NCAA ATLANTA, GA – APRIL 05: A detail of giant NCAA logo is seen outside of the stadium on the practice day prior to the NCAA Men’s Final Four at the Georgia Dome on April 5, 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

While the Big Ten conference appears to be taking the first steps toward a revenue-sharing model with its athletes, the NCAA continues to staunchly insist that college athletes are not employees. And the organization may have just made its most bizarre argument yet on that front.

According to Michael McCann of Sportico, the NCAA recently filed a brief that used previous court cases involving exotic dancers, dog groomers, and aspiring hair stylists to argue that college athletes should not be considered employees under the law.

The NCAA used these several different court cases as part of a larger argument surrounding the court case Vanskike v. Peters, which questioned whether prison inmates should be considered employees. In 2016, the NCAA used this case to successfully argue that athletes were not employees.

According to Politico, the NCAA didn’t cite the case to compare student-athletes to prisoners. Instead, the NCAA argued that “multi-factor tests used in independent contractor disputes fail to capture the ‘economic reality’ of student athletics, where there is no compensation bargain.”

The NCAA argues that Vanskike v. Peters has been used in a wide range of cases where courts examined FLSA disputes, and listed several of them in the brief. In addition to the cases involving exotic dancers, dog groomers and cosmetology students, the NCAA also used cases including car wash workers, construction workers, delivery drivers, garbage workers, garment workers, home health workers, hospital case managers, minor league baseball players, office clerks, restaurant workers, retail managers, roadside assistance drivers, salespersons, sports coaches, and security guards.

Attorney Paul McDonald, who is litigating against the NCAA in the recent court battle, insists that this argument will not hold up.

“The NCAA made the same false assertion that Vanskike v. Peters, and its 13th Amendment ‘slavery loophole’ holding, are regularly applied outside the prison labor context in briefing before Judge Baylson in Livers v. NCAA, and before Judge Padova in this case,” McDonald told Sportico. “Based upon a thorough dissection of cases mis-cited by the NCAA, both those Senior District Court Judges flatly rejected the NCAA’s mischaracterizations. Vanskike v. Peters says what it says. It is disturbing that the NCAA repeatedly attempts to mislead courts to mis-apply it to Student Athletes.”

Using strippers’ employment situations to argue that athletes aren’t employees appears to be a rather unorthodox strategy. We’ll have to see how it works out for the NCAA.

[Sportico]