Like it or not, legal decisions shape future of sports
Two hurricane-level legal sports decisions recently made landfall. One impacts sports in a positive way, the other not so much.
Let’s start with the bad news.
The bad: Name, image and likeness payments will continue to expand beyond their original intention – compensating college athletes for their “celebrity” in return for services rendered – after a federal judge in Tennessee granted a preliminary injunction that stops the NCAA from punishing athletes or boosters for negotiating NIL deals during recruiting or while in the transfer portal.
The ruling is not final, but the decision allows NIL to keep operating as a “get paid to play for us” inducement rather than a financial reward that enables athletes to profit in exchange for endorsing products, running camps, appearing at charity events, and so on.
In his decision, U.S. District Judge Clifton Corker wrote that the NCAA trying to implement guardrails for NIL “likely violates federal antitrust law and harms student-athletes.”
Corker determined that the attorneys general of Tennessee and Virginia have a reasonable chance of winning their case and that athletes could suffer irreparable harm if, as the case is being decided, NCAA restrictions remained in place that prohibit athletes from negotiating NIL deals before deciding where to attend college.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares saw the courtroom victory as an extension of the Supreme Court ruling in 2021 that put the NCAA “on notice” for its flimsy rules regarding NIL.
Here’s my take. On one hand, the NCAA deserves to feel pain for decades of sticking its head in the sand on issues of athletes’ rights and empowerment. Yet it’s not just the NCAA that will feel the sting of NIL run amok. Fans also will suffer. Boosters and collectives, which serve as liaisons between athletes and marketing opportunities, increasingly have carte blanche to “buy” players for the athletic programs they follow and serve.
Without NIL guidelines, college sports are in free-agency free-for-all. How much longer they remain restrained by traditional notions of amateurism remains to be seen. But if recent legal decisions are any indication, say goodbye to the days of college fans “getting to know” their athletes.
I am pro-player, meaning I believe college athletes deserve a portion of the billions collected by the NCAA and conferences off TV money and gate receipts. But I also am pro–college sports, and when athletes can follow the money with no restrictions – well, is it even amateur athletics anymore?
We are on the verge of marching bands, mascots and cheering for your alma mater serving as a cloak for what’s really going on: minor league sports, with major league pricing.
OK, now to better news.
The good: More than 20 states with legal sports betting have limits or bans on player-specific wagering. Now, Ohio has joined them.
The Ohio Casino Control Commission granted an NCAA request to ban wagering on prop bets involving college athletes. Prop bets include specifics like over/under on tailback rushing yards, points scored by a basketball player and strikeouts by a pitcher.
Ohio sportsbooks had until March 1 to institute the ban on any wager involving an athlete’s “performance or statistics when participating in a sporting event governed by the NCAA.”
Turns out – surprise, surprise – the NCAA is good for something. Allowing betting on individual college athletes is a disaster waiting to happen. Recreational gamblers tend to get grouchy when they lay down $25 on that 19-yearold college quarterback tossing three touchdown passes, only to have the QB finish with one. More serious bettors can even turn violent when feeling burned by college players who failed to hit their payoff marks.
Ohio passed a law in 2023 that bans anyone who threatens athletes with violence or harm from participating in sports gaming in the state. The new ban aims to significantly limit the harassment, including threats, from occurring in the first place.
Prohibiting prop betting also helps remove the temptation among athletes to illegally choreograph their performances to make money off unscrupulous gamblers who pay them for “specific outcomes.” For example, say the over/ under on a point guard’s total turnovers in a game is three, and he has colluded with a bettor to wager the “over.” He intentionally commits four turnovers to reach the winning number.
The decision includes some team betting as well. It prohibits any fullteam prop bet on any sport governed by the NCAA when the wager is based on the statistical performance of one or two athletes on the team which factor in more than 50% of the outcomes over the most recent full NCAA season. For example, whether Team A will gain over 200 passing yards in a football game would predominantly rely on the quarterback’s yardage, likely over 50% dependence.
Credit the Ohio commission for responding positively to the NCAA’s request to ban prop bets.
“I have determined that good cause supports the NCAA’s request to prohibit player-specific prop bets on intercollegiate athletics competitions because the NCAA’s request will safeguard the integrity of sports gaming and will be in the best interests of the public,” casino commission executive director Matthew Schuler said in a statement.
The casino commission estimates Ohio sportsbooks received $104.6 million in bets on NCAA player props in 2023, which was 1.35% of the total wagered last year.
Ohio received approximately $2.5 million in taxes in 2023 from playerspecific prop bets.