NCAA Rule Violates Antitrust Law

The NCAA must permit schools to provide student-athletes with money, up to the cost of attendance, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled this week. The current scholarship policy violates antitrust law by short-changing the athletes, who spend many hours training and risk injury without the reasonable expectation of becoming a professional athlete, the court found. Ed O’Bannon, who won a national basketball championship while attending UCLA in 1995, was one of the 20 current and former athletes who filed the antitrust lawsuit. “I was an athlete masquerading as a student,” he said of his 40-45 hours a week spent training. The difference between paying education-related expenses and offering cash sums is “a quantum leap,” Ninth Circuit Judge Jay ByBee wrote. “At that point the NCAA will have surrendered its amateurism principles entirely and transitioned from its ‘particular brand of football’ to minor league status.”