Everything that happened about ten months ago is going to be dramatic. But most
importantly, the Bengals need to win that damn football game, because otherwise the
Bills are going to be way in front of the Bengals, possibly for a
wild card. But it also made determine who's going to have the wildcard in
the playoffs. It needs to be here, not in Buffalo, but until
then. A week or so ago, our Attorney General David yost sent a
letter to the NCAA on behalf of UC two time transfer Aziz Bandego in response
to their ruling that he was ineligible. There's a couple of basketball players who
would like to play this year for Cincinnati but are having difficulties, and our
Attorney General, David yost I sent a letter. He got a response recently
from the NCAA. Plus he sued or did other things against Dollar General,
the store in which the prices at the cash register were different than the prices
on the shelf. It's like ordering a hamburger for nine to ninety five and
you get the bill it's eleven ninety five. Many people don't even look at
it. Tony Bender has so much money he didn't even look at the menu
on the right side anymore. But a few of us are concerned about money
joining us now? Is that same Attorney General David Yost and David welcome again
to the Bill Cunningham Show. And first of all, can you tell the
American people the essence of your letter to the NCAA. There's a real problem
with the way they're running the portal. They've got these exceptions, the criteria
are broad, even why to open, and so they're letting some people through
them, some people not and it looks pretty arbitrary to me. So we
challenge them. I think there's a very good argument under federal and state antitrust
law that they're engaging in an illegal restraint on trade. And I let them
know that we're not happy about this decision. And I guess it's under repeal
from through their internal process. We should maybe hear by the end of this
week. But this is a real issue. Were considering taking its court.
Yeah, And the issue with Ben Dango and I guess Reynolds too, is
a two time transfer, having played at UCF and Temple, and they're crucial.
The issue is not so much are they good basketball players. I assume
they are. The issue is to have a consistent set of objective rules that
notifies a party whether or not they can play basketball or not. And you're
saying that under due process clause of the Fifth and fourteenth Amendments, that substantive
due process is not being followed. Procedural due process may not be followed,
and that the interpretation of these rules are so broad that individually someone can not
be notified what behavior is prohibited, what behavior is encouraged. And secondly,
it takes away from a young man the opportunity at the age of twenty two
years old to work to make money, l and otherwise. And so is
your argument procedural substantive? Is it the Fifth Amendment? Is it the fourteenth
Amendment? Is it based on the Ohio Constitution, the US Constitution or statutory
interpretation? You know what I'm saying, it's kind of all those things.
I mean, what they're doing, I think after the Nil decision in the
Supreme Court a couple of years ago, their entire entire model is breaking down.
One of the arguments they make is, hey, this is necessary for
budgeting, planning. Well, what is it that's necessary to tie these these
athletes like indentured servants to particular schools to say you're not allowed to move,
you're not allowed to get a better deal, You're not allowed to go someplace
that is going to play you. And that's really fundamentally a problem. I'm
looking at the NCUBA. They stated, quote, a second time transfer will
have to prove proof of a physical injury, mental health condition, or other
exigent circumstances that clearly necessitate in immediate departure such as sexual abuse, sexual assault,
or mental damages. In addition, the transfer to u See wants to
be closer to his girlfriend's family in West Virginia who served as a surrogate for
the family. And so when you talk about exceptions for physical injury, mental
health, hell I got mental health problems or other exigent circumstances that necessitate a
departure. That language is so broad. It leads up to a person individually
to serve as their grand potentate and doesn't notify these players what rules they're violating,
what rules they're not violating. But secondly, my producer, Tony Bender
wants to know how come the Attorney General is involved in this matter? Can
you tell him why the ag is going after the NCAA and might sue him.
Yeah, I enforce anti trust law. This is not a So I'm
not going to sue on behalf of this individual law athlete. If we go
there, it's up to him to vindicate his own rights. However, I'm
supposed to enforce anti trust law on behalf of the state of Ohio and not
to permit the restraint of trade, which is exactly what's happening here. And
the University of Cincinnati is being harmed because they have a willing player that wants
to come in and play for their school and they're being arbitrarily prevented by this
illegal restraints of trade. The NCAA is perpetrating. But it's just not right.
