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The Supreme Court sides with NCAA athletes in a narrow ruling

  • By Nina Totenberg/NPR
FILE - In this March 20, 2021, file photo the March Madness logo is shown on the court during the first half of a men's college basketball game in the first round of the NCAA tournament at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. A Supreme Court case being argued this week amid March Madness could erode the difference between elite college athletes and professional sports stars. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

FILE - In this March 20, 2021, file photo the March Madness logo is shown on the court during the first half of a men's college basketball game in the first round of the NCAA tournament at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. A Supreme Court case being argued this week amid March Madness could erode the difference between elite college athletes and professional sports stars. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

(Washington) — Faced with the prospect of reshaping college athletics, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a narrow, but potentially transformative ruling Monday in a case that pitted college athletes against the NCAA.

At issue in the case were the NCAA rules that limit educational benefits for college players as part of their scholarships.

The athletes maintained that the NCAA has, in effect, been operating a system that is a classic restraint of competition–in short, a system that violates the nation’s antitrust laws. The NCAA countered that its rules are largely exempt from the antitrust laws because they are aimed at preserving amateurism in college sports and because the rules “widen choices for consumers by distinguishing college sports from professional sports.”

On Monday, however, a unanimous court ruled that the NCAA rules are not reasonably necessary to distinguish between college and professional sports.

The NCAA “seeks immunity from the normal operation of the antitrust laws,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court. But added that the court declines this request because “this suit involves admitted horizontal price fixing in a market where the defendants exercise monopoly control.”

Amy Perko, CEO of the independent Knight Commission on Athletic Education, notes that having the conferences each establish their own limits on educational compensation would mean that there would be competition among the conferences, and an athlete who doesn’t like the benefits that are offered in one conference might sign up with a school in a different conference.

Though Monday’s decision is narrow, she says, it could be “transformative” in collegiate athletics. And the kinds of educational benefits that might be allowed could also be transformative. They include not just academic scholarships, but scholarships for graduate school, too, paid internships, and the elimination of caps on disability insurance so that injured athletes are guaranteed income in the future if they suffer a career-ending injury before ever being able to play professionally.

College football and basketball are in a world of trouble these days, with athletes viewed as exploited at the same time schools pay millions of dollars to coaches and spend hundreds of millions on palatial training centers, arenas, and stadiums.

Although many NCAA rules were not an issue in this case, they are increasingly an issue for the public. Take, for instance, the NCAA rules that bar athletes to earn money from their “name, image, and likeness.” The NIL, as it is known, has become so unpopular that in the majority of states, legislatures either are considering or have already passed laws that ban these NIL restrictions. Indeed, in five states, those laws will go into effect July 1.

Behind the scenes in Congress, the NCAA has been scrambling to come up with a consensus on legislation that would allow athletes to control, or at least make money off. their own name, image, and likeness,

Perko says she believes that change alone will “transform” college athletics, and not just for players who are big stars. “In the modern world we live in, and that these young people live in,” she observes, lesser athletes will be able to “monetize” their names via social media.

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