. He missed spring football for the last two years while on the ski circuit.