If you have not read this, here is the Supreme court decision re the NCAA and amateurism last summer. It is all anti-trust law, and is not really addressing the nuanced questions we are seeing around NIL and recruiting. In fact, it does not eliminate the NCAA's ability to govern and regulate in behalf of the member institutions. It may restrict the NCAA from regulating compensation and terms of the NIL for a player, but you would need more case law to come forward to shut down the NCAA rules. So for example, the NCAA has academic eligibility rules, and if a player does not meet them, they cannot play. In other words, this case did not give players unrestricted right to participate on a team, and the NCAA can govern that. If a player had unrestricted right to participate, and that right must be guaranteed for their NIL value to be realized, then essentially a player would not even need to be a student. This decision did not open that door. The class suit against the NCAA desired to actually eliminate the NCAA, and it did not do that.
If the NCAA was eliminated why doesn't every school just start having a roster of any size they want? why would Penn State worry about 85 limit? Why not layoff all the compliance people running reports for the NCAA and putting up with their requests? Obviously, the NCAA does still exist, and we will find out if they are dismantled, but that is not the current situation.
It will be interesting to see where the interim NCAA rule moves toward when they meet to update.
