The lawsuit comes after the NCAA's investigation into UT over recruiting violationsGetty Images
The attorneys general of Tennessee and Virginia yesterday filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA that “challenged its ban on the use of name, image and likeness compensation in the recruitment of college athletes,” according to Russo & Walker of the AP. Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti and Virginia AG Jason Miyares asked the court for a “temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction by Feb. 6 that would prohibit the NCAA from enforcing NIL recruiting rules while the lawsuit plays out.” This latest legal attack on the NCAA came a day after Univ. of Tennessee Chancellor Donde Plowman “ripped the association for investigating the school for potential recruiting violations related to NIL deals struck between athletes and a booster-funded and run organization that provides Volunteers athletes a chance to cash in on their fame.” The NCAA already is facing a lawsuit by a group of state attorneys general “challenging the association’s transfer rules,” plus it is the defendant in antitrust suits “targeting employment status for athletes and billions in television revenue that schools and conferences make off big-time college sports.” NCAA President Charlie Baker and college sports leaders have been “pleading for federal lawmakers to regulate NIL compensation and provide an antitrust exemption that would allow the association to govern without constantly being dragged into the court” (AP, 1/31).
LOOKING AHEAD: USA TODAY’s Dan Wolken wrote this is the “big distraction of college sports,” which has made it almost three years into the NIL era “without a proper reckoning on its original sin.” For all the “murky NCAA guidance memos, worthless Congressional hearings and now a growing load of enforcement cases related to NIL activity, the greatest embarrassment of this entire system has not changed.” Regardless of what it was "meant to be, NIL is now nothing more than a tax on fans." The idea that athletic departments are "using it as a crutch to keep their nonprofit status and duck what has become an obvious responsibility to operate like proper businesses is an outrage that nobody should stand for.” If the NCAA and its members “don’t have the courage to look it in the eye and build a financial model that fairly compensates athletes and sends the current legion of NIL hucksters they’ve created off to find their next grift,” then they should “all resign and find a new line of work.” This issue is the “only thing that matters right now in the larger universe of college sports.” Without an admission that they "run a big business and college athletes are their employees," they are “all doomed to a series of conflicts that result in rancor and frustration with no endgame in sight” (USA TODAY, 1/31).
OPEN SEASON: SI’s Pat Forde wrote it is “open season on the NCAA’s authority to enforce its own rules.” Though the rules are established by NCAA member schools -- like Tennessee -- those members “increasingly don’t want to abide by their own bylaws.” When the NCAA “finally relented” on allowing athletes to be compensated, it “still attempted to apply a non-professional framework.” But in the “murky waters of NIL legislation, where the rules have been disregarded or have changed," the NCAA is "having a hard time charting a forceful course.” And "everyone in the membership knows it” (SI, 1/31).
