It's rare for sports cases to reach the highest court in the land, but a unanimous decision is a harbinger of much larger industry changes to come.
ANDREW BRANDTJUN 29, 2021
We are clearly at an inflection point in college athletics. Last week a seminal case on rights of college athletes produced a beatdown of the NCAA from the highest court in the land. And as of this Thursday, name, image and likeness (NIL) rights for college athletes are upon us, whether the NCAA likes it or not. Let’s examine.
Alston decision
One can count on two hands how often a case involving sports has reached the U. S. Supreme Court, so sports business and law nerds like myself were giddy last week when it happened in a case regarding limitations on benefits for college athletes.
In a 9–0 unanimous decision, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision that NCAA restrictions on “education-related benefits” for college athletes violated antitrust law. Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the majority opinion in favor of the plaintiffs, albeit a narrow decision dealing only with education-related benefits and not the larger issue of pay-for-play or other big-picture issues with college athletes. And there was language the NCAA has since claimed as a “win” for itself: It was still free to create limits on benefits unrelated to education.
While there was a narrow focus to the overall ruling, the case, as noted below, appears to be a harbinger for the NCAA of things to come.
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