Andy Coats isn't a coach or athletic director. When it comes to the seismic changes to the landscape of major college football, though, he is a seminal figure.
Coats, the former dean of the University of Oklahoma law school, successfully argued before the Supreme Court in 1984 that the NCAA’s control of football television rights violated federal antitrust law. Justice Byron “Whizzer” White, a former running back at Colorado, told Coats back then that even though he may end up winning the case, he would regret it.