I mean, what if there was a National Broadcasters Association said you have
to stay in Cincinnati, Oh, unless I've signed an agreement on that.
Well, you love Cincinnati, but I love I'm not Leo. I'm not
going to Delaware County. I'm going, oh where I'm staying here. But
in this case, UH that this player from UH was from Kenya or Thailand
or somewhere. This guy's never signed a non compete, he never signed an
agreement to either comply or not comply. Or secondly, he never sign an
agreement that the NCAA has the power to break rules substantive due process rules under
the Clayton and Sherman anti trust laws. He's never agreed to let them do
this. In my case, I may have a non compete that says I
can't go somewhere else for like six months. Hell, I'm going nowhere else
anyway, But nonetheless, as the entity in charge, and the second element
of this is nil money, I would assume, like many players that you
see, he's making a quarter of a million dollars by playing basketball. And
if he doesn't, I have no idea it's a quarter of a million for
him. That that's restraint of economic trade for him a lot of money.
That's right, And look it, non competes can't be you used for simply
restraining trade. They have to be backed up by some issue. For example,
if it takes a long time to train you, or there are trade
secrets, proprietary information, customer lists that you're going to come into contact with,
then there can be a non compete that will be held up in a
court. But for a reasonable time and for a reasonable geographic area. NC
double A is going nationwide. It's for an entire year. He's going to
kid's gonna lose a season. And he doesn't have any proprietary information. There's
no training costs here that the university's trying to protect. They're trying to protect
access to his labor. And I don't care that. You know, the
NC double A wrote a letter back to me and said, well, you
know, our member universities and colleges all agreed to these rules because they want
it. Well, I got news for him. All the member universities are
not allowed to collude and break antitrust law. Bingo right there, that's a
good one, they're David. I like that one that Clayton and Sherman as
interpreted. I like that now. No, And this guy's name is Bandango.
Bandango needs to play for the Bearcats. Bandango, you see, and
you say race serious concerns as an illegal restraint of trade. In essence,
NCAA has imposed a sweeping, unilateral, one year non compete restriction and violation
of both state and federal law. And that's exactly Bandango. He simply wants
to play basketball. Make a quarter of a million dollars. He has no
support system anywhere. I mean, this guy, I don't know. I
hope you win this thing because I can't imagine the NCUBA has any rules anyway.
They can't have no I mean, schools come and go out of leagues.
Coaches go whenever they want. There's rumors that Sadderfield, the coach you
see, may become a US senator soon from a Tubberville. I mean,
all these rumors are out there, and the transfer to you. He's closer
to his girlfriend's family, et cetera. Plus you can claim a mental health
condition. You know, I want to be a bear cat? He could,
Sam, I really want to wear at I want to be a bear
cat. Well, when will this be be resolved? David Jose because the
season starts next weekend. Yeah. The indication we have is that the decision
on appeal and the appeal will get resolved, hopefully by the end of this
week, and then we will see where we are. But I've got to
tell you the letter I got back, they seem to be saying, we
don't really care about your about your law. This is the way we do
business, and every all of our universities agreed to it. So you go
away and shut up. And even if this one case gets resolved, we've
still got this system. Patrick Morrissey over the border in West Virginia, my
colleague has a case like this. He wrote them another letter. He and
I talked about whether we're going to get a group of ags together and maybe
we go to court and fight this thing out once and for all. You
can't be writing a deadline letter at the beginning of every season. Yeah,
and Morrisy's the age in West Virginia, and all right, we'll see what
happens with that. I noticed that the I team, a CPO in Cincinnati,
did an investigation and discovered that there's all kinds of variances between what the
cash registers state you owe for products and what's on the shelf itself and things
of that character. The headline says the Attorney General that you has reached a
one million dollar settlement with Dollar General after an investigation in twenty stores in southwest
Ohio found prices on shelves were lower than that the register. You're encouraged to
buy certain items, and you checked out out, and suddenly the price went
up when you picked it up off the shelf and took it to the cash
