WVU Coach Bans TikTok Dancing, Raising Questions About Employee Status

West Virginia football coach Rich Rodriguez has implemented a new rule for his players–but it has nothing to do with curfews, nutrition, or training.

Players are no longer allowed to participate in the viral TikTok dancing trend, Rodriguez said Monday. Players are still allowed to use the app, but “I’m just banning them from dancing on it,” he said. 

“It’s like, look, we try to have a hard edge or whatever, and you’re in there in your tights dancing on TikTok ain’t quite the image of our program that I want,” Rodriguez told reporters. The Mountaineers hired Rodriguez in December after the team went 6-7 last year, ranking ninth in the Big 12.

The move raises questions about how much control coaches may legally exercise over their players, given that U.S. labor laws examine how much “control” an employer has over a person as an indicator of employee status, two attorneys tell Front Office Sports. Over the past five years or so, the NCAA has spent millions of dollars in court and lobbying Congress trying to prevent athletes from obtaining employee status.

Rodriguez is the first known coach to ban a specific activity on TikTok, but he’s hardly the first to impose social media restrictions on players. Schools nationwide have included various rules about what players can post on social media in their student-athlete handbooks. 

But the restrictions have become less common—and less enforceable—since the NIL (name, image, and likeness) era began, given that social media has become a major revenue stream for players. The regulations have also been used as evidence in trials to argue that athletes are treated as employees of their universities.

“We are in an era where athlete personal branding has tremendous value, and restricting certain social media activities could negatively impact players’ marketability and earnings,” prominent NIL attorney Darren Heitner tells Front Office Sports. “I believe this goes beyond the establishment of reasonable team rules and further assists those claiming that there is so much control over athletes, assisting their efforts to label them as employees.” 

Sports attorney Mit Winter agrees, telling FOS it “shows the control that schools are exercising over athletes, which lends itself to the employment arguments.”

Rodriguez appeared confident that the new regulation was within the bounds of his jurisdiction as a college football coach.

“I can have rules,” he said. “Twenty years from now, if they want to be sitting in their pajamas in the basement eating Cheetos and watching TikTok or whatever the hell, they can go at it, smoking cannabis, whatever. Knock yourself out.”