Evaluating what could come out of attorney general lawsuits vs. NCAA
The latest NCAA investigation into Tennessee amid NIL dealings caused On3’s Andy Staples to look at what could come out of attorney general lawsuits against the NCAA.
Tennessee chancellor Donde Plowman already sent a scathing letter to NCAA president Charlie Baker. At this point, it’s going to heat up if more schools are under investigation.
As in, there’s probably going to be push back, per Staples.
“What happens if the TRO gets granted,” Staples said. What happens if an injunction gets granted? Well then the Collectives can just talk to recruits about how much money they’re gonna make which, spoiler alert, they already are. All this would do is make it where the system that has come into place since NIL became allowed in 2021, would not be against NCAA rules. And the reason this is such a strange situation, I don’t understand why the NCAA went after schools on this. All the schools are doing it now.
“So it’s not like they’re gonna say Oh, you got Tennessee, you got Florida State, you’re getting Florida. No, they got the same things going on with their collective so if they can get Tennessee, if they can get Florida State, if they can get Florida, they can get you too. And I don’t think the schools are gonna put up with that.”
Since there’s so much gray area around NIL, what’s allowed, what’s not, how different states and organizations operate, etc., Staples said this could be totally changed in court.
“Remember, the schools are the members of the NCAA,” Staples said. “Now, a lot of the complaints about this situation is they have not been able to shape the NIL rules the way they would have liked the way, the way the normal process would allow. Part of it was because that normal process is extremely bureaucratic. It takes a long time. And they’ve been trying to hit a moving target with all this denial stuff because it’s a rapidly evolving thing.
“But the NCAA going after some of its biggest schools and saying we’re going to enforce rules that weren’t necessarily in effect, or we weren’t sure were in effect, when this stuff happened. That was a bad idea. Because that’s what brought this case into court. And that is probably going to get that rule hit by the court. And if it is, I don’t think it’s ever coming back.”
Staples explained how the NCAA is simply blind to the positives of NIL.
“When the world didn’t end, when players started getting paid and in fact, the game got a lot more interesting because oh, shockingly, less you listen to the economists, players started moving to schools where they wouldn’t have necessarily gone before, and it made it where more schools could actually compete for the national title in football,” Staples said. “So this is going to be a fascinating case. Because this is one of the most direct attacks on the NCAA just saying, Hey, your rules are not sacred. We’re going to let this happen. And the world is changing. It’s still up to the court to decide whether that happens or not. But given recent history, we probably will …
“And so the schools ultimately need to go back to the drawing board and figure out something else. Perhaps that’s revenue sharing, and athletes, perhaps that’s viewing athletes as employees and bargaining collectively with them because if you do that, then you can’t challenge the rules on antitrust grounds. If they want to make transfer rules, or they want to make a salary cap, compensation rules of any kind, they got to collectively bargain those otherwise they’re going to face the same challenges we’re facing now.”
However, a lot of this is on the athletes as well. Can the NCAA actually make positive changes?
“And what they’re realizing is, schools aren’t necessarily their friends,” Staples said. “The states aren’t their friends. They don’t have a whole lot of friends left. That is the NCAA. They haven’t made a lot of good decisions through this entire process. But going after some of their biggest schools, for stuff that everybody was doing, is probably going to be their biggest mistake yet.”