It's a huge contradiction though, right? Sarniak wasn't authorized to be a recipient of an "educational record". If you are citing FERPA, your claim is that no outside third party can see these "educational records"....that would exclude espn AND Sarniak. If they aren't "educational records" then any citizen or entity is entitled to see them for transparency. I'm not a lawyer, but this is where OSU may have a problem.
NCAA isnt a legal entity, they simply have to trust that a university is giving them everything...they cant supeona hard drives. Whatever you send the NCAA is all they are getting, if you choose to scrub the emails, they will never know without a whistleblower. I wonder if now that it's in the courts if OSU could be forced to turn over more. Part of me wonders if ESPN has a whistleblower feeding them info.
Either way, it will be interesting to see how this goes. Every university will be watching this one closely. It's going to be a huge precedent for how wide of scope you can apply FERPA.