My Turn | NCAA’s Off-Court Losing Streak Extends

To sign up, click here.

To submit a letter to the editor, click here.

To suggest a guest column for My Turn, email [email protected].

Would you like to purchase today’s print edition? Here is a map of the locations of individual copies.

Georgia became the second state to pass a name, image, and likeness law (via executive order) that allows schools to make direct NIL payments to athletes.

Like California’s revolutionary 2019 NIL law, it prohibits the NCAA or conference from penalizing a Georgia school. Virginia passed a similar law in April. This is significant for two reasons.

That’s similar to what California Senior District Judge Claudia Wilken said was appropriate in the House of Representatives’ antitrust case against the NCAA; which is exactly what the NCAA is fighting.
Without NIL limits, the NCAA argues, competition will continue to be destabilizing. Right now, the SEC’s University of Georgia and the ACC’s Georgia Tech appear to have an advantage over other schools in their conferences. The Big Ten and Big 12 don’t have that advantage — yet. More states are sure to follow suit.

This is the ticketThe University of Tennessee plans to add a 14.5 percent “talent fee” to Vols tickets next year. That’s notable for a few reasons.

Some sports administrators must have Ph.D.s in Orwellian linguistics to call pay-for-play schemes (“talent fee” and NIL) something they are not. Wilken made a similar observation even as an NCAA lawyer denied that NIL was ever pay-for-play.
What about schools that don’t have the market power to do this? Again, this fee for talent contributes to competitive imbalance.
Some states regulate tip fees. In 2019, Uber settled with drivers for $20 million in a lawsuit over tip fees. In a previous ruling, California District Court Judge Edward Chen found there was sufficient evidence to show that Uber’s withholding of a 20 percent “service fee” was a disguised tip fee that Uber unlawfully withheld for itself and denied to drivers who could later be considered employees.

There’s a word, “employee,” a term that the NCAA opposes. In Tennessee, that wouldn’t be a problem; but in states with stronger labor laws, it could be.

NCAA Legal BillA recent report shows the NCAA has spent $234 million on legal fees in NIL and antitrust cases over the past four years. It turns out the NCAA isn’t averse to hiring — it loves hiring expensive lawyers, even though the best lawyers in America have only won one small victory this time around.

More lawsuits coming soonMontana, North Dakota and Idaho have said they will file lawsuits against the NCAA following the example of one filed last week by South Dakota.

The South Dakota lawsuit seeks an injunction prohibiting the NCAA from cutting funding to state schools to pay off the House settlement. This lawsuit has promise because it claims the settlement forces schools to violate Title IX (the proposed settlement would pay 90 percent of the damages to men) while unfairly enriching Power Four schools.

Michael LeRoy is a professor of graduate studies in labor and employment relations at the Department of Labor and Employment Relations and the University of Illinois at Illinois School of Law.