register, things went up, So explain that, please, Well, honestly,
I think this was a function of the implationary environment. These stores run
very lean, right, I mean you go in there, nobody's meeting at
the door and saying what can I help you find today? I mean,
they don't have many people. So if you're in an environment like we weren't
twenty twenty two and into twenty twenty three, where you know week's week,
the price you pay for shampoo is changing, You're gonna be keeping your price
register database up to date, but not necessarily having paying clerk to go around
and put new prices on all the shelves. That has to be done manually,
and so there's a cost involved. I heard that the talk to the
manager at my local Target here in Columbus, US and he told me that
he had two people during the second half of twenty twenty two that we're doing
nothing except going around to shelves and adjusting the prices. So I get that
it was a tough environment, but at the same time, it's a tough
environment for the customers. To not have the prices matching between shelf and price
register is unfair. It's contrary to Consumer Sales Practices Act, and so it's
against the law. And these are people could if you're stopping a dollar in
general, these are the folks that can at least afford to pay an extra
dollar for a two dollars bottle of sam two. Well, I read one
of your comments quote everything we buy these days cost more. Ohioans can all
afford. Businesses draw people in with the promise of low prices only to deceive
them of the checkout counter with a higher price. It seems like a company
trying to make an extra buck and open no one will know. We're not
only noticed, but we're taking steps to stop it. So now you got
the million bucks from a Dollar General. Judge Michael Oaster of Butler County's going
to administer it. If you feel as if that you're one of the persons.
I mean, Tony Bender shops a Dollar General all the time and he's
very cognizantive price. He counts Nichols and dimes like they were manhole covers.
But if you're one of the person who felt like you were screwed, blue
tattooed, and barbecued, how can you get a piece of the action.
Well, here's a couple of the problems with this case. Where first of
all, people would get to the register. Most of them didn't even notice
that they were being charged more. But when you know a few of them
did and said, hey, that's only two dollars, is not three dollars
And the person the register said, well, you've got paid for it.
There's nothing I can do, So you don't have In many instances, we
don't know who got screwed over and they don't know it. Secondly, who's
going to go in It's it's like these you know, class actions. You
get, we'll give you a voucher and seventy five cents you know, send
in your form. Yeah, And so the way this is going to work
is the stores that had these problems we are going to have. The money
is going to go to food banks in those communities to provide food. And
that was the best way we could figure out to try to give back to
the community. Because chemmidly giving people two or three dollars or even seventeen dollars
back if they were heavy shoppers, most of them don't know. And the
cost of administering that was just well dollar General and et cetera, would would
quit the practice, and maybe they didn't have them un level and intent.
Maybe it was simply a bet. It never went the other way though.
I bet the price on the shelf was a high and at the encounter check,
how counter, it was low. Seemingly these things only happen in one
direction. But nonetheless, according to this article, Judge Oster is gonna distribute
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to zip codes where these stores are located.
The other two hundred and fifty thousand it is a penalty and reimbursement to the
state of Ohio. And that's the way it's going to work. Well,
David Yos, thanks for clearing things up, and good luck with Ben Dango.
Hopefully it'll be dunking basketballs for you see next week. We'll see how
that turns out, all right, Thank you, Hekat, Thank you very
much, David Yos, Ohio Attorney General. And that you may go to
the website also to see more information about the settlement. But it appears to
be you're not going to have some administrator lining up, some lawyer lining up
to spend a year or two and determining how many people get fifty cents and
who gets two dollars. The administrative expenses would be greater. By the time
time you got done in that process, there'll be no money left anyway.
But just so Dollar General gets the idea and Target or whatever Walmart, that
there has to be some system that the price on the shelf is the price
of the checkout counter, and things only go in one direction, doesn't it.
So let's continue with more. Bill Cunningham News Radio seven hundred WLW that
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