Supreme Court case to determine future of NCAA sports
From 2009-12, running back Shawne Alston was a valued member of the West Virginia football program, using his muscular 5-foot-11 frame to churn out yards, score touchdowns and provide some sense of balance for an increasingly pass-happy offense.
His biggest, most lasting impact in the world of college athletics, however, may come nearly a decade after he last strapped on a helmet for the Mountaineers.
Mr. Alston is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit challenging the NCAA’s restrictions on compensation that can be received by college athletes, a legal effort that began in 2014. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, granting the NCAA’s appeal of lower-court decisions in favor of Mr. Alston and his fellow plaintiffs.
One day after the court’s announcement, which marks the first time the nation’s highest court will hear a case involving
the NCAA in nearly 40 years, a group of four U.S. senators introduced the College Athletes Bill of Rights. If passed, it would give college athletes the right to earn money off their name, image and likeness.
Taken together, those developments stand as a potential catalyst for rapid, elemental changes from a corner of the American athletic landscape that has long been resistant to sweeping reform. Depending upon how the Supreme Court rules and what kind of federal legislation on name, image and likeness, if any, is signed into law, college sports could look considerably different in Western Pennsylvania and beyond in the near future.
“This case is putting it very squarely in front of the court the question of what exactly does it mean for the NCAA to be involved in the business of amateur sports?” said Peter Oh, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law who specializes in antitrust law. “To put it as a pun, this is a potential game-changer. If the court rules or upholds this case in the Ninth Circuit, it could fundamentally change not just college football and basketball, but all of college sports.”
The Alston case is a threat to a longstanding NCAA argument that antitrust law allows it to impose the restrictions it does to maintain competitive equity and exist in a different realm than professional sports, in which teams are not tied to academic institutions. When the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld in May a district court ruling, it effectively denied that contention, finding the
NCAA to be in violation of antitrust law.
Should the plaintiffs win one final time, college sports’ governing body would no longer be able to determine nationally what educationrelated benefits athletes can receive from their schools.
“The bottom line is, in antitrust law, the relevant market is probably nine-tenths of the whole question about how antitrust liability is determined,” Mr. Oh said. “The idea here is that you can define different kinds of markets in all kinds of different ways, but the way it has been defined here, it looks like the court has essentially said ‘Athletes are basically labor. They’re employees of sorts. The universities are really the employer and the NCAA is essentially some type of overarching entity that regulates all of these different employees.’
“If the Supreme Court buys that actual definition of a relevant market, you have a possibility that students now, almost like Uber drivers, can be considered employees that have to receive all kinds of benefits, all kinds of compensation, all kinds of basic rights and protections that they haven’t had up to this point in time,” he said.
The case will be argued next year, with a decision expected before the end of June.
In the meantime, the College Athletes Bill of Rights, which advances the goals of previous, more NCAA friendly proposed federal legislation is seeking to resolve questions about athlete compensation. Among other things, it would allow athletes to earn a share of the revenue generated by their sport and it would establish a medical trust fund athletes can access after leaving school.
Locally, there’s similar work being done. Last year, Pennsylvania Reps. Dan Miller, D-Mt. Lebanon, and Ed Gainey, D-Lincoln-Lemington, introduced the PA Fair Pay to Play Act. The bill would “help balance the scales and allow our college athletes to sign endorsement details, earn compensation for their name, image and likeness, and sign licensing contracts that will allow them to earn money,” as well as permit athletes to hire an agent.
The bill, Mr. Miller said, did not get the bipartisan response for which he hoped
last year, and that he and his colleagues will be reintroducing it this session, likely before the end of January. There are expected to be amendments to the original bill, which will come after further consultation with the National College Players Association, an advocacy group for college athletes’ rights that helped the state legislators with the 2019 bill.
“We’re hoping to build a stronger coalition that will improve the chance of something like this occurring and let’s just be honest — it’s going to happen,” Mr. Miller said. “Some version of this is going to happen. It’s the same question we often find, which is will Pennsylvania be more on the leading edge or will we be where we typically are, which is bringing up the rear?”
One day after the court’s announcement, which marks the first time the nation’s highest court will hear a case involving the NCAA in nearly 40 years, a group of four U.S. senators introduced the College Athletes Bill of Rights. If passed, it would give college athletes the right to earn money off their name, image and likeness.
Mr. Miller said that will continue to be the case, as a nationwide measure could be too narrow in scope or have limited applicability. And should a federal bill not pass, he would not want to risk Pennsylvania’s colleges being put at a competitive disadvantage against schools in other states that
are introducing or advancing bills permitting various forms of athlete compensation.
“If you have the choice between two universities that were generally equal in academic prowess, but one of them allowed you to contract in some fashion and to make some money off of your efforts, which one would you pick?” Mr. Miller said.
Amateurism in question
Both the Alston case and the assorted legislative initiatives come at a time when the concept and structure of amateurism has been increasingly called into question, a conversation that has only intensified as the major revenue sports of football and men’s basketball continue their seasons in the middle of a global pandemic.
“One of the things that I think has come about with all of this since everything happened in March when the season was canceled, I don’t think anyone can say anymore that these young men are amateurs,” Pitt men’s basketball coach Jeff Capel said earlier this month. “That’s out the window. They’re not. They absolutely aren’t.”
Mr. Capel’s comment garnered national attention and understandably so. It’s extremely rare for a college coach of any kind to publicly critique the system of which they’re a part. For a head coach in arguably their sport’s top conference, a man well-known from his days as a player and from previous coaching stops, to lend that kind of a dissenting voice is notable, perhaps even a breakthrough.
For ex-college athletes, people like Mr. Capel and former Pitt quarterback Tyler Palko, they imagine what a world without some of the NCAA’s long-standing compensatory restrictions would look like. Mr. Palko, who came to Pitt after a decorated high-school career at West Allegheny, admittedly is conflicted.
He recognizes the large sums of money that major college sports generate and believes the cost of an athletic scholarship does not go far enough for some players with a certain amount of skill and stardom. However, he also wonders how such a market would be regulated and how the internal dynamics of a team would be affected when some players are reaping financial benefits while others are not.
He said he thinks back to his time at Pitt — 2002-2006 — when he would see his face, along with those of teammates Darrell Revis and H.B. Blades, plastered on billboards and the sides of buses. What if that promotion came with some extra money? It’s a feeling a new generation of athletes at Pitt and hundreds of schools across the country might soon know.
“At that point, it was just cool to be like ‘Hey, we’re on the side of a bus.’ We were just college kids,” Mr. Palko said in an April interview. “I can’t even imagine a local Dunkin’ Donuts commercial or The [Original Hot Dog Shop] or Primanti Brothers or whatever. I think that would be a pretty cool opportunity.”