A hollow victory for student-athletes
Judge rules NCAA’s cap on compensation illegal, but doesn’t offer remedy
If the opinion published Friday night in a landmark college sports antitrust case were a novel, then its villain would be the NCAA.
In a novella-length 104-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken criticizes, berates, even mocks the NCAA for its refusal to allow colleges to compensate players for their valuable labour beyond a scholarship and related costs of attendance, all in the name of amateurism.
“Defendants nowhere define the nature of the amateurism they claim consumers insist upon,” said Wilken, referring to the NCAA and several of its richest, most prominent conferences.
Even if they had, Wilken continued, she pointed to numerous exceptions when players could, effectively, be paid. Players are paid, beyond scholarships, all the time: in untold millions of dollars invested in training facilities; in gifts for participating in bowl games; in funds available to purchase loss-of-value insurance.
“The rules that permit, limit or forbid student-athlete compensation and benefits do not follow any coherent definition of amateurism,” she said.
The decision stems from a long-running case in which a group of college athletes sued the NCAA and 11 athletic conferences that participate in the top levels of basketball and football. They contended that the ruling bodies of college sports had colluded to enact a system that unfairly limits the compensation they receive when they are attending and competing for their universities. The NCAA and the conferences argue that those limits are essential for promoting amateurism and enhancing the value of college sports and undergraduate education.
In her decision, Wilken seems to say that those rules “did restrain trade,” producing “significant anticompetitive effects.”
“The clerk,” Wilken added on the final page, with the majestic understatement of a good literary denouement, “shall enter judgment for the plaintiff class.”
So why doesn’t it feel as if the group of athletes who pursued the litigation to end the NCAA’s rule won the case? Why did they and their star sports la- bour lawyer Jeffrey Kessler not get the outcome they most fervently sought?
Despite finding that the NCAA was violating federal law, Wilken turned away the plaintiffs’ main proposed remedy, which was also the logical one: to lift the supposedly lawbreaking cap on compensation. That means the continuation of a status quo in which so many players feel they are working basically for free. How’s that?
“When you apply a uniquely muddled set of laws to a unique industry, this is the kind of ruling you get,” said Gabe Feldman, who directs Tulane’s sports law program and teaches antitrust law (the unique muddle to which he was referring).
The upshot of Friday’s ruling, pending a likely appeal, is that the NCAA may continue to cap payments to athletes after all — with the limited exception of expenses that are educational in nature.
Think: computers, or costs related to internships, or postgraduate scholarships.
Don’t think: stipends of $1,000 (U.S.), or $10,000, or $100,000, because the player receiving it is good enough that he or she is worth even more than that to the college in increased ticket sales, media exposure and television rights payments.
No wonder several of the defendants responded this weekend with the kind of equanimity one does not expect from parties that technically lost a case. The decision “reaffirms the fundamental principles of the collegiate athletic model and of amateurism,” Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said in a statement. “Student-athletes are first and foremost students, who attend college to receive an education and to prepare themselves for success in life, while also pursuing athletic excellence.”