The 130 year old Sherman - enacted to attack large for profit corporations - has been stretched completely out of shape by the arrogant Federal judges of this nation. They are making a hash of college sports. But they hold themselves in such high regard that what is obvious to everyone will never be acknowledged by the arrogant judges of this nation.
While a unanimous decision, a conservative Justice wrote the opinion with a second, equally conservative Justice writing an even stronger concurring opinion. It has all the hallmarks of a conservative ruling, including a focus on the free market and economic freedom. This is a continuation of the ideology seen in Citizen United which promotes free market principles, and is wary of any influence/regulation of individual rights. So, certainly not laughable to see it as influenced by conservative judicial thought.
I just found a great NPR article that makes it understandable in very human terms...
It starts with this anecdote:
What's disgusting to me is the lawyers on both sides don't want the settlement scrapped. It seeems to me that plaintiffs lawyers just want their cut of the m ney and don't care about the all of the athletes - just the stars getting paid. They don't wnat to have to work any more and just want their $.
The talk of the "exploitation" of NCAA athletes for the last 25 years has always bothered me as there has hardly been any talk about how it's been a great system for non-revenue sports like women's cross country / field hockey etc.
I mean one of the plaintiffs in the case is about to get cut.
What's wild is it looks like many lawyers may have perjured themselves on the stand.
For freshman Jessie Cox, another Liberty runner, college sports were a ticket to a college education in pursuit of a career. The seventh of 10 children, she was expected to pay her own way for school, she said.
When she was still in high school, a Division II program in her home state of Pennsylvania had offered her a full ride to run track and cross country, she said. But when Liberty offered her an academic scholarship and a walk-on spot on the team, Cox jumped at the chance to compete at a Division I level.
She should have taken the full ride offer from the D2 school.
Student still has a free ride and the opportunity to run for their school club.
Yes, things changed for them, everybody gets impacted in a settlement.
This person lost their D1 “status”. They could likely still transfer to D2 schools on athletic scholarship and if not, they don’t belong
For the record, it's not just the stars that are getting paid. $2.8 billion is a lot to go around - I'm on track to receive a few thousand despite having never qualified for NCAAs and not competing at a P5. I don't think the allocation has been unfair, if that's what you were getting at rojo.
That said, I was also firmly in the bucket of a potential cut in college (scholarship athlete, a couple all-conference finishes, but no wins and no NCAA qualification), and I would be pretty upset if this was going through when I was competing.
Ultimately, it comes down to the transactional nature of higher education in general right now. Students don't go to college to learn, they go to college to upskill to land a good job, because nowadays you need a bachelor's to do anything besides manual labor. Institutions don't work to provide an education for students, they work to provide them with skills - even liberal arts degrees these days are glorified job training programs.
Throw on the amount of money being exchanged (one student represents $300k+ of revenue for a large private university, while a college degree represents millions of career earnings to a student) and the relative importance of something like a revenue drain sport drastically goes down.
Colleges offered those programs because students cared about enrichment, and vice versa - replace that with soulless career development and the only sports (and athletes) that matter are those that can make money - and in cross country and track the list of athletes that can actually make money is pretty short.
I'm not sure what the solution is, because it's not like colleges are really acting against their students' wishes. It's easy to blame it on "evil, money hungry administrators" but the truth is that the student body as a whole WANTS institutions to focus all of their resources on providing them with skills and career opportunities, because of the desperate need for a college degree in almost every desirable field. Cross country and track are essentially the equivalent of doing a minor in dance or medieval studies - enriching, educating, and valuable for personal growth, but NOT valuable from a career perspective.
A suit like this is just the final result of years and years of undervaluing personal development in favor of human capital in higher education (which itself is the result of years and years of undervaluing the same things in society as a whole).
