Emmert will appeal Wilken's latest ruling because they don't like the notion that they're violating antitrust lawsGETTY IMAGES
NCAA President Mark Emmert said that a judge's recent ruling in the Alston v. NCAA federal antitrust lawsuit again "reinforced that college athletes should be treated as students not employees," according to Ralph Russo of the AP. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken last month ruled the NCAA "did violate antitrust laws and cannot prohibit schools from providing more benefits to athletes as long as they are tethered to education." Emmert said of Wilken's decision, "Another federal decision has come down reinforcing the fundamentals of what college sports is about, we're very pleased with that. And the way that she wrote what could and could not be prohibited by the NCAA is not in any way fundamentally inconsistent with what we've been doing for about a decade now." NCAA member schools in recent years have "passed legislation permitting an increase in the value of an athletic scholarship by as much as several thousand dollars to include the federal cost of attendance." Schools also are now "allowed to provide athletes with unlimited meals and guaranteed four-year scholarships." Alston's attorneys "celebrated" Wilken's ruling, despite it falling "well short" of striking down NCAA rules limiting compensation. The plaintiffs' attorneys said that the ruling was "another step toward unraveling the NCAA's definition of amateurism." However, the NCAA is "appealing Wilken's latest ruling" in the Ninth Circuit Court. Emmert: "We don't like the notion that we're in violation of antitrust laws" (AP, 4/4).
