The NCAA plans to appeal a recent ruling in federal court that said some of the NCAA’s rules regarding revenue and athlete compensation violate federal anti-trust laws.

Federal judge: NCAA violates antitrust law

Some National Collegiate Athletic Association rules violate federal antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Friday. Judge Claudia Wilken issued an injunction blocking those rules, which bar the sharing of revenue with athletes, including football and basketball players at the focus of the suit.

The ruling is a major blow for the NCAA, which has argued that any deviation from its interpretations of amateurism could be destructive to intercollegiate athletics.

While the judge said that the NCAA presented some valid evidence of problems that could be raised by dropping all rules, Wilken said that there were legal ways the NCAA could limit payments — and avoid the problems the association claimed could arise from a pure free market.

In this regard, the NCAA could have fared much worse. Wilken’s ruling does not require revenue sharing; it just allows institutions to pay athletes above the full cost of attendance if they wish to do so. Those payments are capped at $5,000 per year, and would be held in a trust fund until the students have completed their athletic eligibility.

Wilken also rejected the idea that athletes should be allowed to make paid endorsements.

“Allowing student-athletes to endorse commercial products would undermine the efforts of both the NCAA and its member schools to protect against the ‘commercial exploitation’ of student-athletes,” she wrote in her decision.
The judge did not stay the ruling, but said that the injunction would not take effect until the start of the next Football Bowl Subdivision and Division I basketball recruiting cycle.