Supreme Court rules against NCAA in antitrust case in unanimous decision
Exploring how name, image and likeness will change face of college sports
NAMES TO KNOW: Key figures in the name, image and likeness arena
Questions from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., illustrated the conundrum.
Addressing NCAA attorney Seth Waxman, Roberts noted that NCAA rules allow colleges to pay for a form of insurance for elite-level athletes that is intended to cover them if they suffer an injury that results in them facing a significant loss of value of a pro sports contract.
“Now that sounds very much like pay for play,” Roberts said. “You know, you’re paying the insurance premium so that they will play at college and not in the pros. Doesn’t that undermine the amateur status theory you have?”
But Roberts also pressed the athletes’ attorney, Jeff Kessler. He observed that the lower courts’ decisions — and the additional education-related benefits they approved — could lead to erosion of any limits on athletes’ compensation.
“It’s like a game of Jenga,” Roberts said. “You’ve got this nice solid block that protects the sort of product the schools want to provide. And you pull out one log and then another and everything’s fine and another and another. And all of a sudden, the whole thing comes crashing down.”
Kessler responded that in this instance the issue is only about education-related benefits.
However, there already is a new case under way that not only asks that the NCAA be prevented from having association-wide rules that “restrict the amount of name, image, and likeness compensation available” to athletes but also seeks unspecified damages based on the share of television-rights money and the social media earnings the plaintiffs claim athletes would have received if the NCAA’s current limits on NIL compensation had not existed.
That case is being directed by some of the lawyers involved in the Alston case. And it is pending before the same U.S. district court judge who handled the Alston case, as well as a previous case on behalf of former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon that helped set up the Alston case.
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