The Supreme Court's move to the right is what has caused the current disastrous litigation. Conservative Justices have seen anti-trust violations where traditionally there was acknowledgment that NCAA athletes are amateur athletes who received direct scholarship/contract benefits for participating in sports. An athlete cannot waive their right to NIL, by virtue of obtaining a scholarship and participating as an amateur, as this is an impermissible restriction on their right to access the free market. This is obviously a pretty expansive reading of anti-trust law given that the athletes are clearly participating as amateurs and are compensated for their participation through scholarships worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Supreme Court could have easily ruled that anti-trust does not apply in the context of the NCAA athletics, but instead took an extreme free-market position that has led us to where we are today. The irony is not lost, as anti-trust laws are not enforced against mega-corporations. So, this is selective anti-trust enforcement serving the abstract idea of a "free market". Plaintiff lawyers opportunistically saw the potential case here. The NCAA agreed to cap rosters as a way of adding clarity to their legal obligations where the aggregate settlement would be spread/paid to athletes per school. Having more on the roster potentially leads to a lack of clarity and potentially more of a financial obligation. Thus, neither side has the interests of student athletes in mind. It is either about obtaining the contingency fee or mitigating the financial exposure, depending on what side one is on. Athletes in revenue producing sports are being reward twice through scholarships and then payout money that is dispersed at the discretion of the schools. Again, most of these athletes are not professional in any sense and only very few would be drafted into major professional leagues, with most toiling away in the minor leagues receiving very low pay. Meanwhile, athletes in the non-revenue sports bear the brunt of the apparent need to expose amateur athletes to the free market.
The NCAA IS A MEGA CORPORATION. Non profit is a euphemistic term for them.
The Supreme Court's move to the right is what has caused the current disastrous litigation. Conservative Justices have seen anti-trust violations where traditionally there was acknowledgment that NCAA athletes are amateur athletes who received direct scholarship/contract benefits for participating in sports. An athlete cannot waive their right to NIL, by virtue of obtaining a scholarship and participating as an amateur, as this is an impermissible restriction on their right to access the free market. This is obviously a pretty expansive reading of anti-trust law given that the athletes are clearly participating as amateurs and are compensated for their participation through scholarships worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Supreme Court could have easily ruled that anti-trust does not apply in the context of the NCAA athletics, but instead took an extreme free-market position that has led us to where we are today. The irony is not lost, as anti-trust laws are not enforced against mega-corporations. So, this is selective anti-trust enforcement serving the abstract idea of a "free market". Plaintiff lawyers opportunistically saw the potential case here. The NCAA agreed to cap rosters as a way of adding clarity to their legal obligations where the aggregate settlement would be spread/paid to athletes per school. Having more on the roster potentially leads to a lack of clarity and potentially more of a financial obligation. Thus, neither side has the interests of student athletes in mind. It is either about obtaining the contingency fee or mitigating the financial exposure, depending on what side one is on. Athletes in revenue producing sports are being reward twice through scholarships and then payout money that is dispersed at the discretion of the schools. Again, most of these athletes are not professional in any sense and only very few would be drafted into major professional leagues, with most toiling away in the minor leagues receiving very low pay. Meanwhile, athletes in the non-revenue sports bear the brunt of the apparent need to expose amateur athletes to the free market.
I liked your post except for the Trump/Conservative Derangement syndrome. To blame this on the "Supreme Court's move to the right" is laughable.
Do you not realize that "in the 2021 case of NCAA v. Alston, the Supreme Court unanimously sided with former college athletes?"
Rojo:
I don't think this a blame of the conservative court. I think it is the reality of the conservative approach to free market economics. Sometimes it's about strict readings of the constitution. Sometimes it's about individual rights. Sometimes the consideration is about exploitation of under-represented groups. Sometimes these things unexpectedly align and lead to a unanimous stance from the Court---even if the rationale of the justices is different. That was the case in the '21 Alston ruling.
What I think you're (Rojo) are experiencing right now is that you disagree with the stance of the conservative justices on this matter. I, as a liberal, feel the same way about trans athletes issues and liberal courts/politicians. I generally support the platform, but not on the trans athlete issue. It reminds me that I am a moderate. Maybe you are too.
