Be a Good Sport: NCAA Faces Challenge to Amateurism Rules in New Lawsuit

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is no stranger to lawsuits, having faced multiple suits in the last few years accusing it of, among other things, failing to financially compensate athletes and using players’ names and images without proper consent.

Plaintiffs in this case, four current top-tier college football and men’s basketball players, argue that they’ve been exploited by NCAA’s member institutions.

A lawsuit filed on Monday, however, has got a lot of commentators wondering – could this be the suit that shifts the balance of power in the athletes’ favor?

The suit was filed in the United States District Court, District of New Jersey on behalf of athletes who claim the NCAA’s entire business model, which is based on amateurism and bans athletes from being paid anything more than the usual college scholarship, is outdated, unfair, and stifles competition.

The suit is essentially seeking to change the most basic principles of the NCAA; principles that have been under the microscope for a long time. How did things get to this?

NCAA rules require athletes to accept payment only in the form of college scholarships, capping their potential earnings at way below market rate even as schools earn billions of dollars from collage athlete programs. The rules are backed by a 1984 Supreme Court decision that college athletes “must not be paid” to ensure a “pro-competitive” environment. Would competitiveness be lost if colleges were able to pay for the work and effort put in by college athletes? The NCAA has always argued so, and has used the Supreme Court’s ruling to defend itself against claims that mandatory amateurism is anti-competitive.

Things could be about to change.

While past antitrust litigation has targeted specific practices of the NCAA – its use of players’ names in merchandise, for example – Monday’s suit calls for nothing short of a free agency model and the dismantling of the current NCAA system. The complaint makes it clear that, in the plaintiffs’ eyes, the current ban on competitive pay has no future in college sports:

Plaintiffs in this case, four current top-tier college football and men’s basketball players, argue that they’ve been exploited by NCAA’s member institutions – intuitions that profit from players’ work but will not, and cannot, pass that profit on to the athletes. At the heart of this lawsuit is the fact that, at the end of the day, it’s the players who do the work and, in the words of the complaint, commit their “hard work, sweat, and sometimes broken bodies” without adequate compensation.

It’s a situation similar to an employer-employee relationship, NCAA detractors claim, yet one in which the employees can never expect to be paid a fair rate. CNN, meanwhile, points out that team coaches are often among the highest paid state employees.

The suit names the NCAA, the ACC, the Big 12, the Big Ten, The Pac-12, and the SEC as defendants.

The NCAA’s amateurism rules have long been contentious. As the CNN report states:

So, could this be the suit to bring more freedom to college sports? Or, if you’re a believer in the current system, could it ruin competition by allowing richer colleges to scoop up potential stars? Either way, times, they are a-changing, and the NCAA certainly can’t afford to rest on its laurels with attacks like this garnering more and more widespread support.