damages

Are top-drawer college football teams and their name, image and likeness collectives simply trying to protect themselves from willy-nilly transfers or are they bullying players to stay put with threats of lawsuits?

Adding liquidated damage fee clauses to NIL contracts became all the rage in 2025, a year that will be remembered as the first time players have been paid directly by schools. But some experts say such fees cannot be used as a cudgel to punish players that break a contract and transfer.

It’s no surprise that the issue has resulted in a lawsuit — make that two lawsuits — before the calendar flipped to 2026.

Less than a month after Georgia filed a lawsuit against defensive end Damon Wilson II to obtain $390,000 in damages because he transferred to Missouri, Wilson went to court himself, claiming Georgia is misusing the liquidated damages clause to “punish Wilson for entering the portal.”

Wilson’s countersuit in Boone County, Mo., says he was among a small group of Bulldog stars pressured into signing the contract Dec. 21, 2024. The lawsuit also claims that Wilson was misused as an elite pass rusher, that the Georgia defensive scheme called for him to drop back into pass coverage. Wilson, who will be a senior next fall, led Missouri with nine sacks this season.

Georgia paid Wilson $30,000, the first monthly installment of his $500,000 NIL deal, before he entered the transfer portal on Jan. 6, four days after Georgia lost to Notre Dame in a College Football Playoffs quarterfinal.

Bulldogs brass was not pleased. Wilson alleges in his lawsuit that Georgia dragged its feet in putting his name in the portal and spread misinformation to other schools about him and his contractual obligations.

“When the University of Georgia Athletic Association enters binding agreements with student-athletes, we honor our commitments and expect student-athletes to do the same,” Georgia spokesperson Steven Drummond said in a statement after the school filed the lawsuit.

Wilson’s countersuit turned that comment on its head, claiming it injured his reputation because it implies he was dishonest. He is seeking unspecified damages in addition to not owing the Bulldogs anything. Georgia’s lawsuit asked that the dispute be resolved through arbitration.

A liquidated damage fee is a predetermined amount of money written into a contract that one party pays the other for specific breaches. The fee is intended to provide a fair estimate of anticipated losses when actual damages are difficult to calculate, and cannot be used to punish one party for breaking the contract.

Wilson’s case could have far-reaching implications because it is the first that could determine whether schools can enforce liquidated damage clauses. While it could be understandable that schools want to protect themselves from players transferring soon after receiving NIL money, legal experts say liquidated damage fees might not be the proper way to do so.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian attacks ‘had no … military purpose whatsoever’.

Russian forces have attacked two Ukrainian ports, damaging three Turkish-owned vessels, including a ship carrying food supplies, according to Ukrainian officials and a shipowner.

Friday’s attacks by Russian forces targeted Chornomorsk and Odesa ports in Ukraine’s southwestern Odesa region on the Black Sea. A Ukrainian navy spokesperson told the Reuters news agency that three Turkish-owned vessels were damaged in total, but did not provide additional details.

Posting video footage on social media of firefighters tackling a blaze on board what he described as a “civilian vessel” in Chornomorsk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian attacks “had no … military purpose whatsoever”.

“This proves once again that Russians not only fail to take the current opportunity for diplomacy seriously enough, but also continue the war precisely to destroy normal life in Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said.

“It is crucial that … the world maintains the proper moral compass: who is dragging out this war and who is working to end it with peace, who is using ballistic missiles against civilian life, and who is striking the targets that influence the functioning of Russia’s war machine,” he said.

Today, the Russian army carried out a missile strike on our Odesa region, and last night there was also a Russian attack on Odesa’s energy infrastructure. At one point we talked about the situation in this city and the people of Odesa with President Trump.

Today’s Russian… pic.twitter.com/gIgXUlc4AJ

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 12, 2025

Zelenskyy did not name the vessel, but it was identified as the Panama-flagged and Turkish-owned Cenk T by Reuters, which matched cranes and buildings to satellite imagery of Chornomorsk port.

The ship’s owners, Cenk Shipping, confirmed it was attacked at about 4pm local time (14:00 GMT). There were no casualties among the crew, and damage to the ship was limited, it added.

An employee of a private company was also injured in a separate attack on Odesa port, where a cargo loader was also damaged, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba confirmed.

He added that Russia had used drones and ballistic missiles in the port strikes, which were “aimed at civilian logistics and commercial shipping”.

Ukraine’s three large Black Sea ports in the Odesa region are a key economic artery for Kyiv.

Late on Friday, Turkiye’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the vessel had been attacked in Chornomorsk port. It added that there were no reports of injured Turkish citizens.

The ministry said in a statement that the attack “validates our previously stated concerns regarding the spread of the ongoing war in the region to the Black Sea, and its impact on maritime security and freedom of navigation”.

“We reiterate the need for an arrangement whereby, in order to prevent escalation in the Black Sea, attacks targeting navigational safety as well as the parties’ energy and port infrastructure are suspended,” it added.

Hours earlier, in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Turkmenistan’s capital of Ashgabat, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for calm in the Black Sea and suggested that a limited ceasefire for energy facilities and ports could be beneficial for regional security.

Turkiye, which has the longest Black Sea coastline at approximately 1,329km (826 miles), has grown increasingly alarmed at the escalating attacks in its back yard and has offered to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow.

The attacks come just days after Putin promised retaliation and threatened to cut “Ukraine off from the sea” for Kyiv’s maritime drone attacks on Moscow’s “shadow fleet” – unmarked tankers thought to be used to circumvent oil sanctions – in the Black Sea.

Kyiv says the tankers are Moscow’s main source of funding for its almost four-year-old war. It has also tried to squeeze Russian revenues by expanding attacks to the Caspian Sea, where it struck a major oil rig this week.