You want something other than a market-driven college sports model. You want one that's inclusive and supportive of non-revenue sports; one that funds activities that have value beyond money, but add diversity to university athletic departments and enhance campus cultures, and are inclusive of athletes who are on the fringes of being good enough to make rosters. You want a system that has some level of equity, even if it means taking from revenue sports and sharing with the financial have nots.
I agree with you that there must be diversity, equity and inclusion when it comes to having a healthy, robust, collegiate athletics environment. I think the NCAA crumbles without it.
Here is the unfortunate truth of the situation. The NCAA cannot survive without this settlement. The roster limits are essential to that happening. This is the only way they can provide some sort of parity for their member schools. And before the mob start screaming the NCAA needs to die think about the fallout. The NCAA has only ever been responsible for two things, putting on championships and enforcing rules. The NCAA as an organization has never passed one single piece of legislation. The individual members (schools) are the legislative branch of the NCAA. College presidents and athletic directors have collectively decided to pass every single rule change that has led us to this point. Without the NCAA most of college sports will fall into chaos. You think roster cuts are bad if this deal falls through then program cuts and shuttering of entire athletic departments will follow. There is no way forward without this deal. If the NCAA cannot be in charge of scholarship then roster limits are the only other option. Track and XC will not survive the collapse of the NCAA as well as other sports. Change is coming no matter what. Lets make sure we exist to see it.
Alarmist obfuscation. The roster limits are essential to ensure the Power 4 conferences can avoid the settlement option (to maintain competitiveness) preferred by the other 22 confs, an option that would require no roster limits at all: 1) greater revenue-sharing, including access to new media revenue from CFP.
Parity from sharing the wealth. Everybody eats, some get seconds, no one gets thirds or goes hungry.
You are partly right. This settlement is there to ensure everything you said but the problem is that the Power 4 hold all of the cards. They have the money and will be the ones making most of the future money. If the NCAA cannot provide some structure and at least the illusion of fairness for the entire division while also staying out of the controlling athlete pay argument then the Power 4 will leave. They have no incentive to share or be fair. UK athletics becoming an LLC is the first shot.
The NCAA IS A MEGA CORPORATION. Non profit is a euphemistic term for them.
No, they're organized as a 501 (c) 3 organization. They're legally a nonprofit, and all revenue goes to schools, athletes, and administrative costs. Yes their salaries at the top are probably too high, but not unheard of for nonprofits. They have no shareholders, and they distribute no money to said nonexistent shareholders. I don't understand how this makes them a "MEGA CORPORATION."
This is a thoughtful post. Some things need to be left out of the market and not governed by market principles. If we were to discuss American exceptionalism, our university system, complete with amateur athletics, is a great American tradition. Our National Parks could similarly be opened to market forces, but thankfully politicians of old had the foresight to set them aside. It appears this will likely change, however. College athletics should similarly be set aside, or we risk the destruction of another great institution. Modern conservative ideology supports the outcome in Alston, where everything is left open to the free market. All of the recent attempts to de-regulate just about everything are ideologically similar. If Alston had been decided differently, there would be no such thing as roster caps.
This is a thoughtful post. Some things need to be left out of the market and not governed by market principles. If we were to discuss American exceptionalism, our university system, complete with amateur athletics, is a great American tradition. Our National Parks could similarly be opened to market forces, but thankfully politicians of old had the foresight to set them aside. It appears this will likely change, however. College athletics should similarly be set aside, or we risk the destruction of another great institution. Modern conservative ideology supports the outcome in Alston, where everything is left open to the free market. All of the recent attempts to de-regulate just about everything are ideologically similar. If Alston had been decided differently, there would be no such thing as roster caps.
the question though is are we discussing what we want? or what we will get?
many people commenting here are just posting about what we are going to get.
without carve out laws from congress we are going to get a free market free for all. and yes, this will be bad for college sports in general but that is where we are at.